Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. Think
     … After all, what is your discernment going to use if not your perceptions and your thought constructs? What else does it have? You use aggregates to solve the problem of the aggregates, of clinging to the aggregates. When the work is done, then you can put the tools down. But you’ve got to use the tools because there’s a lot of ignorance … 
  9. Dethinking Thinking
     … What is it that goes into those becomings? The Buddha said that two of the aggregates are especially active in shaping the mind or shaping these becomings: feelings and perceptions. And you want to learn how to deconstruct them. This is a really important part of the meditation. A world begins to form in the mind and you have to destroy it. Now, doing … 
  10. The Raft
     … So you’re taking these five aggregates and are turning them into your raft to cross the river, making it from things that are on this side of the river and using it to cross over the flood to the other side. One of the big floods in the river, the Buddha said, is the flood of views. But part of the raft is … 
  11. Intelligent Effort
     … These are the aggregates. They’re all very ephemeral. There’s no substance in any of these aggregates that we use to create our sense of who we are and the world we live in. And, the Buddha said, when you remember all the many lifetimes you’ve been through, it’s just aggregates. That’s all it is. And here you are, sitting … 
  12. Refuge
     … There you’ve got them all here, the five aggregates, and you turn them into the path. They become your home right now, a much more solid home than any other one you could fabricate from those aggregates. So right here is where you find refuge as you develop these skills We talk about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as refuge. On … 
  13. The Middle Way
     … Clinging-aggregates are not just things sitting around. The compound means the act of clinging to the aggregates, and it’s related to craving, which is the origination, and which also comes from the mind. Both the craving and the act of clinging are defined as passion and desire. The difference is that the word for craving in Pali, tanha, also means thirst. The … 
  14. Practicing for Dispassion
     … The Buddha’s very clear about the fact that the aggregates do have their appeal. As he said, if they didn’t have any appeal, people wouldn’t fall for them. However, they also have their drawbacks. It’s the acts of discernment focused on the drawbacks that help give rise to dispassion for all the things that would pull you back, pull you … 
  15. Ask the Right Questions
     … The question is, “Is this a skillful action or is this not a skillful action?” Sometimes, especially in some Buddhist circles, we hear that “Well, you don’t have a self, but you are the five aggregates.” But then again, that’s defining what you are; and again, it’s placing a limitation on you. If you’re just the five aggregates, the five … 
  16. A Good Mood to Meditate
     … When the Buddha describes suffering, he talks about clinging to the five aggregates. And we hear that one of the aggregates is feeling. People often assume that means our emotions, but that’s not where the emotions are in the aggregates. The emotions are under fabrications. They’re put together. What are they made out of? They’re made of, one, the way you … 
  17. Steering the Raft
     … So what do you do? The Buddha says there is a way to find genuine happiness by taking these tools that we claim as our self—all the different aggregates—and fashioning them into a raft that’ll take us across the flood to arrive at unbinding. Once you get to the other side, you have to let go of the raft. So it … 
  18. Anybody Home?
     … You see that they’re made of nothing but the mud of the aggregates: form, feelings, perceptions, mental fabrications, acts of consciousness coming and going, coming and going. They’ve been coming and going in all kinds of zigzags. You want to learn how to see that they’re really not worth getting involved with. He represents this by the little children suddenly getting … 
  19. Right View about Right View
     … In other words, they don’t maintain, for example, that to say that there’s such a person as Lionel or Isabella or Than Isaac, or whoever, is just a conventional truth; whereas saying that they’re aggregates is an ultimate truth. Instead, the ajaans contrast conventional truths with release, which means that even talking about everybody here in terms of aggregates would still … 
  20. Path & Raft
     … You’re identifying with form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—all the five aggregates—building a sense of self around them. Either you identify with a particular aggregate or group of aggregates, or you feel that they belong to you. You have a self that owns these things, or your self is in these things, or these things are in yourself. Any of these … 
  21. Freedom Undefined
     … The Buddha says, “How can you say anything like that? Can you identify where the Tathagata is right now? Can you define him in terms of any of the five aggregates?” Well, no. “As something separate from the five aggregates?” No. There’s nothing that you could point to, even here in the present moment — unlike your ordinary person, who can be identified with … 
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