Search results for: "Perception"

1. Page 57
2. Play AudioUndomesticated Happiness
    … We start with the perception of earth as a beginning foundation for endurance and equanimity, but we need to give the mind a more solid foundation than just a perception by getting it deeper into concentration. You need an equanimity based not just on holding on and making yourself determined and resistant. You’ve got to possess some well-being inside that’s independent … 
3. Play AudioDriving Lessons
    … Instead of thinking that you have to pull air in from outside, think of the breath, as I said, as energy originating in the body, and ask yourself, “Where does it feel good to think of the breath originating? Does it feel good to have it originate down in the navel? In the chest? Does that perception help you settle down with the breath … 
4. Play AudioQuestioning & Conviction
    … how a perception arises, how the perception turns into a thought, and how the thought begins to develop fangs to bite you and make you suffer. These things are all here to be observed. They’re all happening all the time. But to see them we have to change our focus. To change our focus requires a change of heart, telling ourselves that this … 
5. Play AudioAlighting on the Dhamma
    … What’s the perception here? What’s the thought construct? What’s the feeling here? And then seeing these activities as things worthy of dispassion. Now, you don’t want to jump to dispassion too quickly. If you do it too quickly, you lose the foundation in concentration you need in order help pry away your attachments to other things. In fact, while you … 
6. Play AudioFear & Anger
    … the feelings and the perceptions—the mental labels, the concepts that underlie the thinking, that underlie the verbal side. Once the physical side is relatively calmed down so that you can gain a toehold here, you can start looking at the other components: What are the thoughts, what are the ideas behind that particular emotion that got you going? What are the beliefs, the … 
7. Play AudioEndurance with a Purpose
    … called directed thought and evaluation, as when you direct your thoughts to a topic and then talk to yourself about it, make comments about it. And then finally, mental fabrication: perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, to identify this as this, and that as that. The feelings, of course, are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor … 
8. Play AudioQuestions in the Practice
    … Our feelings, our thoughts, our sense perceptions make up this world, and they’re very different from person to person. Your actions really do shape this world; actions from the past and actions from the present are combining right now to shape what you experience. So that’s why the Buddha said it’s important to focus on your actions, what you’re doing … 
9. Play AudioQuestioning & Acceptance
    … Even his questions on what are commonly called the three characteristics are actually questions using three perceptions: inconstancy, stress, and not-self. He posed those as a series of questions on what’s working and what’s not, what’s skillful and what’s not. First you develop a strong sense of concentration, and then, when you’ve mastered enough, you can start investigating … 
10. Play AudioSelves with Skills
     … As the Buddha pointed out, we construct our experience of the present moment through the way we breathe, through the way we talk to ourselves, through the feelings we focus on, the perceptions we use—in other words, the mental labels and images we use to identify things. We use these processes, what he calls fabrications, to put together the raw material that comes … 
11. Play AudioAllowing the Breath to Spread
     … Because of the craving, you have your perceptions of your feelings that are based on craving, you have thought-constructs about your feelings that are based on a craving, even the ways you breathe are based on craving. Those are going to make the pain even worse. So remind yourself that the pain is not necessarily totally a given. Some of the pain you … 
12. Play AudioSending Happiness
     … the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself in directed thought and evaluation, the feelings you focus on, the perceptions you focus on. What needs to be changed? You can change the way you breathe. How do you direct your thoughts to the breath? How do you evaluate the breath? Or if you find that the mind isn’t willing to settle … 
13. Play AudioThe Field Hospital
     … Or formless pleasures, when everything in the body gets so still that you can have a perception of infinite space, infinite consciousness, and the body doesn’t interfere. It’s so quiet that you can ignore it. It’s only then, when you have this kind of pleasure, that you can really step back from sensual craving. Otherwise, even though you may know the … 
14. Play AudioAlways Willing to Learn
     … questioning the perception, dispersing that little stirring of energy with the breath, getting more alert to what’s actually happening, and more mindful of what you really want to be doing with the process. Which means that, in learning how to deal with distractions, you learn an awful lot about how the mind works, how states of becoming arise. Then you take this skill … 
15. Play AudioAn Auspicious Night
     … The act of turning your mind to that spacious awareness is what creates your perception of that spacious awareness. You have to look at what you’re doing. In fact, that’s the whole point of being in the present moment: to look at what you’re doing. The present moment is something you’re constructing, and you want to know if you’re … 
16. Play AudioBeyond Inter-eating
     … just masses of form, masses of feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and sensory consciousness. You’ve taken these aggregates and you’ve turned them into your path. Even so there’s still a little bit of clinging there. And the clinging also relates to feeding. It’s the act of taking sustenance on these things. You’ve brought the mind to the most refined form of … 
17. Play AudioSkillful Papañca
     … He said it starts with the perception of “I am the thinker.” From there it develops into a conflict, because once you’re the thinker, you become a being. Beings have to feed. They have to feed in the world—and there are other beings in the world that are also feeding, so you come into conflict. The only people who are totally free … 
18. Play AudioObjectivity
     … When it’s no longer necessary, it doesn’t have the power it used to have to skew your perceptions. So here we can see the Buddha’s skill as a strategist, a tactician. If you sit around and wait for a totally objective truth to come and hit you over head, it’s never going to happen. You have to learn how to … 
19. Play AudioTwo Eyes, Not Just One
     … You look at your feelings and perceptions as mental fabrications to see what influence they’re having on the mind. And then in both cases, you try to calm the effect. Try to fabricate more tranquil states in the body; try to fabricate more tranquil states in the mind. That’s tranquility. So you’re developing insight and tranquility at the same time. This … 
20. Play AudioAttention to Your Potentials
     … If you do the action with a particular perception in mind, for example, what’s the result in terms of the penalty? When you do it with other perceptions, what are the results? The text goes through all the different permutations. Those are wheels. The important point of the Dhamma wheel, of course, is that we don’t have four truths that are just … 
21. Play AudioOn the Surface of Things
     … Can you see them as separate things—separate notes in the bird song? The same goes for perceptions, thought constructs, acts of consciousness: They’re all happening right here. Our problem is that we tend to be conspiracy theorists. We want to know: What’s happening behind the scenes? Who’s operating the lasers that shot lightening over northern California last year? We have … 
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