Search results for: "Perception"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The First Noble Truth… We latch onto things like form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness as being us or ours. Or we latch onto the idea that they have to be this way or that way. And not only do we latch on. We feed on these things. That’s actually one of the meanings of the word for clinging, upadana: feeding. We try to get our nourishment …
- Abusing Pleasure & Pain… Keep your awareness, your perception of your awareness, in a position of priority. When you do this, you’re learning how to use both pleasure and pain in the right way. You’re not abusing the pleasure. You’re not abusing the pain. You’re gaining experience in developing the duties of the four noble truths. You’re developing the path, and you’re …
- The Karma of Meditation… Why does that first arrow get you to grab your bow and grab your quiver and pull out all the arrows you can and then shoot yourself? Why do you do that? What is it about that first pain that gets you all worked up? It’s because you have some strange perceptions around it. Look into those. Ajaan Maha Boowa has a lot …
- Complexities of the Mind… Well, why is that? You dig a little bit deeper, and you get into its perceptions, the way it labels things: “This is beautiful. This is attractive. This is enticing. I like feeling aroused.” Those kinds of thoughts. You can learn how to question those. This brings everything back into the mind. So you can’t expect one technique, or one approach to do …
- No Happiness Other than Peace… And even though it’s immediately present, and the possibility of reaching it is theoretically available at any moment in time, our powers of perception are not up to it, our skills are not skillful enough, not subtle enough. So we have to raise the subtlety of our mind as we develop these skills until finally we reach the level where we can have …
- The Need for Right View… It also reminds you that one of the reasons you’re meditating is so that you can understand your intentions, to see them more clearly, because they’re bound up in a real tangle of perceptions and views. The interaction of a lot of different mental events in the mind goes into a decision to do something. That creates the kamma. And it’s …
- Ups & Downs… Go back to the beginning and try to be very careful, very perceptive, very precise, in how you focus on the breath. Don’t try to take on too much. Ajaan Lee gives the example of someone who’s planting a new orchard. It’s not a good idea, he says, to clear all the land you’ve got and plant all the land …
- Dealing with Limitations… As the Buddha said, when you become a being, you identify with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, or consciousness of particular kinds. And whatever way you identify yourself, that’s how you limit yourself. You gain certain powers by bringing those things under your control, but you also take on certain limitations. Those limitations may not be getting in the way of the particular task …
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