Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. No Who or Where
     … There’s a point where he’s talking to the monks, saying, “Let go of what is not yours”—he talks about the five aggregates—he says, “It will be for your long-term welfare and happiness.” So he’s going back and forth on the line there. On the one side there’s a “you” who’s going to benefit, and the other … 
  3. Dispassion Is Freedom
     … The duty with regard to the first truth, suffering, which is clinging to the aggregates: You have to comprehend that, and part of comprehension is getting past passion for them. The duty with regard to craving—the cause of suffering—is that you’ve got to abandon it. How do you abandon it? By developing dispassion. The third noble truth itself is dispassion. It … 
  4. True, Beneficial, Timely
     … twigs and branches here in these aggregates you’ve got. Your habit of talking to yourself is a pile of twigs and branches, and you can make that into a raft if you’re skillful. What the Buddha’s teaching us is that we can master these habits as skills, so that instead of creating suffering for ourselves, we can use them to put … 
  5. Evaluating the Practice
     … He wants you to step back from your clinging to the aggregates so that you can see, “What is this all about?” The world teaches us to go with our craving. “Obey your thirst,” they tell you. Then, of course, they try to take advantage of your thirsts in that way. But the Buddha’s saying, “Step back. This person you think you are … 
  6. Balancing Effort & Patience
     … There’s a sutta where the Buddha says even in just your basic experience of form, feeling, perception, and the rest of the aggregates, there’s an intentional element in all of them. So you’ve got to learn how to make those intentions skillful. You can do that only by watching what’s going on, and experimenting with the way your mind is … 
  7. Assumptions
     … As Ajaan Lee once said, “A wise person can get good use out of anything.” We’re told that the aggregates, if you cling to them, are the essence of what’s stressful, the essence of suffering. So what the Buddha has you do is take these things that are the building blocks for suffering and put them together in a new way. Which … 
  8. Not-self in Context
     … In that discourse, the Buddha gives two arguments for why the aggregates should be seen as not-self. One is that you can’t really control them: You can’t tell them not to grow old, you can’t tell them not to get sick, you can’t tell them not to die. The second argument is, if these things are inconstant and stressful … 
  9. Feeding on the Breath
     … And remember that this process of fabrication is very closely related to the process of feeding on all the aggregates from which we make our sense of self. They are parallel in the process of feeding physically. Form would be the form of the body and also the form of the food we want for the body. Feeling would be the feeling of hunger … 
  10. Take Care of Your Tools
     … Because the things you need to understand—the five aggregates, the processes of fabrication—are all happening right here. It’s just a matter of getting more sensitive to them right here. And how are you going to do that? By taking very good care of your concentration right here. If you look after your tools, your tools will look after you.
  11. Your Main Foundation
     … You have hands-on experience with these different frames of reference, or the different aggregates. This means that concentration is not something just to step on and then immediately jump off and go someplace else in search of insight. You want to stay here. This is your foundation. Everything else will have to stand on this foundation. So don’t let yourself do a … 
  12. Shoulds & Desires
     … But then he boils it down to the five clinging-aggregates. The important word there is the “clinging.” The Pali term for clinging, upadana, can also mean “to feed.” This is where things get counterintuitive, because for most of us, our relationship to the world is that we want to feed off it. We like to take in not only physical food, but also … 
  13. When This Is, That Is
     … In other words, you take all the aggregates, which normally you lug around as your sense of self, and you turn them into a path—by the way you use them, by the way you shape them. It’s up to you. That’s the power you have. So as we meditate, we’re learning how to get a sense of our powers and … 
  14. Merit: Goodness of the Heart
     … We’re engaging in what the Buddha calls five aggregates: the form of your body as you feel it from within; your feelings; your perceptions; your fabrications, the way you put thoughts together; and your consciousness. All of these things are activities. Even the way you keep reaffirming to yourself where your body is right now: That’s an activity, your sense of form … 
  15. The Path is Fabricated
     … With right mindfulness and right concentration, we’re developing what’s called the concentration aggregate of the path as we abandon the hindrances. All of these activities are a kind of fabrication. The Buddha once made a distinction, saying that the highest Dhamma in terms of fabricated or unfabricated, taking both sides into consideration, is dispassion. The mind finally has a sense of disenchantment … 
  16. Universal Truths
     … It’s good to keep in mind, though, that there comes a point where you have to let go of even concepts of things like the five aggregates and the duties of the four truths. There’s just stress arising and passing away, something you just comprehend and develop dispassion for. And because there are these different stages in the path, you have to … 
  17. Disenchantment
     … After all, what else are you going to work with? How would you create a path unless you took those aggregates that you were using for one purpose and use them for another? Meditation is a different way of dressing up the present moment using form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness as tools. You dress them in a different way. But in the process … 
  18. Pulling Out of the Narratives
     … This is why the Buddha has you analyze things in terms of the aggregates, sense media, and properties. Break things down into small units and see what other things can be created out of those units. A lot of the discernment lies right there—in particular, the kind of discernment that leads to release. Release is going to be something unexpected. It’s outside … 
  19. Mindworms
     … This is where Ajaan Suwat’s distinction between the not-self teaching with regard to the aggregates and the self teaching with regard to karma is useful. The mindworm is the result of old actions. Once an action has been done, the results are beyond your control. You can’t go into the world and undo your past actions. So, you have to tell … 
  20. Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?
     … The Buddha’s analysis of suffering itself is that we cling to the aggregates, and the word for “clinging” there can also mean that we feed on them. And the reason we feed on them is because they themselves are activities that are involved with feeding, too. Take physical feeding, for instance. You have form in the form of the body you’re trying … 
  21. The Buddha’s Letter
     … It comes because there’s a bridge—the bridge of craving and clinging, clinging to the five aggregates, which are activities of the mind. We cling out of our desire for sensual pleasure. We cling out of our views of what the world is all about. We cling out of our old habits and practices. And we cling to our sense of who we … 
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