Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- Fear of Mistakes… Look at the Buddha’s analysis of how we construct the present moment with all the different aggregates. He says there’s a potential coming in from the past, and then, with the process of fabrication, we fabricate those potentials into an actual experience of aggregates. What are the processes of fabrication? One: the way you breathe. Two: the way you talk to yourself …
- The Strength of Conviction… You can use these basic skills of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, along with the lessons you learn from them about perception, about feeling, fabrication—all the aggregates, all the components of your mind: It’s through learning these lessons that you can find your way out. This was one of the Buddha’s great insights: that these aggregates we carry around can be fashioned …
- Gather ’Round the Breath… Ajaan Lee talks about two types of aggregates. There are those that basically head outside, interested in forms outside, feelings and perceptions of those forms, thoughts about those forms, and your awareness of those forms. Then there are those that hover around your mind. So focus on the second kind. There are feelings right here hovering around your sense of awareness, perceptions that hold …
- Meaning & Importance… Khemaka** **said, that hovers around the aggregates, lingers around the aggregates. But the fact that you have seen the deathless helps you to realize that this lingering sense of “I am” is something you actually want to let go of in the future. You won’t be willing to let go of this until you’ve seen that there really is something better. That …
- Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters… Everybody hears about things being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, so they want to let go of the five aggregates right away. But we need to hold on to the five aggregates in order to develop the path. The things that are stressful, you learn how to make easeful. The things that are inconstant, you learn how to make constant. The things that are …
- A Good Foundation… There’s a theme in the teachings of the forest masters that when working with the five aggregates, you don’t have to work on all five at once. You focus on one and then, as you focus on that one, you begin to realize that the insights you gain there will have implications for the others. We see this again and again and …
- Just One Person… After all, you’re doing your aggregates right now. You’re doing your feelings. You’re doing your perceptions, your thought fabrications, your consciousness. You’ve even been doing your sense of the body. This is why the Buddha said that all of the aggregates depend on the fourth one—fabrications. That’s what takes the potentials coming from your past actions and turns …
- The Brightness of Life… You can look at fabrication in terms of the five aggregates. You can look at it in terms of the three kinds of fabrication that are listed in dependent co-arising. This kind of knowledge helps get you out of that state. You see the state of becoming not in terms of narratives about who you are in the world that you’re confronting …
- Pay Attention to Some Things… As the Buddha says, it’s clinging-aggregates. We’re clinging to things. When we hear about the aggregates, we tend to zone out because they sound kind of abstract, but he’s basically talking about things you do with your mind, activities of the mind. You feel feelings, you perceive perceptions, you put thoughts together, you’re conscious of things, and all this …
- The Core of Experience… And the things you’ve got—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness, what the Buddha calls the five aggregates—are things that if you simply cling to them, are going to cause problems, going to cause suffering. In fact, the clinging will be suffering. But you can turn them into a path, which switches their role as part of the first noble truth, about …
- Training for Dispassion… The ending of desire and passion for what? Sariputta provided the answer: “Desire and passion for the five aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness.” Then the next question those people would ask would be, “Why? For what purpose?” The answer is that if you haven’t abandoned desire and passion for those things, then when they change, there’s going to be sorrow and …
- Open Are the Doors to the Deathless… And ask yourself, “How do I cling to these things? What’s the passion? What’s the desire I have around these things? Why is that?” Part of the mind will say, “The only way you’re going to find happiness in life is by holding on to these activities of the mind”—these aggregates that the Buddha talked about. The word “aggregate” is …
- A Goal Without Limits… The consciousness of the six senses or the five aggregates covers all consciousness in space and time—near, far, past, present, future—but this is something outside of space and time. That’s why it’s so hard to talk about. Our language can cover things within space and time, but things outside of space and time really can’t be described. As for …
- Murderers, Vipers, & Floods, Oh My!… The five murderers, of course, are the five aggregates; the sixth one is passion and delight, ready to cut off your head. It’s something intimate, but it’s ready to cut off your head at any time. The empty village stands for the sense organs. The bandits attacking the village stand for the objects of the senses. The raft stands for the noble …
- Noble Priorities… Suffering is clinging to the aggregates. The body may grow ill, old, die, but that’s not the essence of the suffering. As Ajaan Lee says, those things are the shadows of suffering. The real suffering is clinging to the aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness. The clinging is the big problem. That’s the suffering. What causes it? The three kinds of …
- Oneness is a Water Snake… You begin to ferret out what the Buddha called aggregates. He actually called them khandhas; we call them aggregates. But these activities of the mind, you begin to see, are distinct things. Ajaan Lee’s image is useful here. He talks about heating a rock. And when it gets to one temperature, one metal will flow out. It gets to another temperature, another metal …
- Use Your Imagination… For instance, what the Buddha had to say about how suffering comes from clinging to any one of the five aggregates: Which aggregate are you clinging to? Which form of clinging are you holding on to? His terms of analysis are meant to be food for your imagination, to open up possibilities. Maybe you think of the pain as a physical thing, but remember …
- For Your Future’s Sake… With the five aggregates, he said, if they were exclusively stressful, exclusively painful, we wouldn’t be attached to them. So, they do offer their pleasures. But then, if we just stay with their pleasures, we become attached. Some people say, “Well, you can be wisely attached. Hold on for the duration of however long something is going to be there, knowing that it …
- Reading & Meditating… Ajaan MahaBoowa points out that one of the ways of getting a pain to separate out from your sense of the body is to see that the pain is a feeling aggregate, whereas the body, of course, is a different aggregate, made up of earth, water, wind, and fire. Those are two very separate things—the feeling of the pain, and the sensations of …
- Noble Right Concentration… Stress is defined as the five clinging-aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. Where are you going to see those aggregates? You see them in the concentration. The breath is part of form. The feeling of pleasure that arises as you stay focused: That’s feeling. The mental image you have of the breath: That’s perception. Directed thought and evaluation as you try …
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