Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. Large Perspective, Small Focus
     … So you look at the suffering, try to identify it, and as the Buddha said, it’s just aggregates, which are just activities of the mind—there’s form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness. And it’s not just the aggregates themselves, there’s aggregates plus clinging, the way we cling to these things. What are you clinging to? Is it a particular idea about … 
  3. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … Suffering is clinging to five aggregates. It’s caused by craving. You can put an end to it by putting an end to the craving. And the way you do that is through the noble eightfold path. Those are the four truths, the basic truths that the Buddha teaches. They carry duties—they have their “shoulds.” You should try to comprehend suffering. You should … 
  4. Right View as Tool
     … But then he concludes with something that’s not quite so intuitive, which is that the five clinging-aggregates are suffering. It’s not intuitive, but it’s what makes this a noble truth. In other words, wherever the mind is pained, wherever the mind is weighed down with stress, you turn to look to see: Where is the clinging? It’s something you … 
  5. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … You say, “This, too, is not-self.” After all, your state of concentration is made up of aggregates, the same things that you use to make your other senses of self: You’ve got the form of the body as you sense it through the breath; you’ve got feelings of pleasure; you’ve got the perceptions that you hold in mind about how … 
  6. In Line with the Dhamma
     … As the Buddha said, he taught dispassion for the aggregates because having dispassion for them would be for your long term welfare and happiness. So the purpose of dispassion is happiness. Always keep that in mind. The Buddha is basically saying, “Here it is: There is a way to find true happiness.” You think of the different teachings that were available in his time … 
  7. The Equanimity of a Winner
     … After all, as he said, stress is clinging to the aggregates, and clinging to the aggregates is how we define ourselves. When we uproot that clinging by abandoning our craving, it’s as if we have to uproot our very sense of who we are. It’s going to be painful. But the Buddha gives us the tools so that we can face that … 
  8. There is This
     … This is one of the reasons why we get the mind concentrated because as the Buddha said, once the mind is concentrated, you can see the aggregates as they arise, as they’re originated by conditions. You can see events at the sense spheres. You can analyze your sense of the body into aggregates and properties. When the mind is still in the present … 
  9. Clinging & the End of Clinging
    When the Buddha formulated his first noble truth—the truth of suffering and stress—he didn’t say something useless like, “Life is suffering.” He didn’t say something vague and obvious like, “There is suffering.” He said something more specific, useful, and insightful: “Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates.” As he pointed out elsewhere, the problem isn’t with the aggregates of form … 
  10. The Power of Truth
     … There are ways you can look at the aggregates and say that they’re stressful, and yet the Buddha also admitted that there is pleasure in the aggregates. You can’t say they’re 100% stress. So, the question is then, which truth are you going to focus on? And that’s answered by asking what the result is going to be. What is … 
  11. How to Listen
     … You’ve seen something that’s not composed of any of the aggregates, but there is a consciousness there. So from that point on, you would never identify yourself as being identical with the aggregates, or owning the aggregates, or being in them, or having them be in you. Your doubts about the Buddha are gone. You see that he knew what he was … 
  12. Appreciating Dispassion
     … You realize there’s something that’s not related to any of the aggregates, not related to any of the six senses, and it’s very freeing. As the Buddha said, it’s a deathless happiness because you can see that it’s not fabricated in any way. That experience changes your life in terms of what you see as possible, what you see … 
  13. The Joy of Renunciation
     … You have to remember the Buddha’s statement about the different aggregates: that what we experience in terms of form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness is based on what we’ve fashioned out of the potential for these things. We have certain intentions that make us fashion these aggregates. That applies to feelings of pleasure and pain. The pleasure you’re going to find … 
  14. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … Just with the word “fabrication”—which is the central issue in insight—you’ve got the five aggregates, all of which are said to be fabricated. In particular, you’ve got the fourth aggregate, fabrication itself, which plays a role in shaping all the other aggregates, too. Or you can talk in terms of the three fabrications: bodily fabrication, the in-and-out breath … 
  15. Appropriate Attention
     … But then, he says, the real essence of the suffering is clinging to the five aggregates. Where are they? The aggregates are inside the mind, inside your body right here, right now. And the clinging is happening inside, too. So even though we can be pained by those other things, the real suffering is in the clinging. Now, the Buddha talks about suffering not … 
  16. Meaningful Freedom
     … It, too, is made out of aggregates. These aggregates give you some resistance, but they also open some opportunities. Think of the principle of causality that the Buddha taught. In some cases, the effects arise together with the causes, and they disappear when the causes disappear. In other cases, if the cause comes, the effect can come later. The cause disappears, and the effect … 
  17. Neither Here nor There
     … the five aggregates, each of which you’ve been clinging to, and the clinging is suffering. Think of the questionnaire that the Buddha would give about the five aggregates. Are they constant or inconstant? They’re inconstant. And it’s important that you understand that term as inconstant. It’s not just impermanent, because some impermanent things could be good. An impermanent illness would … 
  18. Skills to Make a Difference
     … If you shoot great distances, you see that what you’re experiencing now in terms of the aggregates is going to apply to whatever aggregates you experienced in the past and will experience in the future. You take that to heart. **When you fire shots in rapid succession, you see where the mind is suffering and where it’s causing itself suffering. In other … 
  19. The Dhamma Wheel
     … In the case of the first truth, suffering is basically boiled down to clinging to the five aggregates. The Buddha never said that life is suffering. That’s one of those fake Buddha quotes. He said something a lot more useful, to pinpoint exactly where the suffering is. It’s not because of unpleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations that we suffer … 
  20. Encouragement
     … But to summarize, what do they have in common? The five clinging-aggregates. This is where the analysis gets impersonal and unfamiliar. And part of the problem is that translation, “aggregates.” There’s got to be a better translation. It’s basically groups of different actions. We’re clinging to certain ways of acting, clinging itself is a kind of action, and that’s … 
  21. Constructing & Deconstructing
     … Where there’s the pain, which part of the experience is the body? Which part is the actual pain, and which part is the perception? If you look at this in terms of the establishings of mindfulness, you’ve got body, feeling, mind, and then mental qualities, in which case the mental qualities here might be the categories of the five aggregates. How are … 
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