Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Factors for Stream Entry… It basically comes down to thinking in terms of the four noble truths, trying to figure out, “Where is the stress here? What is the stress?” The Buddha identifies is as clinging to the five aggregates. What are the aggregates? What is clinging? You want to explore that. You want to comprehend what’s going on as you’re doing it, because all too …
- To Know the Unconditioned… The earth is the four other aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication. The water is the water of passion and delight. When a seed lands on the earth and there’s water, then it grows. All of our experience of the senses comes out of that. The other image the Buddha gives us is of light. There’s a house with a window on the …
- The Allure of Self… It wasn’t identified with any of the five aggregates, but it lingered around the five aggregates, he said, in the same way that when you used—back in those days they didn’t have detergent, but they had the equivalent of detergent—when you used detergent to wash a piece of cloth, there would still be the scent of detergent lingering around the …
- Defilements at the Door… The Buddha’s analysis is that we have the potential for the different aggregates coming from past actions. Then, through our acts of fabrication, we turn them into actual experiences of the aggregates. We do it for the sake of something: We do it for the sake of pleasure. We think we’re going to get something out of it. So you want to …
- Beyond Imagination… Look on the good side of things.” Well, as long as you do that—and the Buddha said things do have their pleasant side; if the aggregates didn’t have their pleasures, we wouldn’t fall for them—if you focus on the pleasures, all you do is get overwhelmed with passion. And then, in passion, you start creating things that will then all …
- A Noble Warrior’s Path… And as you’re thinking about your breath and evaluating it, that’s the aggregate of fabrication. Meanwhile, your consciousness is aware of all of these things. So you’ve got the five aggregates right here in right concentration, which is your nourishment on the path. Without the well-being and nourishment that come from right concentration, the path gets dry pretty fast. And …
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