SarathW wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 9:00 am
pegembara wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 8:01 am
"In-&-out breaths are bodily fabrications. Directed thought & evaluation are verbal fabrications. Perceptions & feelings are mental fabrications."
"But why are in-&-out breaths bodily fabrications? Why are directed thought & evaluation verbal fabrications? Why are perceptions & feelings mental fabrications?"
"In-&-out breaths are bodily; these are things tied up with the body. That's why in-&-out breaths are bodily fabrications. Having first directed one's thoughts and made an evaluation, one then breaks out into speech. That's why directed thought & evaluation are verbal fabrications. Perceptions & feelings are mental; these are things tied up with the mind. That's why perceptions & feelings are mental fabrications."
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitak ... .than.html
Things tied to the body - breathing/heartbeat/tremors/sympathetic-adrenergic systems.
Agree.
My question is why it does not include other bodily fabrications.
The phrase
kayasankhara could indeed be taken to mean "all bodily fabrications". Because the term sankhara is particularly hard to pin down and the meaning seems to be very context-dependent, the range of possible meanings is very wide. But in the linked video, Bhikkhu Bodhi refers to MN 44, which defines kayasankhara thus:
“But ma’am, what is the physical process? What’s the verbal process? What’s the mental process?”
14.2“Breathing is a physical process. Placing the mind and keeping it connected are verbal processes. Perception and feeling are mental processes.”
15.1“But ma’am, why is breathing a physical process? Why are placing the mind and keeping it connected verbal processes? Why are perception and feeling mental processes?”
15.2“Breathing is physical. It’s tied up with the body, that’s why breathing is a physical process.
It appears that BB takes this more restricted definition here, in the context of the mindfulness of breathing because this definition is actually about breathing and appears more relevant. (If he has another reason, I didn't see it in the few minutes I watched the video).
MN 118 also says:
I tell you, monks, that this — the in-&-out breath — is classed as a body among bodies
Which provides further evidence of the potential usefulness of this restricted use in this particular context.
(There is also the fact that kaya can also mean "group", as well as one's physical body, so there is the possibility that in some contexts the term doesn't even refer to the physical body at all - my Pali isn't good enough to say whether this is a real possibility...)
Some meditation teachers link the sutta to the practice by getting people to relax the whole body at this point; whereas others take the BB line that what is to be relaxed is the breathing. There doesn't seem to be any clear steer from the suttas as to which is definitive and correct, and I guess what happens is that people are taught one way and then this seems to be the naturally correct interpretation for them.
