Some causes of suffering go away when you just look at them; others require that you engage in what the Buddha calls, “exerting a fabrication.” There are three kinds of fabrication: bodily, verbal and mental.

"We talked about different ways you deal with the causes of suffering. Some causes of suffering go away when you just look at them; others require that you engage in what the Buddha calls, “exerting a fabrication” [MN 101]. And when the Buddha’s talking about fabrication in this context, he’s talking about these three kinds of fabrication.

For example, suppose that you’re feeling a strong sense of anger and you want to get over it. The first thing you do is to look at your breath. Usually when you’re angry, your breath is disturbed, which aggravates the anger. So, remember what you’ve learned to do with the breath in meditation: calm the breath down, breathe through any tightness you may feel in your chest or your abdomen, and in this way you begin to reclaim your body from the anger, which has hijacked it. You make the breath your own again. That’s bodily fabrication.

When the body feels calmer, it’s easier to think clearly about the situation. This is where you apply directed thought and evaluation. And you can start asking yourself, “What, in the long term, would be the most skillful thing to do in this situation?” In other words, you’re not going just by your emotions or impulses. You’re looking at the long-term results.

Finally, with mental fabrication, you ask yourself, “What perceptions are you holding in mind that are aggravating the situation? For example, do you perceive yourself as a victim? Are you carrying perceptions of other times when you were a victim? Can you change those perceptions?”

Another perception that’s a troublemaker when you’re angry is that, when passing judgment on the other person, you subconsciously perceive yourself as a judge in a court and you’re free to decide whether the person is guilty or innocent, without perceiving that the judgment will have any effect on you. But when you perceive that the consequences won’t touch you, you tend to get heedless. To prevent this, the Buddha advises changing the perception: Consider yourself as a person traveling through the desert. You’re hot, trembling, and thirsty. You see a small puddle of water in the footprint of a cow. You need the water, but you realize that if you try to scoop it up with your hand, you’ll make it muddy. So what do you do? You get down on all fours and you slurp up the water. Even though this is not a dignified position, it’s what you need to do.

In the same way, we sometimes need the perception that other people have at least some goodness to them, because that will nourish our ability to do good in response to them. The perception of their goodness is like water nourishing our own. And so even though we may be angry with the other person and we don’t feel in the mood to look at the person’s good traits because it hurts our pride, we should still realize that we need their goodness to nourish our goodness. Otherwise, if we see the entire human race as basically bad, it’s going to be very difficult to treat people well. If we look for their goodness, we benefit in being more inclined to act skillfully. This comes from applying a totally different perception to the situation.

This is one example of how you can apply these different kinds of fabrication or the instances of intention, attention, feeling, and perception to approach the present moment with strength and with clarity. That way you will be more likely to do the most skillful thing.

So the Buddha’s basic instructions are similar to what you would give to train a good cook: Choose your good ingredients if you can. Develop your skills so that even though you’re sometimes stuck with bad ingredients, you can create a good situation in the present moment, providing yourself with good food now, at the same time planting new seeds for good food into the future."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"