Mental Factors

Discerning Meditation In general, meditation has two stages: discerning meditation and stabilizing meditation. In discerning meditation, we work through either progressive steps or a line of reasoning, as we did in the thinking process, to build up to a state of mind that...

 Mental Factors There are primary consciousnesses and mental factors. In any cognition there are always these two kinds of conscious phenomena, which share five congruent features (mtshungs-ldan lnga). They share a common (1) object (yul), (2) reliance (rten), (3) mental...

The Components of the Aggregate of Other Affecting Variables The fourth aggregate, the aggregate of other affecting variables, is the largest collection of items. “Variable” means that it changes, and “affecting” means that it affects our experience. This grouping contains all...

Balanced sensitivity requires deconstructing the deceptive, dualistic appearances our mind creates and harnessing our underlying deep awareness and natural talents. We also need to work with other mental factors that structure our mental activity, but do not form part of our...

Our minds give rise to many different kinds of appearances. To avoid confusion, we need to recognize and discriminate among the various different ways in which our minds make things appear to us.

The lam-rim, or graded stages of the Buddhist path, take us from an ordinary limited being to a fully enlightened Buddha.

It’s very important to try to understand the various appearances of the mind, how they exist and do they correspond to reality or not.

This eighteenth century text concerns the mind and the ways in which it knows things, and is written from the point of view of the Gelug interpretation of the True Aspectarian branch of the Sautrantika tenet system of Indian Buddhism.

If we are aware of the ten mental factors that are involved with every single moment of our experience, we can mold situations in such a way that they optimize the experience.

An analysis of the nature and different subtleties of the mind.