Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart… And we use true perceptions as we speak, because otherwise, what would we have to direct our practice? We’re already fabricating our experience through our perceptions, so the Buddha’s giving us new perceptions to use. But notice, they’re there to be used. We’re not trying to arrive at a true perception. The Buddha makes this point many times in the …
- Doing… The same with feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. He doesn’t tell you just to give to up and say, “Well, that’s not my self, so I’ll just learn how to accept things as they are.” That short-circuits the whole path. You never get anywhere. He says to try training these things into a state of stillness, a state of well …
- Equanimity on the Path… You’ve got to realize that equanimity itself is a fabricated state. It’s put together from certain perceptions and feelings, and if you look at it from that point of view—in other words, you’re satisfied in one area of the mind, but another part of the mind is not yet satisfied, because there’s got to be something better: That way …
- Asalha Puja – Completeness… So there’s an element of fabrication, an element of intention, in everything we experience. So apply the four noble truths to this realization. Look at your intention in the present moment to see if it’s causing suffering or leading to the end of suffering. Everything comes down to the quality of the intention, the quality of the desire behind the intention. The …
- A Memorial to Your Life… It is possible that you can peel away all the levels of fabrication there might be in the mind. Then you go to a place that’s very different. So there’s a lot to explore here, but the important thing is that you learn how to observe your mind in action. Only then can you comprehend suffering, let go of the cause, fully …
- What’s Worth Doing?… After all, everything that’s fabricated involves some stress. And every state of becoming, where you take on an identity in a particular world of experience, is going to involve some stress and suffering, too. Now, you need to do that in order to create the path. So the actions of the path are actions that are worth doing. As for actions that lead …
- You Should Heed These Shoulds… In other words, you use the aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness to create a path. Your practice of the precepts will involve these five aggregates. Your practice of concentration will involve them. Even discernment—the perceptions and thought constructs you use for discernment—will involve the aggregates, especially perceptions. And you have to hold on. And if it involves a sense …
- A Promise to Yourself… You could sit there and just bliss out in the concentration and decide, “Well, this is good enough for me.” But then you have to remember what the Buddha said about fabricated happiness. The fact that you’re sitting here with the mind quiet, nothing happening, is not going to last. Either something outside will come to disturb it or you’ll get tired …
- Changing Your Default Settings… They were all fabricated. So as long as these things are put together, you have the right to put them together well. When you’re going through a bad period of life, it’s the same sort of thing. You don’t have to add any extra suffering on top of it by breathing in a way that’s weighing you down, or perceiving …
- At the Door of the Cage… As the texts say, the first stage in insight is to focus on the drawbacks of anything that’s fabricated. The next stage is for the mind to incline to the Deathless. Normally the mind will not incline to the Deathless unless it feels that that’s the only way out. Otherwise it’s always going to find some other place to go, some …
- Owning Your Actions… In other words, it takes the mind to a dimension where nothing has to be created, nothing has to be fabricated, nothing has to be put together. There there’s no stress, no suffering at all. That’s where it’s all headed. And it starts right here with noticing what you’re doing. So be clear about what you’re doing and try …
- Anybody Home?… form, feelings, perceptions, mental fabrications, acts of consciousness coming and going, coming and going. They’ve been coming and going in all kinds of zigzags. You want to learn how to see that they’re really not worth getting involved with. He represents this by the little children suddenly getting sick and tired of their mud houses, realizing they’re nothing but mud, and …
- An Inside Job… One of his big discoveries is the extent to which we fabricate our experience from within, through our intentions. In other words, we’re not just on the receiving end of the material world. We actually shape the world we live in. The whole point of the path is to learn how to take advantage of that fact—so that, on the one hand …
- The Pleasure of Concentration… And be sensitive, as the Buddha said, to breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication. This is largely an issue of the perceptions that you use around the breath. Remember, we’re not trying to pump air into a solid body. Our immediate experience of the body is breath energy. So as the breath flows in, it’s simply energy mingling with energy …
- The Kindness of Body Contemplation… your feelings, your perceptions, thought fabrications, states of your mind, any qualities that would pull you away from staying with the body here in the present moment or any qualities that would help in that direction. You want to be able to see these things clearly for what they are and while they’re happening. The more you’re able to step back from …
- Appropriate Attention… You know that in those two things—the craving or the passion and desire on the one hand, and these aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness on the other—the craving is to be abandoned, while you have to comprehend those aggregates that you’re clinging to. When you think in these ways, that’s called appropriate attention. So, as you go …
- The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind… These different layers of sankhara, fabrication, fall away one by one by one. And the mind can become very light. The reason we don’t experience lightness in our meditation is because we’re not willing to let go. We feel that we’re going to need some straw. So we keep that big load of straw on our backs. The purpose of the …
- It’s All in What You’re Doing… You’ve got the thought fabrications that are directing your thoughts and evaluating to get the breath and the mind to settle down together. And then you’ve got the awareness, the consciousness, that’s aware of all these things. That’s where you’re going to see those five aggregates. It’s not that they’re going to be set out some place …
- Freedom Undefined… When you hold onto any of the other aggregates, you’re classified as a feeling-clinger, a perception-clinger, a mental-fabrication-, or consciousness-clinger. You create your identity by what you cling to. This is why the Buddha never answered questions about what a human being is, because a human being can be almost anything. So this noble eightfold path that we’re …
- The Right Time at the Right Place… Right here in the state of concentration, you’ve got the form of the body, you’ve got feelings of pleasure, you’ve got the perception that holds you here, you’ve got the fabrications of directed thought and evaluation that are your internal analysis—your internal conversation on how to get the mind and the breath together well—and then there’s consciousness …
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