Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. Be Bigger Than Your Pains
     … As the Buddha said, if there weren’t some pleasure in the aggregates, we wouldn’t fall for them. Remember the aggregates are not things; they’re activities. They’re certain ways of thinking, ways of feeling. And even in the painful ones, there’s a certain amount of pleasure. That’s why we indulge in them. So you’ve got to look for … 
  3. Timeless Practice
     … The Buddha equates that kind of suffering or stress with clinging, clinging to the five aggregates. There’s something counterintuitive about that. We tend to like the things we cling to, and here’s the Buddha telling us we’re suffering because of those things. The word for clinging in Pali, upadana, can also mean to feed. This gets even more counterintuitive. For most … 
  4. The Dhamma Wheel
     … In this case, it’s clinging to what the Buddha calls the five aggregates. Of course, he didn’t use the word “aggregate.” The Pali term, khandha, means “heap” or “pile.” Five categories of activities: Your sense of the form of the body as you feel it from within. Feelings of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions, where you put labels on things … 
  5. Three Stages in the Practice
     … Ultimately, you learn how to develop dispassion for your concentration by seeing that it, too, is made out of the aggregates, and those aggregates are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. There are subtle vacillations in the pleasure, subtle vacillations in the sense of clarity of your concentration, and you realize that those variations show the element of inconstancy and stress. Then you ask yourself … 
  6. Lessons from Jhana
     … And you’re letting go of different aggregates. You’re letting go of fabrication, stage by stage. You’re letting go of certain perceptions. You’re letting go of certain feelings. And you’re letting go of the sense of the body. You can even work up to where you let go of your sense of the oneness of your consciousness. That happens when … 
  7. Wake Up from Addiction
     … You could look at them as aggregates: sensations in the body, feelings of pleasure or pain, perceptions, i.e., the images you hold in mind. Take perceptions, for example: What are the images you hold in mind—not so much about the object you’re lusting for, but about lust itself? Why does it seem attractive? What’s the glamour? What’s the appeal … 
  8. Conviction & Confidence
     … They don’t need to wash away any defilements anymore, but they practice contemplating the aggregates, they practice establishing mindfulness, they practice concentration as a pleasant abiding. It’s a good thing to be doing. So even though they don’t need these activities, they’ve figured out that these are the best things you can do with your life afterwards, after you’ve … 
  9. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … clinging to the five aggregates. Now, the aggregates here are activities of the mind. There’s the body, and even the body, he says, is an activity: Form he says, deforms. Feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, acts of consciousness—all these are activities that we do. And because we try to feed off these things—that’s what the clinging is—we suffer. In fact … 
  10. Persistence
     … Ask yourself, “This mind state that’s coming up, where does it fall in the four noble truths? Is it an instance of suffering or is it an instance of the cause of suffering?” Suffering has to be comprehended to see that it’s in the clinging to the aggregates. And what is clinging? The Buddha defines it as passion and desire for the … 
  11. Expand Your Expectations
     … You’ve got all the different aggregates; you’ve got all the different types of fabrication. Everything’s happening right here. It’s just a matter of putting things together just right. Maybe part of the problem is that you narrow yourself down to a little tiny corner and keep yourself cornered there. So it’s important that you open things up a little … 
  12. Feed the Hungry Mind
     … Instead of clinging to the aggregates just for their own sake, for the sensuality you can get out of them or the states of becoming you can create, you turn them into a path. You feed on them as you turn them into a path. But then the path takes you to a place where you’re no longer hungry. You no longer need … 
  13. Feeding the Mind
     … Four is the four noble truths, five is the five clinging-aggregates, and so on up through ten. The most interesting question, though, is, “What’s one?” Some teachers might answer that there’s the oneness of the world, or the oneness of the underlying principle of all things. But the Buddha’s answer was something totally different. “What’s one” is “All living … 
  14. A Pure Happiness
     … He starts with the obvious forms of suffering—birth, aging, illness and death, not getting what you want, having to be with things you don’t like, being separated from the things you do like—and then he finally boils them all down to the five aggregates of clinging or the five clinging-aggregates. What are they? There’s form, which is how you … 
  15. The World Offers No Shelter
     … Ajaan Suwat used to comment on how the Buddha would talk about how the aggregates are not-self, the sense media are not-self, not-self, not-self. But then the Buddha would turn around and say, “We are the owners of our actions.” In Thai, the translation is basically both that we’re the doers of our actions and the owners, at the … 
  16. Making an Effort
     … The basic building blocks of our experience, the five aggregates, require fabrication. Even before we sense things, there’s an element of fabrication going on in the mind. If the mind weren’t active, if it weren’t putting effort into this, it wouldn’t be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch anything at all. Then there’s all the effort that … 
  17. The Need for Right View
     … He gives you a pragmatic definition, the five clinging aggregates, which means that you’ve got to look for the clinging. The way you’re feeding on something entails stress. You’re trying to figure out what is it you’re feeding on, and why you want to feed on it. Keep looking at that until you get a sense of dispassion, a sense … 
  18. Suffering is an Addiction
    The Buddha defines suffering as clinging to the aggregates, which makes it sound like we’re holding on to things, but we’re actually holding on to actions—in other words, certain ways of doing things, certain ways of thinking that we just keep repeating over and over again even though they cause suffering. It’s like an addiction. You hang on in spite … 
  19. Swept Downstream
     … The Buddha lists five kinds of grass corresponding to the five aggregates. They all get pulled out as you try to grab on to them, as the flood washes you downstream. So where is your island? The Buddha says you try to establish your mindfulness—ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world—so that you can get … 
  20. Discernment in Concentration
     … For example, the five aggregates: You’ve got the breath, which is form. You’ve got the pleasure that comes with being with the breath: That’s feeling. There’s the perception that holds you with the breath, the image of the breath that you have in mind that helps you stay with the breath: That’s perception. You’re thinking about the breath … 
  21. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … As the Buddha said, suffering comes from clinging to the five aggregates. And what is our identity made out of? Out of the clinging to those same five aggregates. We identify with our suffering. So of course it’s going to be hard to let go as long as we say, “This is me” and “This is mine.” This is why you have to … 
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