Search results for: "Perception"

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  2. Admirable Intentions
     … You see perceptions simply as events in and of themselves, part of a causal chain, before they coalesce into a state of becoming—in other words, the act of taking on an identity in a world of experience. If you can see things in this way, you begin to gain some distance from your other cravings. This is how the path helps you abandon … 
  3. Balancing the Bases for Concentration
     … You can end up with distorted perceptions. Even though they seem to fall right in line with what the books say, they can still be wrong. The Buddha’s way is to have you ask questions. It’s as if he were organizing a treasure hunt, saying that there’s something really valuable over in the yard next door, and it has these general … 
  4. Laying the Infrastructure
     … Because the sensitivity involves not only very clear perception, but also continuity. If you really want to be sensitive to something, you’ve got to watch it continuously and not go skipping around. Think of a needle on a record: When the needle stays in the groove, you hear the music on the record. If the needle goes jumping around, then all you get … 
  5. Training in Commitment & Reflection
     … But the important thing is that you try to observe on your own as much as you can so that the observer in the mind, the part of the mind that reflects, becomes more and more perceptive, more and more reliable. For many of us, the observer inside is way too judgmental, which is why—to compensate—some people will tell you, “Don’t … 
  6. The World Is Swept Away
     … Even your body, your feelings, your perceptions, your thought constructs, your consciousness: You can’t take those with you, either. These first three Dhamma summaries provide an interesting point to reflect on — that the Buddha’s teaching on the three characteristics may have come from the simple facts of aging, illness, and death. Aging — inconstancy; illness — stress and suffering; and death — not-self. The … 
  7. Anapanasati Day
     … Then you notice how those feelings, together with the different perceptions that go along with the breath and the feelings, have an impact on the mind. These are mental fabrications, the Buddha calls them. Then you learn how to calm the mental fabrications. In other words, where there’s pain, you try to turn it into rapture; where there’s rapture, you might want … 
  8. In Training
     … You train yourself to be sensitive to how feelings and perceptions are having an impact on your mind, and how to calm that impact. At the same time, you’re calming the breath and training yourself to be sensitive to the state of your mind, and then adjusting it to get it to settle down: gladdening it to make it happy to be here … 
  9. Audacious & Undaunted
     … We cling to our perceptions, our thought constructs, our consciousness. And in that clinging is the suffering. Why do we cling? We cling because of craving. If you can comprehend the suffering to the point where you go beyond any passion, aversion, and delusion around it, and if you can abandon the craving, that’s the end of suffering. That was the third noble … 
  10. Feeding on Right Resolve
     … But just hold in mind the perception that the breath energy in the body is there first. It has priority. It can go anywhere. Then allow yourself to settle into the sense of whole body breathing in, breathing out, with a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment. This is the expression of resolve on renunciation. When you’re sitting here like … 
  11. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … Feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, acts of consciousness—all these are activities that we do. And because we try to feed off these things—that’s what the clinging is—we suffer. In fact, the suffering is in the clinging. Why do we cling? Because of craving. We crave sensuality—the act of fantasizing about sensual pleasures—or we crave what the Buddha calls becoming … 
  12. Kindfulness
     … Even just the perception, the label there: That’s an activity. To what extent is that activity still stressful? Can you drop whatever’s causing that stress? These are the questions the Buddha has you ask, looking at everything as actions, actions you want to do skillfully, actions you want to do or stop doing for the sake of putting an end to suffering … 
  13. Days Fly Past
     … Why does death shake the mind? Because we identify with the body, we identify with feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, sensory consciousness. As long as we identify with things, we’re going to be shaken not only by death, but even by the slightest changes in these things. Life seems to be going along well and all of a sudden something comes up unexpectedly. We … 
  14. Cleaning up Your Personal Environment
     … The real suffering is the fact that you’re holding on not only to your body, but also to your feelings and your perceptions, your thought constructs, even to your active consciousness. All those are things: If you hold on to them, if you cling to them, you’re going to suffer. Now, the word holding on doesn’t mean your mind has a … 
  15. Vitakka & Vicara
     … working with the breath, which is bodily fabrication; working with your perceptions, the images and individual words that have power over the mind—which are mental fabrications; and working with feelings of pleasure and pain in the body, which are mental fabrications as well. Verbal fabrication, though, is the primary factor that adjusts the other two. You have to evaluate the situation and ask … 
  16. Stern Kindness
     … When the Buddha talks about those three perceptions he wants you to hold, they’re not just grabbed out of the air someplace. They relate to the fact that change means aging in the human body. Wherever there’s aging, there’s going to be the illness, and the stress that comes with the illness, even before you really get old. And then when … 
  17. Right View
     … Can you move the mind onto a new perception, to a new state of concentration where there’s less of that stress? Learning to ask yourself that question is what develops your concentration, develops your meditation, and develops your insight at the same time you’re getting more and more sensitive. So those basic questions are: What are you doing? What are the results … 
  18. Ask the Right Questions
     … feelings and perceptions. How do these to grow calm? That’s part of getting the mind to settle down. But this time you go back to the same issue, and the question now is: How do you look at fabrications? How do you begin to see when they’re skillful, when they’re not? To what extent is it good to identify with them … 
  19. Freedom & Security
     … In those three perceptions the Buddha has us develop with regard to phenomena—inconstancy, stress, not-self: The stress there is the stress that you have no control over. But the stress in the four noble truths is something you do have control of. You’re the one who chooses to create it. And you can also choose not to. You can develop the … 
  20. Mindful Judgment
     … The Buddha defines this suffering as the five clinging-aggregates, which is the technical term for the fact that we try to feed on the form of the body, on our feelings, on our perceptions, on the way the mind fabricates its thoughts, and on acts of consciousness, in our attempt to find happiness. It’s like feeding on potato chips thinking that you … 
  21. The Will to Awaken
     … As one of the ajaans in Thailand once said, it’s not the case that discernment begins with perceptions or ideas or concepts. It begins with conviction, that there is a way out, and that it can be found through your own actions. The other aspect of discernment is that you see what the important questions are. As the Buddha said, the big question … 
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