Exploring Fabrication (extract)

"Feeling and perception have an effect on the mind, and the breath has an indirect effect on the mind through the feelings.

How do you use these fabrications to gladden the mind? How do you use them to steady the mind? How do you use them to release the mind? In some cases, the Buddha says, you simply watch a particular defilement or a particular hindrance that’s weighing the mind down, and simply by your watching it, it goes away. Other times, as he says, you have to exert a fabrication to let go of a particular cause of stress. That can involve bodily fabrication, which is the breath; verbal fabrications, which are directed thought and evaluation; and mental fabrications, which are feeling and perception.

Now, all of this is to get you really sensitive to the process of fabrication. It’s not just a matter of things coming and going, arising and passing away. The mind has an intentional element in all of its experiences. Basically, you take the potential for, say, a form or a feeling or a perception, fabrications, or consciousness — these potentials come from your past kamma — and then you fabricate them into an actual experience of the aggregates. There’s an intentional element in all of these things."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Exploring Fabrication"

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