Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … There’s an element of intention in how you experience form, feeling, perception, the process of fabrication, and your sensory consciousness. So it’s not just that you’re experiencing a given that’s been provided by the past, you’re actually shaping it here and now. On top of that, it’s possible to shape it in such a way that there is … 
  3. Mindfulness of Death
     … You have to ask yourself, “Well, what needs to be done?” Look at the breath as bodily fabrication; the way you talk to yourself as verbal fabrication; and the perceptions and feelings you focus on as mental fabrication. What needs to be worked on in those three things? What insight can you gain into the process of fabrication as you work with them? That … 
  4. Three Levels of Evaluation
     … If you evaluate the breath in a way that makes it more comfortable, and the sensation of the breathing more interesting, it’s a lot easier to keep your mind focused on the breath and to stay there, to maintain a sense of singleness, which means both having one object in mind and then having that one object or that one perception fill the … 
  5. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … Part of the problem is that they come and go very quickly, especially the images that the Buddha calls perceptions: the labels in the mind, isolated words or little visual images. They’re like the subliminal images that people put on TV. They flash for second and they go so quickly that your conscious mind doesn’t see them, but there’s something inside … 
  6. Asalha Puja
     … the form of your body, your feelings, your perceptions, mental fabrications, or consciousness. The fact that we cling there: That’s the suffering. The third level of knowledge is when you know that you’ve completed the duty: In this case, you’ve comprehended the suffering *fully. *Now, that level of knowledge doesn’t come until you’ve completed the duties for the other … 
  7. Things Aren’t as They Should Be
     … You can take something simple like this—the fact that you’re talking to yourself about the breath, focusing on the breath; you have a perception of the breath, an image of how the breath flows in the body; you’re trying to create a feeling of well-being: Okay, that’s the activity. You can watch yourself doing that activity and you’ll … 
  8. The Context for No Context
     … You see your body as something separate, your feelings as something separate; your perceptions, your thought constructs. Even your sensory consciousness: You have to see that as something separate—separate both in the sense that these are individual events that arise and pass away, and in the sense that they’re separate from your awareness, your sense of you. You want to pare back … 
  9. In Line with the Dhamma
     … What’s it made of? It’s made out of forms, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and acts of consciousness. That’s it. We’ve cobbled our sense of self out of these things. When you actually look at them, you can see that there’s really not that much there. These things keep changing and changing and changing, so how could we find any … 
  10. Judging Your Meditation
     … If your idea of your “self” gets involved, it’s going to skew your perception. And it can work both ways. In other words, when things are not going well, you take it as a sign that this might reflect badly on you, and then you deny that it’s not going well. But when things are going well and you’re the type … 
  11. Refuge in an Admirable Friend
     … In fact, that question, “What, when I do, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” sets up the basic parameters for the three perceptions that the Buddha said are useful for figuring whether you’ve attained the goal or not. If something is not long-term, if something is anicca, inconstant, it’s not what you want. If it’s not happiness … 
  12. Tuning-in to the Breath
     … In other words, there’s a potential for a form, a potential for a feeling, potential for perception, fabrication, consciousness; and the act of fabricating is what turns these potentials into actual aggregates. It sounds abstract, but it’s a very important lesson for the meditation even from the very beginning. You sit here in the body — and of course, that’s a fabrication … 
  13. The Best of a Bad Situation
     … You’ve got to use your discernment, to see the pain as something separate, hold that perception in mind. The awareness is one thing, the pain is something else, your body is still something else.” In other words, the sensations of body are the earth, water, wind, fire sensations. The pain is something else. Learn how to see the distinction. Exactly what is the … 
  14. The Path to Stream Entry
     … There’s no form, no feeling, no perception, no fabrication of anything, and no consciousness of the six senses—and yet there is an awareness. As a result, there’s no tendency to want to identify yourself with any of the aggregates ever again. You still have a lingering sense of self that hovers around them, but you never hold to the view that … 
  15. The Buddha’s Last Word
     … Ajaan Lee talks about how you start out with the perception, a sañña, and then you fabricate something out of it. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about there being a little stirring in the mind which is the beginning of a saṅkhāra or fabrication, and you slap a sañña on it to give it some meaning. And they’re both right. Their analysis in each … 
  16. The Meaning of the Body
     … It also shows you the power of your perceptions, that what you thought was a given was actually something you had glued together yourself. This makes you want to turn around and look at the whole process of labeling things in the mind in other areas as well. So in all these cases you’re using the body as an aid in the practice … 
  17. Ironies
     … clinging to form, to feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. This is what it all comes down to. Again, it’s stuff that’s happening all the time in the present moment, but we tend to miss it. So we need to develop our powers of mindfulness and alertness to see these connections and to understand our duty toward suffering, which is to comprehend it … 
  18. Inner Negotiating Skills
     … You’re learning something about how the mind relates to the body, how your awareness relates to the body, how simply moving the spot of your awareness in the body can change things in the body, how changing your perceptions of the breath will change the way you breathe. There’s a lot to learn right here. Even though you’re saying No to … 
  19. Respect, Confidence, & Patience
     … You can be more realistic about what you’re undertaking here, which is the total re-training of the mind, learning radically new habits in how you relate to the body, how you relate to your feelings, how you relate to your perceptions, your thought- constructs, even how you relate to consciousness. The Buddha points out that we tend to relate to these things … 
  20. What You Don’t Like About Yourself
     … gives rise to a sense of rapture, to breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of pleasure, to breathe in a way where you’re sensitive to the perceptions and feeling coming into the mind and to the effect they have on the mind. But you’re not going to get involved. You know they’re there but you don’t … 
  21. Strength of Conviction
     … Discernment doesn’t come simply from things you’ve read—it doesn’t come from perceptions, or sañña. It comes from conviction: saddha, conviction that there’s got to be a way out. There’s got to be a way to survive hardships and come out not only surviving, but thriving. And what do we base that conviction on? Conviction in the Buddha’s … 
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