Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Like Earth and Space
     … Now, these are just perceptions you’re dealing with—the perception of earth, the perception of space—but they help train the mind in the right direction. After all, perceptions are mental fabrications. These are the things that have an impact on the state of your mind. So learn to use fabrications that are impervious to other people’s activities, like the man with … 
  3. Facing Pain
     … That’s an important perception right there. The question of perception is what creates a lot of that second arrow with which you shoot yourself. If you find yourself facing the pain, you can ask yourself, “Do I really have to face it? I can look someplace else. Or I can think of the pain coming at me from behind, going around me, and … 
  4. Insight from Developing Concentration
     … Ajaan Lee recommends that you use, not the perception of air coming in and out of the lungs, but the perception of the energy in the body as your main focus. Think of the breath as going throughout the body, the energy throughout the body. Hold that perception in mind. Note the words in those instructions: attention, intention, feeling, perception. Those are mental actions … 
  5. The Not-Self Discourse
     … After all, the idea of a permanent knower is just a perception. So they reflected: They applied those perceptions of inconstant, stressful, and not-self not only to obvious levels of the aggregates, but also to subtler ones. Around that sense of the permanent knower there’s a feeling of well-being. There’s a perception. There’s some fabrication going on, and there … 
  6. A Recipe for Jhana
    A Recipe for Jhana February 14, 2009 When you meditate, try to be very conscious of holding a particular perception in mind. In this case, it’s very simple: the perception of the breath. That’s all you have to think about. As you sit here, being sensitive to the body, be sensitive to it as breath. Just think, as you feel your energy … 
  7. Alternative Conceptions
     … Then apply just the right amount of perception and awareness to maintain that. And you find that it’s useful. One, it really does create a sense of ease here. Two, you’ve learned a lot about perception. You’ve learned about how feelings and perceptions can be turned into part of the path. They’re not just a given. You fabricate them. You … 
  8. Not Pained by Pain
     … The third is that you breathe in and out being sensitive to mental fabrication—in other words, feelings and perceptions. Perceptions, here, are the images you hold in mind. And the fourth step is to breathe in and out calming mental fabrications. Now, his explanation here is focused on how to give rise to a sense of pleasure, and then refine that pleasure in … 
  9. Assumptions
     … This is where the teaching on perception comes in. The Pali word for perception, sañña, has lots of different meanings. One is simply the label you apply to things. Another is the assumptions you make about them. And you might want to look into those assumptions as they come into the mind. Because what they usually do is tp tell you, “You’ve got … 
  10. Getting Untangled from Thorns
     … You realize, “Okay, there is that angle from which I could look at things, and it works.” Once you get a sense of the power of perception in your concentration, then it’s a lot easier to see it at work in your thoughts: how one particular perception can ignite anger and another perception can ignite lust or fear, greed or envy. You begin … 
  11. Pain & the Middle Way
     … So why do you have this idea that there was this one pain that was frozen in your leg, or in your knee, or whatever? Where does that perception come from? Learn how to question that perception. And by prying the perceptions away from the pain for a bit, you begin to see that the pain and the perceptions really are two separate things … 
  12. How to Use the Three Perceptions
     … So when do you use these teachings? One, remember that the Buddha taught these, not so much as characteristics of things as perceptions you apply to things. And when do you apply these perceptions? Here it’s good to think back in terms of those categorical teachings, especially the ones in the four noble truths, because each of the four truths entails a duty … 
  13. Things As They Function
     … Change your perception of the breath, and the breath feels different. Change your perception of the solidity of the body, and the body feels different. Think of all the atoms composing the body. We all know from science that atoms are mostly space. The nucleus of each atom, proportionally, is a tiny, tiny thing. So hold that perception in mind. Your body is mainly … 
  14. Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space
     … You see the power of perception. Just hold in mind the perception of warmth, and things will warm up. And the more confidence, or what they call assurance, that you give to that perception of warmth, the stronger the effect is going to be. These are potentials that you can see in action: the extent to which your directed thought, your evaluation, your perceptions … 
  15. To Know the Unconditioned
     … Then the perception of form begins to dissolve as the image you have of where the body’s boundary lies disappears. You’re left with space. The perception of space dissolves. You’re left with consciousness as an object of your awareness. The perception of the oneness of consciousness falls away, leaving a perception of nothingness. As you can see, things keep getting peeled … 
  16. The Kamma of Concentration
     … In other words, you replace a disturbing perception—one that says the pain has seized the body, the pain hates me, the pain is after me, whatever crazy ideas you may have about the pain—with a perception that’s less disturbing. And a lot of your crazy perceptions are hidden behind some more sane-sounding ideas. Even the idea that the pain has … 
  17. Anti-slacker Dhamma
     … It’s within those duties that the Buddha taught the three perceptions, because comprehending stress means that you have to develop dispassion for it, and those three perceptions are for inducing dispassion. It sounds strange that we’d have passion for stress and suffering, but we do. We cling to these things. Where there’s clinging, there’s going to be stress and suffering … 
  18. Skillful Effort
     … You see lots of strange perceptions, strange ideas. And you can ask yourself, do you still believe that? Especially if you see that those ideas are adding more unnecessary suffering onto the pain, you learn how to drop them. Take, for instance, the perception that you’re on the receiving end of the pain. You can switch that perception around: How about perceiving the … 
  19. To Make Suffering Crumble
     … That changes your perception. The perception is sometimes like a little lid that we try to put on the pain to make clear exactly where the pain is and how we can keep it in place. But sometimes the lid is the problem. So question your perceptions around the pain. When you do this, you find that you can sit with the pain. Instead … 
  20. Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self
     … The Buddha taught three perceptions, or the three contemplations as tools in helping us to sharpen our vision as to what true happiness would be, where we can find it, and how we can go about finding it. These are the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. He doesn’t say why he focused on these three perceptions aside from the fact that … 
  21. All for the Sake of Freedom
     … Here again, you’ll use those same three perceptions. You’ll see that even the concentration state involves aggregates. There’s the aggregate of form: your breath, your sense of the body as you feel it right now. Feeling: the feeling of pleasure or equanimity. Perception: the perception of breath, or—as the sense of the body begins to dissolve away—the perception of … 
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