Search results for: "Perception"

  1. Page 60
  2. Common Ground
     … The form of the body, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, these we have in common. And the ways we cling: We cling through sensuality, through our habits and practices, through views about the world, and through ideas of who we are. And although the views and the ideas of who we are, and our habits and practices, and the particularity of our ideas of … 
  3. Contemplation of the Body
     … The last time I saw Ajaan Suwat, shortly before his death, he mentioned that his brain was beginning to malfunction, that it was giving him all sorts of weird perceptions. But he added, “That thing I got through the meditation, though, that hasn’t changed; it’s still there,” which is why the suffering of the body didn’t weigh on his mind, why … 
  4. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … We cling to form, we cling to feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, which means we feed on them, hoping to get some satisfaction out of them. As the Buddha points out, that’s why we’re suffering. So he wants us to gain a sense of having had enough of this kind of feeding. It’s through having had enough that we gain release … 
  5. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … How are you processing the breath right now? As soon as you turn your attention to the breath, the breath is going to change—based on your perception of the breath, your intentions around the breath—which means the breath is a really good mirror for seeing these things in action. We know that one of the principles of causality that the Buddha taught … 
  6. Right Exertion at Play
     … a role in shaping the feelings that dominate your awareness in the present moment by the way you breathe. You can also do it with the other type of mental fabrication: perceptions, the images and words by which you identify things. You can cultivate feelings by the way you perceive the breath—with the images you have in mind of the breath, your conceptions … 
  7. In Control
     … What does the body need? What does the breath need? Does it need you to put a little more energy into it, or does it need you to think of calming it down? The perceptions you use to relate to the breath can have a huge impact on how the breathing goes through the body. So what can you give to the breath? The … 
  8. Sucked into the Tube
     … Then at some point, you apply a perception. You apply a label to it, saying, “This is this, and that’s that.” It’s as if you have a little code for yourself. You recognize the code’s signals and often you create the code’s signals. There’s just a stirring, nothing much at all, but you turn it into a thought about … 
  9. A Special Time
     … In other words, be really penetrating in your perceptions, your understanding of what you’re doing. And be very quick to notice when the mind has slipped off, and quick to bring it right back. Often it’s useful to think about skills you’ve developed, especially manual skills like cooking or carpentry or any kind of sport. Think about the attitude you brought … 
  10. Centered
     … Or think of yourself backing into the body, if that’s a helpful perception—anything to give the sense that you’re here sitting surrounded by the breath, by the body. And your center is firm. Not firm through tension, firm simply through the fact that it’s right in the middle, where everything gravitates on its own. That’s the kind of center … 
  11. The Mind Comes First
     … That perception of the mind coming first then gets easier and easier to hold on to. In the beginning, it requires some willpower to reorder things in your sense of what’s going on; but when you find that it really works, that things begin to click in this way, then you can deal with the world a lot more easily. The disappointments outside … 
  12. Concentration
     … As you look after concentration this way, you learn a lot about form, i.e., the form of the body, the feelings that arise as you focus on the breath, the perceptions that either keep you with the breath or pull you away, the thought fabrications that, again, either help you investigate the breath or help you lose the breath, and your awareness of … 
  13. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … There’s a feeling going into it, a way of breathing that goes into it, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. Seeing things in those terms helps pull you out. So there’s the alertness to see what you’re doing, and the mindfulness to remind yourself, “Okay, this is a mind state.” That puts it in a framework. Then, recognizing what mind state it is, you … 
  14. Your Game Leg
     … If all you can see are things that inspire disgust, turn your eyes around to realize that the issue is with this process of perception—the labels we give to things—which, as Ajaan Suwat pointed out one time, are little agreements in the mind. “This means that; that means this. This is something you stamp with ‘like’; this is something you stamp with … 
  15. Potentials
     … From there you can look at the pains and ask yourself, “What is it about physical pain that as soon as the mind focuses in on it, aggravates it? What are the perceptions? What are the conversations it’s having with itself about the pain? Can you learn to be with the pain and not get involved in those unskillful potentials?” So as you … 
  16. What Are You Bringing?
     … And we live with minds that are affected by greed, anger, and delusion, so they color our perceptions of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. So it’s good that there has been someone who went through all the effort to find a way of training the mind so that it’s not colored by those things. That … 
  17. Single-minded
     … feelings and perceptions. They’re all right here. There’s no other place you have to look. Simply look really carefully right here, and learn when to look carefully and when to really settle in and aim simply at stillness. Get a sense of the rhythms of the mind.
  18. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … From there you can go into the formless states, where having to maintain a perception of the shape of the body is a disturbance. And so on through the various levels of concentration. This then shades into discernment: You see how the mind creates unnecessary suffering for itself—sometimes in the concentration, sometimes as you’re leaving concentration, sometimes as you’re going through … 
  19. Committed to the Breath
     … The mind fabricates its way of approaching things, its way of thinking about the breath, thinking about feelings, perceptions, thinking about thoughts. To put an end to suffering, we have to see those processes. The best place to look, from the very beginning, is at the breath. It’s near the mind, but it’s not directly at the mind. I remember, years back … 
  20. Thoughts with Fangs
     … It’s one of those perceptions of papanca: proliferation or complication. There’s contact at the senses, and from contact there arises feeling. It’s an interesting passage in one of the suttas, where the Buddha starts out in a totally impersonal way like this. There’s contact, and from the contact comes feeling. And then what you feel, you then label—all of … 
  21. The Tricks of Denial
     … And that’s when you use the Buddha’s analysis for how to deal with the perceptions, or the feelings or the other types of fabrication that do have a pull over the mind. You look for them arising. You look for them passing away. Sometimes we read about how discernment is simply knowledge of the arising and passing away of phenomena. That’s … 
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