Search results for: "Perception"
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- Beyond Inter-eating… You see the precise points where you’re making a decision to move in and continue creating more and more form and feeling and perceptions and thought constructs and consciousness in that thought world, all of which involve taking on an identity—which in turn takes a lot of food. So only when you see the harm of that process do you realize this …
- Mindfulness over Time… This is one of the ways in which we use perception skillfully on the path.
- Strong Through Mindfulness… That’s a symbol for trying to hold on to your body, to your feelings, perceptions, thought constructs—the aggregates. They get pulled away and can cut you as you try to hold on to them. You need something better—the island you build through your mindfulness, your alertness, and your ardency. That island becomes the island of concentration. There’s a school of …
- Practical Wisdom… In other words, learn how to use what you’ve got here in the present moment in terms of the breath, your perceptions, your ability to analyze what’s going on. Learn how to use these things as your allies, rather than allowing your defilements to take them over. This is one of the ways in which meditation shows its real benefits. It’s …
- What Is One… form, feeling, perception, and fabrications. It’s only arahants who don’t need to feed on these kinds of food. They feed physically, but their minds no longer need to feed, because they don’t identify themselves as beings. To be a being, you have to be clinging to something, attached to something. But arahants have no attachments, no clinging, so they’re not …
- Emptiness… But again, which of those world views is really helpful? Which type of view is helpful? The Buddha was very perceptive in seeing that there’s one issue that cuts through all of that, and that’s the issue of the suffering that’s experienced right here, right now. The suffering, the stress: Focus on that without the narratives, focus on that without the …
- Craving & Desire on the Path… You focus on the breath, developing a feeling of ease using a perception of the breath to hold you in place. You fabricate the processes of directed thought and evaluation to settle in, and you’re aware of all these things. Well, that’s the five aggregates right there—creating right concentration. Then there are four forms of clinging around the aggregates. One of …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Repeatedly, the Buddha talks about analyzing the concentration in and of itself, seeing what in the concentration is form, feeling, perception, thought fabrication, or consciousness. You realize that even when you let go of outside aggregates, or the grosser aggregates, there are still these subtler aggregates inside. It’s right here that the work can be done. So the Buddha’s teachings are very …
- A Good Buddhist Ego… The fact that you’ve made the raft out of things on this side of the river means basically that you’re taking the aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and turning them into the path. Like we’re doing when we concentrate: You’re focused on the breath, which is an aspect of form. You’re trying to develop a feeling …
- Accepting the Buddha’s Standards… a perception you’re holding on to, an attitude you’re identifying with. That’s what you have to learn how to accept. This requires having a mature attitude toward your own weak points, a mature attitude toward the areas where you’re still lacking. Being mature means learning, on the one hand, not to beat yourself up over these things, but on the …
- Stepping Back… He had a foundation, so even as the brain was churning out weird perceptions, he had access to a dimension where he didn’t have to get involved. As we meditate, we’re working in the direction of that dimension. The first step is to establish a safe place through concentration to keep our awareness based, a place where it’s protected. And that …
- Pain & Distraction… All the perceptions and ideas you have around a pain can suck you into a little world of their own. You want to be in a position where you can look at these worlds as a separate thing. That’s why we work on developing a comfortable center in the body, some spot that’s a sensitive place in the body where you can …
- Teaching Old Dogs New Selves… With your body, your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and especially your awareness, there are aspects here that you can control, and so you say, “They’re useful for this or that purpose, and holding onto them in this way or that way I can get some happiness.” And you identify with that happiness. So you identify with the tools for getting that happiness as well …
- Ultimate Reality… But here you’re trying to find out, “If I hold to this intention, what happens?” “If I hold to a different intention, what happens?” “If I intend different perceptions, what happens?” “If I choose different topics, what happens?” Those are things you can learn from your meditation. Someone once asked, “How do you learn about the nature of ultimate reality through meditation?” The …
- Feeding on Ardency… It’s because of intention that you take the raw material for an experience of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, or consciousness, and turn it into an actual experience of those things. So there are many layers of feeding that go on in our experience, and because we can’t simply stop feeding, the Buddha’s path gives us something good to feed on. Think …
- Why Mindfulness… form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and sensory consciousness. There’s another follow-up question: “What danger does your teacher see in having desire and passion for those things?” The answer: When you have desire and passion for those things, you do things that cause suffering. But if you abandon that passion and desire, you put an end to suffering. So notice that Sariputta’s answers …
- Meditation as a Skill… You’re beginning to read it in terms of the three perceptions. You begin to see there’s a certain inconstancy there. There’s a certain level of stress. There are things you’ve got to let go of. This is how one of the three qualities you bring to the practice of mindfulness and concentration—i.e., alertness—gets developed. As Ajaan Lee …
- The Opportunity to Be Quiet… We think about not-self as a perception that comes way at the end of the path, but it’s a useful tool all the way along. After all, even before you practice, you’re not-selfing things. Thoughts come into the mind and you say, “Nope, I don’t want that.” You don’t identify with it; it just goes away. With things …
- In the Context of the Deathless… There are perceptions, the labels you apply to things that identify them, give them meaning. Here you’re identifying the breath as the topic you want to stick with. There’s fabrication, the way you talk to yourself about the breath. There’s consciousness, your awareness of these activities. Even though these concentration aggregates ultimately will show that they, too, are inconstant, stressful, and …
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