Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Equanimity… That’s when the Buddha says that you have to use the fabrications of exertion. In other words, you use the way you breathe, you use the way you think about things, evaluate things, you use your perceptions and feelings to deal with those problems: to figure out where they’re coming from and what you can do to undercut them so that eventually …
- Happily on the Path… not just sitting here, passively watching things coming and going. We’re proactive in trying to figure things out. Look at dependent co-arising, all the factors happening before sensory contact: fabrication, intentions, attention, perceptions, feelings. We’re actively shaping things, and that’s what we’re trying to train: the way the mind shapes its experience. Part of that is learning how to …
- Evaluation… That forms the foundation for deeper and deeper levels of concentration, and they in turn allow you to watch the process of fabrication. This way, you can see areas in which you’ve been adding unnecessary stress to what’s going on and you can learn how to stop. So always remember this factor of evaluation. It’s the beginning of discernment. If you …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… You see that all the stress that’s weighing down the mind comes from your passion for fabrication. You’re making all kinds of worlds out of your experiences, and in the course of that you’re making yourself suffer. But a lot of those worlds are hard to give up. The different hopes and ideals we have: Some of them are in line …
- The Committee of the Mind… He’s teaching us new ways to breathe, new ways to talk to ourselves, new ways of applying perceptions to the world—all three of the fabrications that go into shaping the present moment. To really take them on, it’s good to keep in mind that it is possible to put an end to suffering. There’s something better than the ways we …
- Safety in Awareness… Let go of your awareness of feelings, perceptions, fabrication.” He goes through all the five aggregates, all the elements, and all the sense bases. He finally gets to the point where he says, “You have to let go of your consciousness of consciousness. Don’t let your consciousness rely on consciousness.” This is the point, of course, where Ananthapindika starts crying. “All those years …
- The Solvent for Sticky Narratives… Then, of course, the Buddha has you step back from this whole process of creating narratives in your mind, and remind yourself that it’s all just fabrication. You happen to breathe in a certain way, talk to yourself in a certain way, certain perceptions come up, and all of a sudden you’re back in that old thought world. Well, it doesn’t …
- Self-Doubt… Ajaan Lee makes the point that of the various fabrications—bodily, verbal, and mental—the really important one is verbal. It’s through the way we talk to ourselves that we can destroy ourselves, we can sabotage the practice. It’s through the way we talk to ourselves that we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and encourage ourselves to move on. It …
- 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 …
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