Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. Action & Result
     … But after all, how is suffering defined? It’s the clinging-aggregates. You cling to things because you have passion for them, yet suffering comes out at the other end. As Ajaan Chah says, we’re like the person who doesn’t think that the tail of the snake is connected to the mouth of the snake. The tail seems safe, doesn’t have … 
  3. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … There’s another case where a monk tries to argue that if all the aggregates are not-self, then what self is there to do the actions? And what self would there be to receive the results of actions? That line of thinking is a license for irresponsible behavior. There’s nobody there to be responsible, nobody to be affected by the actions, so … 
  4. What Is One
     … In other places, he identifies the food for consciousness with the other aggregates: form, feeling, perception, and fabrications. It’s only arahants who don’t need to feed on these kinds of food. They feed physically, but their minds no longer need to feed, because they don’t identify themselves as beings. To be a being, you have to be clinging to something, attached … 
  5. Taking Apart Suffering
     … This is what the teachings on the aggregates are all about, as well as the teachings on the establishing of mindfulness. The Buddha wants you to take things apart, to see that this big mass of suffering you’ve got here is actually composed of little tiny things, little tiny actions, little tiny decisions in the mind or little tiny physical sensations that you … 
  6. Things as They Function
     … You hold on to the raft that you’ve made out of what? Out of the twigs and branches on this side of the river, the side that’s dangerous—in other words, the linging-aggregates. You hold on to the raft as you go across the river, then you let it go. Then you’re free to go as you like. The Buddha … 
  7. Lean into the Present
     … The Buddha talks about the aggregates as all being shaped by fabrication. We fabricate the sense of the body for the sake of having a sense of the body because we want to do something with a body. We fabricate feelings because we want feelings. The same with perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness: We do this for the sake of something, but all too often … 
  8. Pain & Distraction
     … This is why, when the Buddha talks about suffering, he talks about aggregates. Cut the problem of suffering down into little bits and pieces, and you find it’s a lot more manageable. Learn how to destroy the world that you create around the pain: The pain is in this part of the body and it has this shape and it’s doing this … 
  9. Feeding on Ardency
     … As the Buddha said, all our experience of the aggregates is based on intention. It’s because of intention that you take the raw material for an experience of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, or consciousness, and turn it into an actual experience of those things. So there are many layers of feeding that go on in our experience, and because we can’t simply … 
  10. Why Mindfulness
     … They’re going to ask you, ‘What does your teacher teach?’ How are you going to answer them?” So the monks ask Sariputta, well, what would be a good answer? Sariputta’s answer is interesting: “Our teacher teaches the abandoning of passion and desire.” And the follow-up question is: “Passion and desire for what?” For the five aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and … 
  11. Antidotes to Craving
     … You often hear about clinging to the five aggregates. But here he said you’re clinging to craving—the craving that led to the clinging to begin with. You turn around and hold on to that. That’s what pulls you along. So you look at the kind of cravings you might have at that point, and three big ones stand out—the ones … 
  12. Inner Authorities
     … And how did he finally know who was right and who was wrong? He found a path that led to something that was deathless, a knowledge that didn’t involve the aggregates at all. We sometimes think that as you listen to Buddhist teachings, you finally get to a point where they make sense, it really hits home that what he says is true … 
  13. Tapping into the Breath
     … all the five aggregates. And if you want to know what’s not-self, what’s beyond your control, you try to exert as much control as you can in this area. You’ll find there will be limits. It’s when you want to run into the limits that you say, “Oh, this is really not-self.” But you don’t give up … 
  14. Make the Most of Right Now
     … Even though the path is made out of intentions, thoughts, words, deeds, still it’s a set of intentions, a set of aggregates, that provides the way out. You have to depend on this body, with all its illnesses and its aging, as a tool for practice. Either you take it as an object of contemplation, or you focus on the breath: contemplating the … 
  15. Name & Form
     … In some cases, the word “name” covers just the other four aggregates: feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness. In other cases, mental fabrication gets divided up into attention, intention, and mental contact. This gets us into dependent co-arising. All this is dependent on consciousness, consciousness is dependent on this, and the two of them together are dependent on fabrication, which is another word … 
  16. Samvega
     … You need to have your skills ready so that you’re not taken in by pain, you’re not taken in by any of the aggregates. When you have that sense of urgency, that’s when your practice really takes off.
  17. Visakha Puja – Shaking the Earth
     … the ending of passion for what? The ending of passion for the five aggregates. Why? What advantage is there in dispassion for these things? Because if you cling to these things, then when they change, there’s going to be sorrow. But if you have no passion for them, then no matter how much they change, there will be no sorrow. Then he went … 
  18. How to Read the Dhamma
     … Or there’s Sister Sona, who said that when she went to see another nun and asked for the Dhamma, the nun taught her aggregates, sense doors, elements or properties. So there are some Dhamma teachings there. Still, there’s not much in detail. The same with Ajaan Mun’s life. At the very end of his life, he mentioned that his main teachings … 
  19. Calming the Breath
     … Even our basic experience of the five aggregates—our experience of the form (the body), feelings of pleasure and pain, our perceptions, our thought constructs, even our sensory consciousness: As the Buddha says, we *fabricate *these things for certain purposes. The best way to test this is by watching the breath. This is why this process of (1) being sensitive to the whole body … 
  20. Standing Where the Buddha Stood
     … As the Buddha said, sometimes looking at things in terms of the five aggregates is what provides the important insights; sometimes you have to look in terms of the six sense spheres, sometimes in terms of dependent co-arising, sometimes in terms of the six elements. You never know beforehand which kind of analysis is going to be right for you. You have to … 
  21. Bringing Right resolve
     … It’s not mediated by the senses or the aggregates or any of those activities. At that point, you can let go of the path. You don’t need right view or the other factors anymore, because you’ve got the happiness that more than satisfies the desire for happiness that you’ve nurtured all along.
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