Search results for: "Perception"
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- Delight in Persistence… You’re holding a perception in mind: how you picture the breath to yourself. You’re trying to develop feelings of pleasure. Well, all those mental acts come under the factor what the Buddha called “name” in name and form. If you bring knowledge to these things, they turn from causes of suffering to the path to the end of suffering—and you bring …
- Evaluation… So you evaluate the breath, you evaluate your perceptions, and you make adjustments. Then you evaluate the results. This is the work. This ability to step back and watch what you’re doing is going to be an important part of the meditation. It’s the beginning of discernment, as Ajaan Lee points out. Here in the beginning stages, you’re devoting it to …
- Break Things Down… This is how you should hold certain analogies or perceptions in mind. This is how you should breathe.” Those are the instructions that are really useful. So think about how you breathe. Think about how you talk to yourself. Think about the images you hold in mind. Tell yourself, “I can do this differently. If this is causing suffering, I don’t have to …
- A Much Better Place… those who can see the danger coming before it comes; and then there are those who have to be slapped in the face with a danger before they realize, “Yes, this is dangerous here!” Of course, it’s best for us to see ahead of time the danger of identifying, say, with forms, feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness, all the things that go into …
- It’s What You Give… fabrication, name and form, intentions, acts of attention, perceptions, feelings, even the way you breathe. This is what you bring to sensory contact, and what you bring is going to make the difference between whether it’s going to be a cause for suffering or part of the path to the end of suffering. So this principle of the mind comes first goes from …
- The Buddha Defines Wisdom… What’s going on? Where are the perceptions of the mind playing tricks on you? You want to come from understanding so that you have control over thinking the thoughts you want to think, and don’t have to think the thoughts you don’t want to think—in other words, thinking thoughts that are going to be for your long-term welfare and …
- Metta Math… They’re perceptions to shape your thinking. Once you generate goodwill, then you try to protect it, as with all wealth, because there will be people who misbehave, and you can’t let that erode your goodwill away. Think of the example of the mother protecting her child. The poem says, “Just as a mother would protect her child, her only child, so you …
- To Certify Yourself… Just have the perception in your mind—“breath, breath, breath”—along with the intention to stay, and that’s enough. You find that when you can keep the mind still with even less activity, the deeper the concentration grows—the more refreshing, the more energizing, the more solid it becomes—all because you’ve learned how to observe yourself. It doesn’t matter whether …
- It’s All about Action… It’s a perception. Perceive the breath energy coming in and out of the pores, nourishing all the nerves, nourishing all the blood vessels. Breathe in with a sense of fullness; breathe out with a sense of total relaxation: relaxation of the body. Don’t totally relax your mind. You have to be alert. You have to be on top of this. That’s …
- Control… Once you understand the process of what the Buddha calls fabrication, the intentional actions around the breath, that sharpens your sensitivity, so that you begin to see other kinds of fabrication as well, particularly in the way the mind talks to itself, the feelings and perceptions that it creates in the present moment. Some of these are the results of past actions, but a …
- Defilements at the Door… What perceptions fuel your greed, anger, and delusion? What intentions fuel it? What ways of paying attention to things fuel these things? Look into those, because that’s where you can make a difference here in the present moment. You may not be able to choose who’s going to appear at your door or who wants to get into the fortress. But you …
- Everything Gathers Around the Breath… But you don’t really make full use of the perception of inconstancy until you learn to see connections. After all, the Dhamma eye is not simply seeing that whatever arises, passes away. The actual insight is: Whatever is subject to origination is also subject to cessation. Now “origination” here means cause. There is a factor that arises with it when it arises and …
- Something New… There are forms, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. Out of those five, fabrications covers the widest variety of mental events. It’s the way you talk to yourself. It’s the way you think. It’s your emotions, your world views, your ideas of what you have to do, what you don’t have to do, how other people should be, how other …
- The Four Noble Truths… All of this falls under the stress that comes from clinging to form, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness—consciousness here being the consciousness of the senses. All of this, the Buddha says to comprehend. Now, for most of us, when we run into pain, comprehending is not the first thing we have in mind. We want to push it away; we want to …
- The Noble Path to Happiness… the activity of focusing on the breath, and then other more subtle activities like feelings and perceptions. There’s an element of intention even those activities, he said. Learn to look and see how all these things are connected. While you’re here examining your activities, you’re going to find all the things you need to know about why you’re suffering and …
- Why We Bow Down… That’s why we would be willing to adopt those three perceptions—inconstancy, stress, not-self—and apply them to the things we’re attached to. People sometimes say we can see these things all around us: Things are always changing—but do we know that there is nothing that doesn’t change? Maybe not in our range of experience, but perhaps there’s …
- A Passion for the Path… We cling to our feelings, our perceptions, our thought fabrications, our consciousness. It’s because we cling to these things that we suffer. That’s what suffering is—and we’re passionate about it until we comprehend what’s going on.—in other words, we understand them to the point that we realize that they’re really not worth the passion that goes into …
- Goodwill & Kamma… Every perception, every fabrication, even plain old consciousness contains an intentional element. Something is fabricated out of a potential, coming from past kamma, and turns into an actuality. Just like the issue of past kamma in general: What you focus on is going to become the actual kammic result you experience. And so it’s the intention there that’s important, the intention to …
- Boring… voice that says, “This is boring,” and you’re getting ready to believe it. It’s usually a sign that you’re not paying very careful attention. Fabrications are going on. Perceptions are going on. All the aggregates are going on right here, and you’re relating to them in your old ways. And as we all know, the old ways are the ones …
- The Flamethrowing Mind… feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, acts of consciousness—very simple things that are not very lasting. In fact, they’re very ephemeral. Yet we want to create a sense of our identity as a solid thing we can depend on, and the world as something we can depend on. And we do a fairly good job—good enough, at least, that we can deceive ourselves …
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