Search results for: "Perception"
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- Goodwill for the Real World… So in working on goodwill, you begin to get more sensitive to how the mind has to create these mental states, and how it can create these states by learning to think in new ways, learning how to keep new perceptions in mind. So basically, what it comes down to is understanding goodwill in the light of karma. On the one hand, there’s …
- The Mind Comes First… As the Buddha said, when you deal with breath meditation, you’re going to learn about the directed thought and evaluation—what they call verbal fabrication—and perceptions and feelings: what they call mental fabrication. All these things are going to appear right here. As you get to know them, you realize that you’re engaged in these activities all the time. Then as …
- Five Steps to Insight… If you decide, “Hey, this is a thought about x,” you slap a little perception on it, you slap a label on it, and then it begins to grow into a thought-world. So you have to ask yourself: “Why are you slapping labels on these things? What are you looking for?” That’s called the origination. Then there’s passing away. When you …
- Seeing the Stillness… Learn how you can use them.” After all, what is the path made out of if not feelings and perceptions and thought-constructs and consciousness? Learn how to use these things. What is rupa jhana made out of? It’s based on form, the first khandha, and includes the other four khandhas as well. Learn how to use these things in a way that …
- What Am I Becoming?… We’ve got perceptions and images in the mind; feelings that we develop through the way we breathe. These, too, are things we’re doing all the time. But if we get them in line with the practice, they can become part of the path. You hold on to the raft as you make an effort with your hands and feet, as the Buddha …
- Chickens from Hell… But if you slap the perception on and say, “Oh, this is a thought and it’s a thought about the future; it’s a thought about the past; it’s a thought about this topic, that topic,” then you run with it. In the very beginning stages, you’re going to be aware of the thought only when it’s fully formed. But …
- All About Change… That’s where you want to see, “Okay, where does this thing change? Where is it unreliable?” It’s not just change that the Buddha is talking about in the series of the three perceptions. He’s talking about inconstancy and unreliability. You’ve got this unreliability in your mind, but also unreliability in the things that you tend to latch on to. If …
- Up for the Challenge… First, you should try to comprehend suffering, which means seeing that suffering is in the act of clinging to form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. You want to see yourself suffering in the act of clinging itself. Sometimes we’re told that we suffer because we cling to impermanent things. But it’s possible to cling even to permanent things and still suffer. You …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… Then you see how your perceptions and feelings around the breath, as the Buddha says, fabricate the mind. And the way you talk to yourself as you remind yourself of these instructions is going to fabricate the way you experience both body and mind. So these processes of fabrication are what you’re getting to know. And when you see the processes of fabrication …
- Terror & Revulsion… We cling to form, feeling, perceptions, thought-constructs, and consciousness because we think we’ll get some nourishment out of them. For the most part, though, they’re like junk food—they give pleasure, but no real nourishment, and can actually be harmful. But once we’ve turned them into the health food of the path, and they’ve strengthened us as much as …
- Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End… Breathing in a way that allows you to see how your perceptions and your feelings are having an impact on the mind, and learning how to calm that impact. Energizing the mind when it needs to be energized, steadying it when it needs to be steadied, releasing it from its burdens when it needs to be released. You do all this by developing that …
- Not Getting What You Want… We cling to our perceptions—the labels we apply to things. We cling to all the thoughts that we fabricate around things: good, bad, true, false. And we cling to our awareness of these things. He has you break these things down into impersonal activities to help try to get* you* out of the way so you can see clearly: “Okay, there is this …
- Cook Your Mind… the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, your perceptions and feelings. Those are aggregates. You get hands-on practice in using those aggregates to develop skillful thoughts, to calm the mind down, to create a state of concentration. Then when the mind is in concentration, you begin to see the aggregates even more clearly—and you can see that they really …
- The Breath Soufflé… There’s physical fabrication, which is the effect of the breath on the body; verbal fabrication, what you talk to yourself about; and then mental fabrication, the feelings you create through the breathing, through your attention to the breathing, and the perceptions you hold in mind to be aware of the breathing as a whole-body process. They’re all right here. We take …
- Dreams & Voices… Take the whole issue of the three perceptions. When you see that things are inconstant, stressful, not-self, those facts on their own don’t really tell you what to do. If something is inconstant, is it worth going for? Sometimes, even in very unskillful cases, you can actually convince yourself that it would be—especially if you tell yourself that that’s as …
- Over the Pass… feelings, perceptions, acts of attention, acts of intention, contact among these things, without any reference to whose they are. When they first arise, that’s what they are: just events. But then we turn them into worlds, and we turn them into ourselves, and create becomings out of them. This is why part of the formula for right mindfulness is putting aside greed and …
- Barriers in the Heart… There’s the word sañña , which we usually translate as “perception” or “mental label.” But in Thai it also means an agreement, a contract. When you look carefully at the way your mind works, you find that it keeps making agreements with itself to turn a blind eye to things, to put up barriers so that it can’t see the full story, so …
- Patience & Urgency… The technique is here to develop your powers of perception, to develop your powers of concentration, so that you can use your discernment to figure things out more clearly for yourself. If you rush through things, discernment doesn’t have its chance to develop its skill, doesn’t have its chance to develop its powers of observation. What happens all too often when you …
- Respect Opens Possibilities… The aggregates are activities we indulge in. We chanted about them just now. Form—your body is constantly in action. Feeling—feelings of pleasure, pain, feelings of neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions—the labels you apply to things, the meanings you give to them, how you identify them. Thought fabrications—the way you put ideas together, the way you talk to yourself. And finally …
- Free from Animosity… our sense of the form of the body as we feel it from within, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental constructs—mental constructs are the stories we tell ourselves, the analyses, the comments, we make on things—and then finally consciousness at the senses. These are the things with which we ordinarily assemble our sense of who we are and what’s ours. Yet …
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