Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. The Limits of Control
     … You’re taking those five aggregates and basically pushing against what they call the three characteristics. Push against aniccam:See how constant you can make your mind. Push against dukkham: See what sense of pleasure you can create out of your sense of the body, out of your present awareness. Push against anatta: How much can you control the mind to stay with the … 
  3. Attention to Your Potentials
     … The radical part is when he says that it all comes down to the five clinging-aggregates. We read elsewhere that the aggregates themselves are not the problem. Arahants have aggregates, but they don’t suffer. It’s the clinging. And the idea that the clinging is the suffering: That takes a lot of getting used to. It’s also challenging us. The things … 
  4. Overcoming Complacency
     … Think of the five khandhas or aggregates: The Buddha says that the khandha of fabrication or sankhara, is the one that molds the others from potentials into an actual experience of the khandhas. From the potential for form, we create forms. From the potential for feeling, we create feelings. And so on with perception and consciousness as well. An act of creating that’s … 
  5. Putting out the Flame
     … The same goes for all the other aggregates. They’re basically without essence, without substance. And you’re going to create something solid out of these things that have no essence or substance? Mirages, banana trees, magic shows? It’s impossible. As for the world, when you have this frame of reference: It’s just body, feelings, mind, mental qualities in and of themselves … 
  6. Full Attention
     … We forget the Buddha’s analysis of feelings, which would place feelings and emotions, in our sense of those terms, under the aggregate of fabrications, rather than under the aggregate of vedana, which is a matter of the feeling tone: pleasant, painful, or neither pleasant nor painful. We forget how fabricated our feelings are, how conditioned they are, and the fact that just because … 
  7. Patience
     … As the Buddha says, we engage in different activities that he classes under the aggregates, and each of those aggregates — whether it’s form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, or consciousness — is something we fabricate for the sake of something else. In other words, we have means and we have goals. The goals are either directly or indirectly aimed at happiness. This is how we … 
  8. Analyzing Anger
     … This is why we have the analysis in terms of the aggregates or the sense media—all the things that happen in the course of sensory perception: Where in the process did the narrative begin? Take it apart. When you take it apart, you find that there’s not that much there. There are just lots of little bits and pieces. You were the … 
  9. The Reality of Emotions
     … After all, you know what the Buddha says about trying to find an authentic self in form and feeling and all the other aggregates: You’re not going to find it. But you can find things you can use. You take those aggregates and turn them into the path. As you do this, your renunciate grief leads you to renunciate joy. You’ve got … 
  10. Self-hatred
     … As when the Buddha talked about the five aggregates: He said there are people who manage to let go of form, feeling, perceptions, and thought constructs, but they don’t let go of consciousness, so they’re still holding on. It was when he pointed out to the five monks all five of these aggregates that they were able to let all five of … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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