Search results for: "Fabrication"
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- The Buddha’s Vipassana… The way you breathe is a kind of fabrication. The way you talk to yourself is another kind. Feelings and perceptions that lurk around the mind, those are another kind of fabrication, too. When you’re getting the mind into concentration, you’re going to be using all those fabrications. You’re going to be talking to yourself about the breath and using perceptions …
- Right Exertion at Play… Finally, you can take things apart in a way where you know entirely what’s going on, so that you can find something that’s not put together, not fabricated at all. You don’t really understand the unfabricated until you learn how to fabricate really well. And you fabricate really well when you enjoy it. This is why the Buddha encourages you not …
- A Good Dish of Concentration… You can say, “Oh, well, I can change perceptions, use different perceptions, create different feelings, fabricate thoughts in different ways.” You want to take the sense of well-being that comes when you’re actually able to fabricate the aggregates into something really good like concentration, so that when you start fabricating other things, you can see that they’re pretty shoddy. Thoughts of …
- Training Your Inner CriticWhen the Buddha talks about fabrications, saṅkhāras, sometimes he talks about five types; sometimes he talks about three. The five types are the five aggregates. For each of the aggregates, he says you take the potential for that aggregate and then you fabricate it into the actual aggregate. In each case, he says you fabricate them for the sake, say, of formness, or for …
- Anupassana… With insight, the questions are: “How is this a fabrication? And what’s the best way to deal with these fabrications?” The Buddha’s instructions on breath are divided into four tetrads: four sets of four steps. In each tetrad, the processes are the same. One tetrad deals with the breath, one tetrad with feelings, another with mind, another with dhammas—in other words …
- Possessed by Emotions… Remember the Buddha’s teaching on fabrication: bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself—technically it’s directed thought and evaluation, you direct your thoughts to a particular topic and you comment on it, ask questions about it, you figure out what’s right and what’s wrong with it; and there’s mental fabrication, which gives …
- Levels of the Breath… What do you have in the present moment? You’ve got intentions, or in other words, fabrications. What kind of fabrications do you have here? You’ve got the breath; that’s the bodily fabrication. You’ve got directed thought and evaluation; those are verbal fabrications. And you’ve got feelings and perceptions and the intentional element fashioning them; that’s mental fabrication. These …
- The Power of the Mind… When he brought knowledge to the process of fabrications, they ceased, because this was a knowledge that put an end to passion for fabricating. When there’s no passion for fabricating, why would you do it? The fabrications ceased, and then even the fabrications of the knowledge that put an end to them ceased as well. He relinquished those, too. That’s how he …
- The River Gauge… Yet you’re trying to get beyond fabrication. He said that in a way that implied that you couldn’t use fabrication to get beyond fabrication. But the Buddha’s very upfront about the fact that this path is a fabricated path. You’re putting it together with your thoughts, your words, your deeds, all the five aggregates we chanted about just now. Your …
- A Complete Training… Then the Buddha told them to reflect on the fact that everything you would experience, past or future, everything that you could fabricate, no matter how well you fabricate it, no matter what level of being you go to, is going to be made of these same fabrications. They’re all going to fall apart at some point. And even before they fall apart …
- The Power of Choice… And it’s in this process that you begin to understand the workings of fabrication in the present moment even more deeply. The Buddha said that there are three kinds of fabrication that come out of ignorance: bodily fabrication, verbal, and mental. Bodily fabrication is the breath. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, like we’re doing right now: We’re directing our …
- Your Secret Foundation… And when you focus the mind on the breath, you’ve got all the processes of fabrication right here. There is what’s called bodily fabrication: the breath in and of itself. There is verbal fabrication, where the mind directs its thoughts to the breath and evaluates the breath. And then there’s mental fabrication, the feelings that arise—the sense of pleasure, the …
- The Chattering Mind… The Buddha identifies three kinds of fabrication that go into taking the raw material from past karma and shaping it into an actual experience in the present. Your internal conversation is one of those forms of fabrication, and a large part of the meditation is learning how to do it well. So capture your inner conversation and apply it to the breath. Ask yourself …
- Tranquility & Insight in Tandem… In fact, most of them require that you look at how you’re thinking, look at how you’re fabricating around them, and learn how to fabricate in new ways. The word fabrication here, sankhara, applies to several things. It applies to the fabrication of the breath, what adjustments you’re making to the breath. It applies to your thoughts, the way you pick …
- The Uses of Right Concentration… We fabricate and use these things as steps toward a goal that lies beyond them: the deathless, total freedom from fabrication, from suffering and stress. This is what makes everything else in the path, all the effort that goes into fabricating and mastering all the factors, worthwhile. The Buddha doesn’t talk much about the goal. After all, it’s not something you can …
- Your Tranquility & Your Insight… Just with the word “fabrication”—which is the central issue in insight—you’ve got the five aggregates, all of which are said to be fabricated. In particular, you’ve got the fourth aggregate, fabrication itself, which plays a role in shaping all the other aggregates, too. Or you can talk in terms of the three fabrications: bodily fabrication, the in-and-out breath …
- Questioning Your Unconscious Actions… The Buddha talks about bodily fabrication, which is a physical process, although the mind is involved in doing bodily fabrication, through its intentions. He also talks about verbal and mental fabrications, which are more purely aspects of the mind. Bodily fabrication is the way you shape the way you breathe. We’re doing this all the time. As the breath comes in, there’s …
- When You Don’t Like Your Selves… This is why the Buddha provides those teachings on the three types of fabrication, because it’s through those types of fabrication that we create our becomings, our sense of who we are in a particular world. The Buddha’s full of recommendations on how you can learn how to create new senses of self, develop new skills, as part of the path to …
- Tranquility & Insight… Here the questions are: “How do you regard fabrications? How do you investigate them? And how do you see them with insight?” You can regard fabrications as the five aggregates: There’s form, feeling, perception, fabrication itself, and consciousness. Or there’s another list called the three fabrications: bodily fabrication—which is the breath; verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation; and mental fabrication—perceptions …
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