Search results for: "Fabrication"

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  2. Working Hypotheses
     … What this means is that we’re already embedded in a fabric of actions and intentions. Whether we like to think in that way or not, this is the way things are. When you look in the Buddha’s accounts of his own quest for awakening you see that there were a lot of things he questioned, but the one thing he never questioned … 
  3. Learning from Desire
     … Where is the breath flowing? When the breath comes in, where does it come in? How do you know a sensation of breath? Then there’s fabrication, the intention to do this and that, along with the inner conversation we engage in: what the Buddha calls directed thought and evaluation. So we’re** **thinking about the breath and evaluating whether the breath is good … 
  4. The Middle Way
     … specifically, the suffering that comes from craving, the suffering in clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. All the different kinds of suffering in world that really weigh on the mind come down to clinging to any one of these five aggregates or any combination of them. So when you see the suffering simply as that—an example of … 
  5. The World of the Noble Truths
     … We think, “Why is this pain afflicting me?” “Why is this situation in the world outside afflicting me?” But the Buddha is saying that suffering is the act of clinging to form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, or consciousness. It’s something we do. It’s not something we’re just on the receiving end of. We’re actively doing the suffering. He then defines the … 
  6. A Leap of the Heart
     … The dispassion then undercuts any motive for continuing to fabricate whatever you used to take as food. So this is the process. Look for the origination. Look for the passing away. Look for the allure. Look for the drawbacks. And finally there’ll be the escape. All of this is motivated by heedfulness, along with your desire, as Ajaan Mun says, not to come … 
  7. If These Walls Could Talk
     … We keep fabricating our experience in the old ways that we’re familiar with, and even though we may not think that we’re passionate about it, we are stuck in our ways. That’s a kind of passion. We need to realize that we can be freed from our old bad habits. A good analogy is a game that you used to play … 
  8. In Search of What’s Skillful
     … Because after you’ve learned very carefully to watch for your actions and to watch for your results, and you keep the framework of that questioning in mind, you finally get to something that is not maintained through any fabrication, through any intention at all. And you know that because you’ve detected even the subtlest kinds of intentions that can come with these … 
  9. Perfection in an Imperfect World
     … When you think in these ways you’re using mental fabrication to shape your experience, right here, right now. You find you have resources inside that you hadn’t imagined before. That’s what allows your resolution to grow. The other quality the Buddha said was important for his awakening was not being content with skillful qualities. It sounds strange. Of course, it means … 
  10. Examine Your Happiness
     … You focus instead on the fact that some aspects of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness are actually pleasant, and you want to pursue them for that pleasure. There’s the pleasure of the precepts, the pleasure of generosity, both of which are conditioned things. There’s the pleasure in concentration, which is also conditioned, and you want to motivate yourself to develop … 
  11. A Refuge Inside
     … All fabricated things are suffering. But then there’s also the suffering of the four noble truths, what he calls the five clinging-aggregates. The first kind of suffering is just the way things are, in and of themselves. The question is: Why does that create suffering for us? Because of our clinging. So you’ve got to watch the mind to see why … 
  12. Trust in Heedfulness
     … If you look at it really carefully — and this takes very subtle, very intent powers of observation — you begin to see even there there’s an element of fabrication. Intention. It’s willed. So you learn how to drop that, realizing that it wasn’t the underlying principle of the nature of — the underlying awareness of — reality that you thought it was. To see … 
  13. Right View
     … The aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness come in a potential form and then—based on which things we’re interested in, which things we want to create, which things we want to destroy—we actually create our experience of the present out of these different potentials. So we need to do a lot of digging down into our experience of the … 
  14. An Auspicious Day
     … You have to remember to look at these feelings as events, as part of a causal process, realising that you’re doing a lot of the fabricating. Pains don’t just happen; pleasures don’t just happen. An element of intention goes into them. And you have to remember that, so that if you see that unskilful fascination with a particular kind of pain … 
  15. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … There’s an element of intention in how you experience form, feeling, perception, the process of fabrication, and your sensory consciousness. So it’s not just that you’re experiencing a given that’s been provided by the past, you’re actually shaping it here and now. On top of that, it’s possible to shape it in such a way that there is … 
  16. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … Your emotions are sankharas, fabrications—thoughts that get into the body. They feel especially real because they have a bodily presence. One of the reasons we work with the breath is to burst through some of the constraints that our emotions place on the body. And also to give us a handle. When a particular emotion comes up, when you feel that it’s … 
  17. The Power of Truth
     … You start with strong concentration and you develop insight by looking into the concentrated state, analyzing it in terms of the five aggregates, or simply the fact that it’s constructed, fabricated. Even to get into that concentrated state, he also said that you need not only some tranquility but also some insight. If you don’t understand the workings of your mind, it … 
  18. Asalha Puja
     … the form of your body, your feelings, your perceptions, mental fabrications, or consciousness. The fact that we cling there: That’s the suffering. The third level of knowledge is when you know that you’ve completed the duty: In this case, you’ve comprehended the suffering *fully. *Now, that level of knowledge doesn’t come until you’ve completed the duties for the other … 
  19. The Prison Break
     … This is what the Buddha means by the stilling of bodily fabrication. The mind gets really, really still and very content. The body is still. The breath is still. And you can stay there. That’s when you can see events in the mind clearly, because that’s what we’re here for: to see the movements of the mind. To make sure that … 
  20. A Noble Path
     … The path is something fabricated. The goal is unfabricated. The path doesn’t cause the goal. It takes you there. The traditional image is of a road leading to a mountain. The road doesn’t cause the mountain, and the road doesn’t look like the mountain at all. And the road doesn’t take you there. You have to follow the road. It … 
  21. A Larger Perspective
     … You fabricate thoughts. You’re conscious. You’re aware of having a body from the inside. It’s useful to have this vocabulary to help you sense what’s going on, to give you a handle on depersonalizing it, to see it in line with those larger patterns. When the Buddha created a catechism, a series of questions for teaching basic Dhamma concepts—“What … 
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