Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- The Craft of the Heart… You’re engaging in sankhara, fabrication, which is the doing, and it has a purpose. That purpose involves imagination. This is an aspect of meditation that’s often overlooked; people sometimes regard it with suspicion. After all, we’re supposed to be simply watching what’s really happening, right? And imagination seems to get in the way of that. But you can’t engage …
- It’s What You Give… mind. He saw that what we bring to our sensory experience is what makes all the difference. You look at dependent co-arising: The big factors are prior to sensory contact: fabrication, name and form, intentions, acts of attention, perceptions, feelings, even the way you breathe. This is what you bring to sensory contact, and what you bring is going to make the difference …
- Refuge… Instead of holding something new and unexpected for his last teaching, he simply summarized everything he’d taught, “All fabricated things are subject to arising and passing away. Try to become consummate through heedfulness.” “Consummate” means here consummately skillful in the way you act and think and speak—in other words, bringing the mind to a point where it creates no more suffering. And …
- The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough… The Buddha said that some unskillful states will respond simply to equanimity, but a lot will require what he calls the exertion of a fabrication, where you have to change the way you breathe, change the way you perceive things, change the way you feel about them, or change the way you think about them. Ask questions, probe in: That’s where the liberating …
- Practical Wisdom… You have to use fabricated things. But it works, just as long as you put them together well, you hold on tight, and you make the effort to go across the river. It can be done, it’s simply a matter of wanting to do it enough, and then being as wise and discerning in acting on that desire. We all want happiness. We …
- For the Survival of True Happiness… But remember, the Buddha has us focus on ways of breathing that make us sensitive to how the mind fabricates its experience through its perceptions, through its feelings, and even—in the way the instructions for breath meditation are given—through the way you talk to yourself. The act of becoming sensitized to these things is what’s really going to make a difference …
- Everything Gathers Around the Breath… Step number four is calming bodily fabrications. In other words, you’re calming the effect that the breath has on the body. Well, what is that effect? That effect goes through feeling. That takes you right into the next tetrad. You’re breathing in ways that give rise to rapture. If the body needs the nourishment that comes from rapture, you apply that. When …
- The Four Noble Truths… All of this falls under the stress that comes from clinging to form, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness—consciousness here being the consciousness of the senses. All of this, the Buddha says to comprehend. Now, for most of us, when we run into pain, comprehending is not the first thing we have in mind. We want to push it away; we want to …
- Solo Practice… Other times you need formulating and fabricating. But in any event, you begin to get a better and better sense of cause and effect in the present moment. And that’s what connects to the four noble truths. You see what the mind does that creates suffering, you see what it does that puts an end to that suffering. That’s the basic pattern …
- The Meaning of Insight… As the Buddha says, we fabricate the aggregates for the sake of using them. So that gives us two things right there: goals—what the Buddha calls attha—and means toward the goals. This is the way the mind functions. This is the way it gropes through the world, learning about things, learning what works, what doesn’t work, which kinds of goals are …
- Samvega… Everything that’s fabricated has to be inconstant, stressful, and not-self. But the stress that comes from craving and clinging: That’s not necessary. So you sit with the pain until you get fed up with creating suffering around the pain, and you’re willing to look at your own actions to see how you could do things differently, how you could relate …
- Boring… yourself listening to that voice that says, “This is boring,” and you’re getting ready to believe it. It’s usually a sign that you’re not paying very careful attention. Fabrications are going on. Perceptions are going on. All the aggregates are going on right here, and you’re relating to them in your old ways. And as we all know, the old …
- Compunction & Awe… Dispassion is the sense that you’ve been feeding off of your fabrications, willing to put in the effort to construct them, because you have a passion for the pleasures they provide. But now you see that they’re just simply not worth it. You lose any enthusiasm for continuing with this process, and you stop. Saṁvega is one of the ways of inducing …
- Opportunities Everywhere… He started with a warning, “Fabrications are inconstant, subject to arising and passing away. Achieve completion through heedfulness.” In other words, he was talking about an attitude, an attitude you bring to the practice, realizing that things slip away, slip away very quickly. And you’ve got work to do. You can’t be complacent. If you let yourself be complacent, all the opportunities …
- A Noble Warrior’s Path… And as you’re thinking about your breath and evaluating it, that’s the aggregate of fabrication. Meanwhile, your consciousness is aware of all of these things. So you’ve got the five aggregates right here in right concentration, which is your nourishment on the path. Without the well-being and nourishment that come from right concentration, the path gets dry pretty fast. And …
- A Mirror for the Mind… These are called mental fabrications because they’re the mental processes that really have an impact on shaping your state of mind. In this case, the perception of the breath and the different ways of perceiving the breath allow it to become more comfortable. The sense of well-being, the sense of refreshment sooth both the body and the mind. So you’ve got …
- Right Speech, Inside & Out… Because this business of verbal fabrication inside the mind, as Ajaan Lee pointed out, is the most important issue on the path. It can do the most damage, but it can also be the most helpful. It can be helpful in the sense that it reminds you of what right view is, and in that way it’s an essential part of mindfulness. As …
- Gratification… When you enjoy a pleasure, there’s an element of fabrication even in the present moment of the enjoyment. When you try to enjoy a nice sound or a nice sight, the mind embroiders an awful lot around the sound and sight in order to enjoy it, because those things are pretty fleeting. The mind has a tendency to advertise the sound and sight …
- Levels of Truth… form, feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness. All these things are things that we cling to, and in the clinging there’s going to be stress. That’s something you want to comprehend. You want to watch as it’s actually happening to understand how it’s happening. Then, in the course of performing that duty, you learn to see the cause of stress: what’s …
- Patient & Inquisitive… When he talks about calming bodily fabrication, how do you do that skillfully? If you try to stifle the breath, it’s not going to work. Ajaan Lee gives some good recommendations: Think about the breath energy as having channels that go through the body. Think of the channels all opening up and connecting together. As you think of the body in those ways …
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