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The Buddha taught that perception is one of the five aggregates that comprise each moment of experience. The five aggregates are matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. The way these aggregates coalesce in a moment can create suffering, or not. You can affect whether suffering occurs by developing new habits of perception, thereby changing what you notice in the future.
It takes effort and practice to break old patterns of perception. You are essentially developing a new relationship to “pleasant” and becoming mindful that what matters in life is something greater than “happiness,” which is fleeting. You are discovering that “pleasant” and “happiness” aren’t reliable sources of well-being. And you are developing the capacity to meet pleasant and unpleasant moments of life equally, which conditions future moments of perception and leads to a sustained sense of well-being.
Meditations
We practice the Buddha’s First Foundation of Mindfulness — awareness of the body in the body — as we observe what is arising. We start by noticing something comfortable in our body. What is it like to experience this ease? Then we systematically scan the body from head to toes. Finally, we focus on the breath and observe if it is comfortable. If not, we return to the place in the body where we found comfort and then go back to the breath.
