Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Smart About Lust
     … This is why we bring out the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self to help underline the drawbacks of your fantasies so that you can develop dispassion for them and gain release, escape from them. The Buddha compares sensuality to a fetter. It’s like being in prison. Your defilements have managed to make the prison nice enough so that you feel like … 
  3. Victory
     … So try to hold these perceptions in mind because they remind you of what true victory is—and how you can gain a victory that really matters.
  4. Feeding on Open Wounds
     … So change your perception. You can think of breathing in from the back of the neck or up from the floor. See what that does. Think of the breath going down the arms, going down the legs. You can either go inside the arms or on the surface of the arms, whatever feels good, whatever minimizes the pressure of the process of breathing, so … 
  5. Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing
     … When it goes up a bit, ask yourself, “What did I do just now? What perception did I hold on to? What feeling was I focusing on? How was I focusing?” If the mind can’t settle down, you tell yourself, “How can I be patient with this, so that my irritation about the disturbances in my mind doesn’t add more disturbance?” In … 
  6. The Heart of the Teachings
     … the way feelings and perceptions shape your mind. And then calming that effect. Breathing in and out sensitive to the mind, and then noticing if the mind is out of balance, what you need to do to bring it into balance. Either gladdening it if it’s dull, steadying it if it’s too restless, or releasing it when it’s burdened with things … 
  7. Patterns to Happiness
     … There are points you can focus on—in terms of intention, attention, or perception—that can help you make sense of this whole question of why there sometimes is happiness, and why sometimes there isn’t, and what you can do to master the processes of cause and effect so that you can tap into happiness, tap into a sense of rapture whenever you … 
  8. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … Your perceptions are what connects them, your labels saying, “This pain is fixed in my body” or “This pain is fixed in my awareness.” It’s like you’re shooting yourself. Then the Buddha comes along and says, “Hey, you have the choice. You don’t have to shoot yourself.” This is the point where the mind really welcomes the idea that things are … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. A Timeless Foundation
     … Your mental fabrication—different perceptions and feelings—will begin to grow calm as well. The mind moves from a sense of being glad to be here, to getting concentrated, and then being released from disturbances. Ideally, all three tetrads work together. If there’s any disturbance, if your mind can’t settle down, you can ask yourself, “Is the problem with the breath and … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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