Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. Training Your Inner Critic
     … The five types are the five aggregates. For each of the aggregates, he says you take the potential for that aggregate and then you fabricate it into the actual aggregate. In each case, he says you fabricate them for the sake, say, of formness, or for the sake of feelingness… It sounds odd, but basically you fabricate the potentials so that you can have … 
  3. Outside the Box
     … There’s that story about the monk who, hearing the Buddha say that all the aggregates are not self, asked, “Well, if the aggregates are not self, then what self is going to be affected by things that are done by not self?” You can see where his thinking is leading: There’s nobody there to be responsible for the actions, there’s nobody … 
  4. An Auspicious Birth
     … There’s the birth when you take on this human body, this set of five aggregates, and that kind of birth happens once in a lifetime. There’s another level of birth, though, that happens on a momentary level and can happen many times a day. That’s when the mind gets tangled up in desire for any of the five khandhas. It takes … 
  5. Tools of Perception
     … In this way, you’re looking at things in terms of the aggregates, in particular, the aggregate of perception. The perception of form is gone, and what you’re left with is feeling, perception, thought fabrication, and consciousness. But even these aggregates are not the ultimate terms. In the commentaries they talk about this being the ultimate description of reality: the five aggregates. But … 
  6. Questions of Skill
     … It’s defined as the five clinging-aggregates. Where are you going to find those aggregates? You find them as you’re doing concentration. You’ve got the body here: That’s form. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that you’re trying to create. You’ve got the perceptions, the images you hold in mind of what the breath does as it … 
  7. Learning from Desire
     … He says, “When you boil it all down, it’s the five clinging-aggregates.” To see that, he says, is to discern suffering. We also need to see suffering’s cause, which he says is the craving that leads to becoming. How are we going to see these things? By meditating: first, getting the mind to see what these aggregates are and how we … 
  8. How Much Concentration Is Enough?
     … And what is it doing? Basically, it’s the same thing the aggregates do at any time. “Aggregates” is an unfortunate term that we’ve used to translate the Pali word khandha into English. It makes it sound like a pile of gravel—lots of little things. Actually, the aggregates are activities. Feeling feels, perception perceives, fabrications fabricate, and consciousness cognizes. Even form, the … 
  9. Useful Vocabulary
     … He divides things into five aggregates, six sense spheres, six properties, all the factors of dependent co-arising. Those are not superfluous teachings. They’re there to throw a spotlight onto things that are happening in your mind and to give you some distinctions. How is a perception, say, distinct from a fabrication? How are they related to feelings? You can’t see relationships … 
  10. A Soiled, Oily Rag
     … As the Buddha said, if the aggregates didn’t give some pleasure, we wouldn’t hold on to them. We wouldn’t crave them. But we also have to see that there’s stress involved in holding onto them as well. Once the aggregates as they have been shaped into right concentration have done their work, you no longer need the effort that goes … 
  11. Comprehending Pain
     … clinging to the five aggregates. Second, there’s knowledge of the duty appropriate to stress, which is to comprehend it. Third is the knowledge that you have totally comprehended it. You’ve completed the duty. With regard to the second noble truth, the truth of the origination of stress, the first knowledge is that there are three forms of craving that lead to clinging … 
  12. You Can Do Better
     … The duty with regard to suffering itself, if you really want to put an end to it, is to comprehend it, to see how the desire and passion of clinging, focused on the aggregates, is what actually constitutes suffering. You want to comprehend that, because most of the times when we’re suffering, we’re not thinking in terms of, “Gee, I’m clinging … 
  13. Against the Grain
     … In his analysis, he talks about the suffering of the five clinging-aggregates. Each of the aggregates is an activity that’s involved in feeding. There’s the form of the body that needs to be fed, and of the physical food that we feed on. There’s the feeling of hunger that drives us to feed, and the feeling of satisfaction that comes … 
  14. Question Your Actions
     … This is the Buddha’s reason for talking about the aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness—because they help you take your suffering apart. You’re just not trying to define who you are, although we do tend to define ourselves around the aggregates. But we have to remember they, too, are activities; they, too, are actions. They’re things you’re doing. So … 
  15. Comprehending Clinging
     … In the first noble truth, the Buddha defines suffering and stress, in its short version, as clinging to the five aggregates. When we hear that, we tend to focus on the aggregates—that we need to comprehend them. Which is true, we do, but we also have to comprehend clinging. In fact, clinging is the real problem. That’s the activity that’s suffering … 
  16. Victory over Death
     … passion and desire for the different aggregates. As you create your sensual fantasies, as you create your views about the world, your sense of what should and shouldn’t be done, and even your sense of self: All these things are created out of these aggregates. The things we take to be really solid in the world, when you look at them carefully, are … 
  17. Strong Through Mindfulness
     … That’s a symbol for trying to hold on to your body, to your feelings, perceptions, thought constructs—the aggregates. They get pulled away and can cut you as you try to hold on to them. You need something better—the island you build through your mindfulness, your alertness, and your ardency. That island becomes the island of concentration. There’s a school of … 
  18. A Path Under the Trees
     … He said that it was the five clinging- aggregates, and the important part was the clinging. If there’s no clinging to the aggregates, then there’s no suffering. And why do you cling? Because of craving. So the question is: Can you get rid of that craving: the craving for sensuality, the craving for becoming, the craving for non-becoming? The first factor … 
  19. In the Context of the Deathless
     … In the context of your search for a deathless happiness, are these really worth going for? There are few cases when the answer is actually Yes, in the sense that the path we’re working on is something we’re putting together out of these aggregates that the Buddha says are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. Aggregates like the form of your body as … 
  20. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … In other words, you’ve got the five aggregates right here in your state of right concentration. So there’s still the possibility of clinging right here as well. In fact, in the beginning, this is what you’re doing: learning how to cling to the aggregates in a new way as you turn them into the path. But then, ultimately, even that has … 
  21. The Equanimity of a Victor
     … When the Buddha says suffering is the five clinging-aggregates, our immediate reaction is “What? What does that have to do with my suffering?” It seems abstract, far away, technical. But it really has to do with what you’re doing. Because the aggregates are activities. They’re actions. Even form is something you actively maintain. Your perception of form is something you have … 
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