Balanced Sensitivity

What Is Sensitivity? Certain people seem naturally more sensitive than others. Sometimes this is an admirable quality. Partners are sensitive to each other's moods and do not make demands when the other has had a difficult day. Because of this type of sensitivity, our...

Basic Description of the Five Types of Awareness An additional asset of subtlest clear light mind is that five types of deep awareness naturally endow it as part of our innate network of deep awareness. These five are a topic discussed primarily in the highest class of...

Statement of the Problem The most basic mental activity during each moment of our experience is to produce mental objects and simultaneously to engage with them. If, however, the actual object we perceive with mirror-like awareness is merely an appearance our mind creates,...

The Need for Deconstruction Methods Sometimes, we discover that we are overreacting to what we see, hear, or feel because we are mistaken about what we perceived. We thought, for example, that our friend was angry with us because he or she did not call for days. In fact, our...

Exercise 12: Visualizing Life's Changes The first exercise for deconstructing deceptive appearances helps us to dissolve faulty impressions we might have of situations or persons as permanent. We need to deconstruct our feelings that people's appearance, mode of behavior, or...

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...

Differentiating the Various Aspects of Feelings Adjusting the ten mental factors is an effective means for increasing attentiveness to problems and for enhancing the intention to respond. Several factors, however, may still hamper this response. One of the more troublesome is...

Feelings, Wishes, and Necessity Even when we are attentive to a situation and we feel some level of happiness, interest, and compassion about it, and some level of willingness to become involved, we need to respond sensitively and appropriately. Frequently, we need to decide...

Statement of the Problem Because of the deeply rooted habit of confusion about reality, our mental activity instinctively and constantly produces not only dualistic appearances, but also "triplistic" ones. According to madhyamaka (middle way) theory, it fabricates a deceptive...

Dispelling Insecurity through Deconstruction To dispel the problems of insecurity that our confusion and its instincts create regarding mind's natural functions, we need to identify the triplistic appearances that fuel these problems. Recognizing the absurdity of our...