Search results for: "Perception"

  1. Page 80
  2. Birth Is Suffering
     … We get hands-on experience with bodily fabrication in the breath, verbal fabrication in the way we talk to ourselves, and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions—seeing how we put these things together to create a state of concentration. Then, as the concentration deepens, some of them will peel off. That’s how you see that they are distinct. The first one that … 
  3. The Middle Way
     … specifically, the suffering that comes from craving, the suffering in clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. All the different kinds of suffering in world that really weigh on the mind come down to clinging to any one of these five aggregates or any combination of them. So when you see the suffering simply as that—an example of … 
  4. Inner Voice Lessons
     … Finally, when all other conversation is stilled, you can turn to question the more subtle voice of the perception in charge of your concentration: “Who’s talking here? Who’s it labeling for?” That’s when things really open up in the mind. Of course we all want to jump to that spot, where you find the transcendent, but to get there it takes … 
  5. A Handful of Leaves
     … They come to the waterhole, commenting on it—“I don’t like this; I hate this; I’m afraid of this”—creating perceptions about what this pain is, thinking about how long it’s been there, how long it may be there, and what it means in terms of the future of your health. The mind can create all kinds of narratives around it … 
  6. Therapy for the Mind
     … the little blips of perceptions or feelings that are used to justify going with a particular defilement—your lizard brain’s contribution to the whole conversation. The lizard brain may not be articulate, but it is powerful. Still, there will be a conversation going on in the mind. You have to learn how to run that conversation in such a way that you’re … 
  7. Why the Breath
     … But as the Buddha said, that’s where you find purity, in really getting perceptive and intelligent about how you look for happiness, observing how you’re looking for happiness, and being careful to make sure that your actions are in line with your most skillful intentions. So the quest for happiness is not a bad thing. I was talking yesterday with someone who … 
  8. Examine Your Happiness
     … You focus instead on the fact that some aspects of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness are actually pleasant, and you want to pursue them for that pleasure. There’s the pleasure of the precepts, the pleasure of generosity, both of which are conditioned things. There’s the pleasure in concentration, which is also conditioned, and you want to motivate yourself to develop … 
  9. Ingenuity
     … Your perception of the breath, the feelings that come from the way you breathe: You take these things that are said to be stressful and you make them as comfortable as possible. These things that are ultimately out of your control, you see how much control you can exert over them. It’s only when you flip things around like this that you get … 
  10. Right View
     … The aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness come in a potential form and then—based on which things we’re interested in, which things we want to create, which things we want to destroy—we actually create our experience of the present out of these different potentials. So we need to do a lot of digging down into our experience of the … 
  11. Wisdom for Dummies Revisited
     … All they get are perceptions, labels in the mind. They don’t actually see where these teachings are useful and why they’re useful tools. The Buddha didn’t teach these things just to show off how smart he was. Everything he taught was for a purpose. And when your mind is ready, then you see, “Oh, this serves that purpose.” When you’ve … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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