Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- Inner Strength, Inner Wealth… All the concepts that we tend to think about as being very esoteric Buddhist ideas—the teachings on the aggregates, the teachings on emptiness, the teachings on not-self—are actually all very pragmatic. The aggregates, for instance: A good way to look at your mind is to try to think about the various activities of the mind that are involved in the way …
- Controlling… As for name, it’s basically the five aggregates, or the four aggregates aside from consciousness, with fabrication divided up into contact—contact among various things going in the mind—attention, and intention. These are all things you can shape right here in the present moment as you’re meditating. What are you paying attention to? How are you are paying attention? As the …
- What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now… This is what the five aggregates, the discussion of the six sense spheres, the six properties, dependent co-arising—all these teachings—are meant to alert you to: the fact that there are these various things going on here in the present moment, things you often just accept as a given. But as you get the mind more and more quiet, you begin to …
- The Brahmavihāras Aren’t Enough… You have to contemplate the aggregates that make up your sense of self and understand them in line with the four noble truths, because it is possible to hold build a self-identity even around equanimity. As the Buddha said, it’s one of the highest objects of clinging, but it’s still clinging. There’s another passage where the Buddha talks about a …
- The Buddha Aimed High… The Buddha talks about people trusting their aggregates, the aggregates they cling to. The image he gives is of someone who’s planning to kill you. They work their way into your confidence and then, when they find you in a likely place, they stab you. Well, the same image applies to your craving. So what do you do? You can’t just say …
- Not-self… And what is suffering and stress? It’s clinging to the five clinging-aggregates, or more basically the clinging. The aggregates themselves are not the problem. The problem is in the clinging. We want to comprehend how our clinging is suffering and stress. And it’s hard because we clinging because we think that what we’re clinging to is going to lead to …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… In both cases, you’re learning how to look at the role of perception in your mind, along with the role of feeling and fabrication, which are the central aggregates in any attempt to free the mind from the aggregates. That makes you more and more sensitive to what the mind is doing to deceive and create unnecessary suffering for itself. As for which …
- Taking Stock… Realize that all of these aggregates play a part in the path. You’re sitting here focusing on the breath: That’s form. You breathe in ways that give rise to a sense of ease, fullness, pleasure, refreshment: That’s feeling. You hold the perception of breath energy in mind and look for the sensations that correspond to that. You evaluate how things are …
- Learning by Doing… All the different forms of fabrication, all the different aggregates: They’re right here. You’ve got the form of the body, you’ve got the feelings of pleasure or pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Hopefully you can work with the breath so that you can give rise to a greater sense of pleasure. Then there are the perceptions that hold you here …
- Owning Your Actions… that the aggregates are not you. But then the passage on karma: We’re the owners of our actions. That’s something we’re responsible for: what we choose to do. And it’s good to make a distinction. A lot of things happen to us, and we have to write that off as past karma. But we don’t want to focus on …
- Issues of Control… Even though the Buddha says that, in ultimate terms, the five aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness do not lie under your total control, still you do control them to some extent. If it weren’t for that “some extent,” you wouldn’t fall for them. The question always is, with your sense of self: Is it worth identifying with them …
- The River Gauge… You’re putting it together with your thoughts, your words, your deeds, all the five aggregates we chanted about just now. Your concentration is going to require form—the form of your body, the breath. It’s going to require feeling. You have to develop feelings that they call feelings not-of-the-flesh, pleasure not-of-the-flesh. Part of the motivation though …
- Goodwill as Right View… You’re dealing with five aggregates, and when you have another person, it’s like five more, although it’s more like multiplying than adding. It feels like you’ve got twenty five aggregates when there are just two people. Then it goes up from there. We’d like good rules of thumb that would apply in all cases to give us some idea …
- Appropriate Attention… You know that in those two things—the craving or the passion and desire on the one hand, and these aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness on the other—the craving is to be abandoned, while you have to comprehend those aggregates that you’re clinging to. When you think in these ways, that’s called appropriate attention. So, as you go …
- Safety in Awareness… As you focus on the different aggregates and as you began to see past them, he said, then you turn on this knowing awareness in the mind. He said that you decide that you can’t trust it anymore. And this was at a point when I was just beginning to learn how to trust it! That teaching came at the wrong time for …
- A Rite of Passage… Suffering is clinging-aggregates—and the clinging is the real problem. The aggregates on their own are not that much of a problem. But we cling to these things. A thought comes in and we just go for it, take it on. A feeling comes in, an emotion comes in—something comes in, and we just take it on without really thinking. So you …
- Training Wheels… You’ve got the aggregates, which are neutral, but then they become part of suffering when they become clinging-aggregates. You’ve got the sense media, which are neutral, too, but they become the topic for suffering when you start developing fetters around what you see and hear and smell and taste; or simply fetters around the fact that you like having these senses …
- Timeless Dhamma… And that’s the solution to the problem, because this happiness lies beyond the aggregates of the body, aggregates in the mind, lies beyond all conditions entirely, so it’s not in any place where it can be touched by aging, illness, or death. This is why the Buddha’s teachings have lasted all these years. Even though he often talked about the inconstancy …
- Together but Separate… You have to realize that your sense of self can be composed of any combination of the aggregates. You can latch on to a feeling. You can latch on to a perception. You can latch on to a thought construct, or just latch on simply to awareness—or any combination of these. And even within a particular perception, it’s not always the same …
- Learning from Labor… You want to get so good at it that you no longer feel any desire or passion for any kind of aggregates at all. But notice: The Buddha said it’s not that you’re going to abandon the aggregates; you abandon the desire and passion. The only way you’re going to do that is to develop a sense of enough. And the …
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