Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- Here to Learn… You have five aggregates. Each other person has his or her five aggregates. And when we get into contact with another, it’s not like adding our five aggregates with their five aggregates, it’s like multiplying them or taking five to the fifth power—a lot of complications. So you have to realize when you’re dealing with other people, the same issues …
- Use Your Defilements… You work with the trees and twigs and branches on this side of the river—the things you identify with, the aggregates—and you make them into a raft that helps you as you swim across. So as you’re meditating, don’t be in too great or hurry to try to get rid of your defilements. Use them well first. Learn how to …
- Dealing with Pain… This is where the Buddha’s teaching on aggregates comes in. The word aggregate is a translation for the word *khandha. *It’s not the best, but it’s hard to think of anything better in English. It sounds like piles of gravel; it’s not. The Buddha actually was talking about activities of the mind. You create your sense of the form of …
- The Mind Undefined… He boiled things down to five clinging-aggregates, but those are things you have to explore. Those are activities that you do. Your clinging to the aggregates is an activity, and the aggregates that you cling to are activities. The question is, in every case, can you do those activities in a different way? So it’s good to leave some things undefined, especially …
- The Buddha’s Filters… to see where the things you hold on to dearly are constructed out of these aggregates, and question exactly how reliable those aggregates are. That way, you’ll be less inclined to cling to them and less inclined to crave them. After all, that’s where the cause of suffering is: It’s in the craving. You crave sensuality; you crave taking on a …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Therapeutic Seclusion… When he talks about clinging-aggregates, that’s what he’s talking about: You hold on to things that are making you suffer. The first noble truth is that you’re doing things that make you suffer. After all, the aggregates are activities. Form keeps changing. Feelings feel. Perceptions perceive. Thought fabrications fabricate. Consciousness cognizes. These are activities we’re doing all the time …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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