Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- Monotasking… When the Buddha talks about mental fabrication, this is what he’s talking about: He’s talking about the feelings and the perceptions, those images or the labels you have in the mind. What’s your image of the breath coming in? What’s your image of the whole process of breathing? If it feels like it’s creating a rough breath, try to …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… Can you resist that pull? This is one of the reasons why we have the contemplation of the parts of the body, the contemplation of all the different diseases that any body is subject to, the contemplation on the undesirability of any world that you could go to, and a sense of dispassion for fabrications, any thoughts in the mind. So when you find …
- Encouraging Perceptions… What’s called the bodily fabrication aspect of the in-and-out breath has an impact on the movement of energy in the body, and the way you feel the body is going to get more and more subtle, more conducive to the mind’s settling down. All these perceptions are true to some extent, it’s just that some of them are more …
- Perception… Then you can look at the other perceptions and thought-fabrications that gather around the pain — the stories the mind tells itself about how long you’ve had this pain, or how much you’ve suffered in life, and “poor you”: all this suffering, all this pain. You begin to ask yourself, “Do you really have to believe those stories? Can you stop making …
- The Wheel of Dhamma… When you go beyond that, you’re spinning off into more and more fabrication, more and more views, more clinging, more suffering. So even though there may be an element of stress in the path, you try to keep it at a minimum by looking at things in these terms. Once you’ve figured out what you’ve got—is this stress, is this …
- Outside the Box… He goes on to point out that when you’re practicing concentration, you’re taking these inconstant aggregates—body, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—and you’re trying to make them as constant as possible. You see that they do have their constant side. These things that are stressful do have their pleasant side. You can create a sense of ease in concentration, a …
- Coming into the Present… We’re looking for useful perceptions that help the mind to gain a sense of dispassion, to stop fabricating stress and suffering all the time, to come more and more fully into the present moment. There’s one passage in the Canon where the Buddha talks about how he gained insight into the present moment, seeing how many things arise and pass away at …
- Actualizing Your Potentials… It’s a fabrication. As long as you understand that, it’s a lot easier to step out of the various roles you play, and the various identities you assume, so that whatever a setback that particular identity suffers, it’s not necessarily a setback for all of you. This way, you learn how to wear your responsibilities more lightly. When you can do …
- Mature Strategies… They’re all stressful because they’re all fabricated. They’re made, they’re intentional. And intentions are inconstant. When the cause is inconstant, how can the result be constant? This analysis, though, goes against the grain. But hopefully, by the time we come to it, we’ve been practicing the Buddha’s teachings — especially the ones on generosity, virtue, and goodwill — and our …
- The Five Hindrances… The mind is engaged in a lot of different kinds of fabrication, making a lot of choices all the time. When your mind is still, that’s the ideal opportunity to look more deeply, more precisely. So use more sensitivity. Try to get more and more to the details because that’s where the action is.
- Taking Responsibility… How should fabrications be regarded? How should they be analyzed? You get some answers but then again you have to take those answers and apply them in your own practice to see if they work. If they don’t work, you come back again. Maybe get some more advice, or else figure out you’ve got to figure them out on your own. For …
- Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself… Because it’s in seeing the distinctions that you understand the whole process of what the mind is doing, what it’s fabricating. And these distinctions are very subtle. If you don’t learn how to be subtle in your speech and don’t learn how to be discerning in a subtle way about your precepts, it’s going to be impossible to be …
- Happiness is a Skill… the form of the body in the breath; the feeling of pleasure that comes when the breath feels good; the perception—the mental image of the breath being the energy going throughout the body—that holds the breath in mind; fabrication, the conversation you hold with yourself about the breath as you’re evaluating it; and then consciousness, which is aware of all these …
- Right Inner Speech… Any acts of directed thought and evaluation, which are thought-fabrications, become part of your concentration as well. Everything is right here. These things that before were a cause of suffering when you clung to them, now can become the path. In this way, we learn how to use our perceptions. If we have the intention to drop them, that means that the new …
- The Uses of Equanimity… But eventually you have to step back from the equanimity itself, because even it is fabricated. This is when the mind goes beyond equanimity to non-fashioning: not fashioning a sense of “I” or “mine” around even your highest attainments. And hopefully the practice you’ve had in learning how to cut through your old narratives can help you in this step as well …
- The Pursuit of Excellence… When you get that point in your practice, your sensitivity toward happiness, your sensitivity to what’s involved in fabricating experience gets so acute that you really do see that the unfabricated is the ideal alternative even to very bright and expansive mind states. Until then, there’s a tendency in the mind to say, “Well, I can imagine something else I’d prefer …
- The Wisdom of Tenacity… They may seem fabricated and constructed, and sometimes you wonder how something constructed like this could be worthwhile. But the mind is used to constructing things, and as long as it has this habit you might as well construct things that help take you further. That’s part of the genius of the path. You could be sitting here creating all kinds of narratives …
- Between Either & Or… Saccaka was trying to say that everybody knows that form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness are your self. And the Buddha picked his argument apart, to the point where Saccaka really lost face, in front of all the people that he, Saccaka, had brought along to watch his victory. So the issue is the intention. But then again, you can’t take that as …
- Sensitive to the Breath… As he says, you calm bodily fabrication, which means that you calm the effect the breath has on the body. But before you can calm it, you have to give yourself a sense of energy, what he calls rapture, which can also be translated as refreshment: the sense that the breath energy is filling, that it saturates the body. And it feels good. It …
- Holding On to the Path… You try to develop a sense of ease, a sense of comfort, stability, through the processes of fabrication, and that’s a balancing act right there. Sometimes when there’s a sense of comfort, it’s not all that stable. You phase in and you phase out, because it’s so easy to leave the breath and go wallowing in the comfort. So you …
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