Search results for: "Fabrication"

  1. Page 60
  2. The Power of Intention
     … You gain a sense of the power you have when you’re choosing to focus on something and, from that skillful focus, you can fabricate things skillfully and create a sense of ease even in the midst of a lot of pain. This is an important skill to develop. You might scan through the body to see where there’s some tension that you … 
  3. The Riddle Tree
     … You see that as you get the mind through stages of concentration, you’re going to be shifting around among issues of thought fabrication or perception or feeling or consciousness or form, the body: all the aggregates. Or you may find that the issue is how you visualize things as opposed to how you feel them: those are issues of the sense media. Or … 
  4. A Concentration Diet
     … That’s because you have to be very careful not to be overcome by the pleasure in order to hold on to the perception of the breath, which gets you more and more sensitive to the process of perception and thought-fabrication in the mind. You can also begin to see how these things can contribute a little bit of stress to the mind … 
  5. Three Perceptions
     … Now, it’s true that you’ll frequently find in the Canon the statements that all things compounded or fabricated are inconstant, that they’re all stressful. And all dhammas — all objects of the mind — are not-self. So if that’s the way things are, why not just say that these are characteristic features of these things? Why make a big deal about … 
  6. Letting Go
     … Relax around, as they say, the fabrication of the thought, and it won’t have anything to hold on to in the present moment. It’ll stop. If none of these approaches works, just make up your mind to grit your teeth, press your tongue against the roof of your mouth, and say, “No, I’m not going to think that thought.” Just stay … 
  7. Culture Shock
     … In other words, these fabricated things, if you learn how to use them skillfully lead someplace. Even if you don’t learn how to use them skillfully, they still lead places: random places, miserable places. The question is, “Do you really want to go where they’re taking you?” If you make the effort to get skillful at fashioning conditioned things, they can lead … 
  8. Acceptance & Equanimity
     … Take them apart in terms of your perceptions or in terms of your bodily, verbal, mental fabrication around the pain—how you breathe around the pain, how you talk to yourself about the pain, the perceptions you apply. Does the pain have an intention? Does it have a shape? Does it have a color? Is it solid? Call these perceptions into question. And simply … 
  9. Strength Training
     … You see how all the factors of the mind that the Buddha would describe in dependent co-arising, or in the different kinds of fabrication, all play a role in developing these strengths. You get hands-on experience in using them. That’s when they’re easiest to see. Which is why these basic strengths lie in just coming back, coming back, coming back … 
  10. Question Your Perceptions
     … What do you perceive of the process of breathing? How does it happen? And what kind of perceptions help you settle down? As the Buddha said, perception is a mental fabrication. It has an impact on the mind. What ways of perceiving the breath have a good impact on the breath and a good impact on the mind? You want to test them. Ajaan … 
  11. The Humble Way to Awakening
     … This is why the Buddha has us divide things into the aggregates, because the comings and goings of perceptions, the comings and goings of thought fabrications are going to have an impact on the pain. You see that the perception, the label you place on the pain, acts like a bridge. Certain perceptions come and they make the anguish flare up. When you can … 
  12. Victory
     … There is, as the Buddha said, some fabrication going on. You have your ways of shaping this experience and if you’re not paying careful attention to what you’re doing, middle-level management takes over—in other words, your old habits. You can find yourself tensing up over a little pain here and there without even realizing that it’s happening. It’s … 
  13. A Victory that Matters
     … The social fabric gets torn apart. This is what happens when a narrow view becomes ascendant and demands to be ascendant in every area. It’s not just now that people are challenging the Buddha about the metaphysics of rebirth. Back in his time it was a controversial issue, too. One of the major fallacies that you hear repeatedly is that the Buddha just … 
  14. The Origination of Suffering
     … One of the events that leads up to the craving that leads to clinging is the process of fabrication: the breath coming in, going out, your conversation inside, your thoughts, acts of evaluation, perceptions, feelings. Try to see these things simply as “those events” until you get a sense of dispassion for them. That’s how you can get past this dilemma of the … 
  15. Determined to Make a Difference
     … As the Buddha said, we fabricate our experience for the sake of happiness. So, there’s always a for the sake of in our experience, but you have to ask yourself, “For the sake of what?” What is your purpose? Fortunately, you get to decide. It’s not the case that there’s an overarching purpose for the universe that you somehow have to … 
  16. Stepping Out of Truth Games
     … Even the Buddha’s analysis of what’s going on here in terms of fabrication and becoming: these are conventions, too. There’s only one thing that’s not a convention, and that’s release. So while we’re working at the practice, we’re moving from one set of conventions to another set, a more useful set, but it’s good while you … 
  17. Stay
     … There are times, as the Buddha says, to exert a fabrication, and there are times to just watch. So if you’re going to tell this dog to stay, you also have to teach it how to stay relaxed around the spot where it’s staying, and how not to let it get caught up in any of the urges that may suddenly bubble … 
  18. The Story behind Impatience
     … That’s what the whole fabric of our experience of time and space comes from: the constant input coming from intention. And the Buddha’s insight was that if you look at where the new input is coming from, you’ll see the way out. And where are you going to see that new input? Right here, right at the intentions in the present … 
  19. Inconstancy
    One of the basic principles of insight or clear seeing is that all compounded or all fabricated things are inconstant. They don’t last. They waiver. They change. And as someone once said, So what else is new? Things change. And if that’s all there was to the Buddha’s insight, there wouldn’t be much to it. But it goes deeper than … 
  20. A Decent Education
     … It doesn’t have to be fabricated. It doesn’t have to be protected. It’s there, and it will always be there for you to tap into when you really need it. So finding that oil is the most important skill you can develop. This gives the most satisfying narrative to your life. The narrative of most people’s lives is — what? They … 
  21. Meaningful Freedom
     … After all, it, too, is fabricated. It, too, is made out of aggregates. These aggregates give you some resistance, but they also open some opportunities. Think of the principle of causality that the Buddha taught. In some cases, the effects arise together with the causes, and they disappear when the causes disappear. In other cases, if the cause comes, the effect can come later … 
  22. Load next page...