Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Time & Place to Let Go… So for anything that would pull you away or adds extra burdens to the mind that are unnecessary, the thinking or the perception of not-self is a useful tool to have to cut them away. You can say, “Well, it’s really not myself, it’s not really mine.” Even your own body: At some point, you’re going to have to give …
- Fears… form, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. You look to see where these things are inconstant. Where they’re inconstant, you realize they’re stressful. There’s stress right there in the inconstancy. Then when you look at stress, look at suffering — although at this level it’s more stress than suffering — you ask yourself, “What am I doing to cause that stress, to …
- A Healthy Attitude Toward Happiness… We feed off our perceptions, the labels we put on things. We feed off the thoughts we put together. We feed off our awareness of these things. And simply the fact that we have to be feeding all the time creates a lot of stress, because the things we’re feeding on don’t last. So we have to keep looking for new sources …
- Time & Place… But something, say, like the three characteristics, or more properly the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, not-self: There are cases in the Canon where people try to apply those teachings, and the Buddha reprimands them, saying that this is not the place to apply that teaching. One case is of a young monk who is asked by some sectarians, “What does the Buddha …
- Getting Back on Your Feet… Hold that perception in mind. In other words, instead of allowing lust to do the looking, you have these thoughts do the looking. Or if there’s somebody you really dislike, you can focus on their good side. Maybe they’ve done something good in the past. The Buddha compares this to a monk who’s looking for rags to make his robe. He …
- Mastery… As long as you find that you can control things like form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—the five aggregates—you do exert control over them. You do develop a sense of self around them on the path: the self as its own mainstay, the self as its governing principle. But you try to develop it, not in the sense of trying to …
- Right View Comes First… You’ve got feelings, you’ve got perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness—and you cling to these things. That’s the suffering. Suffering is not something that you’re passively receiving. You’re actually doing the action that constitutes suffering. Think about that. And why do you do that? Because of craving: either craving for sensuality, craving for a state of becoming, or craving to …
- The Triple Training… There has to be a certain amount of insight into how you’re fabricating your mind-states—the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you use, the feelings you focus on—if you want the mind to settle down. If you don’t see these things happening in the present moment, it’s going to be really hard for the mind to settle …
- The Dhamma Eye… Understanding that suffering is clinging—clinging to the body, clinging to our feelings, clinging to our perceptions of things, clinging to the way the mind fabricates and puts together its experience, and even clinging to our awareness of things. That’s what suffering is. It’s not an intuitive definition. He starts out by talking about the suffering of aging, illness, and death, of …
- Worldly Narratives… When you get more and more firmly established in the state of concentration, then you can use your perceptions and thought-constructs to start taking even that apart, to see what attachment there is to this state of quiet, this state of calm, this open, spacious state that comes with the concentration. Start taking that apart as well. Then you finally get to a …
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