Search results for: "Aggregates"

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2. Play AudioRemember This
    … You try to see where the clinging is—which particular aggregate you’re clinging to—and then you learn how to depersonalize these things so that you can get the upper hand. Part of you may resist, thinking, “Well, this is me. These are my feelings. This is me, mine”—whatever. But what’s happened is these things have taken you over. You’re … 
3. Play AudioThe Most Important Thing to Be Doing
    … Suffering is the clinging to the aggregates—things like feelings and perceptions and thought-constructs. We cling to these things, we keep doing them over and over again: That’s what “clinging” means for the mind. We cling to things and then we feed on them, we seem to need them. We go running after a lot of pleasures that contain a lot of … 
4. Play AudioAsalha Puja
    … Then he summarized all kinds of stress as “the five clinging-aggregates.” He didn’t explain what he meant by that; he moved on to the next truth. The cause of stress and suffering is craving—the kind of craving that gives rise to becoming. He listed three kinds: the craving for sensuality, the craving for becoming, and the craving for no becoming. The … 
5. Play AudioTalking Among Your Selves
    … Think in terms of the aggregates. Where are the intentions? Where are the perceptions? What exactly are the feelings right now? Are the feelings the same as the breath? Is your awareness the same thing as the breath? There are times in the meditation when it’s actually helpful to think about the breath and the awareness going together as they spread through the … 
6. Play AudioCross-questioning
    … Remember that suffering is defined as five clinging-aggregates. The Buddha right there is giving you a key. It’s the clinging that you’re going to have to understand. When he’s talking about comprehending suffering, that’s what he means: comprehend the clinging. See where it is, what it is you’re clinging to, and why you want to cling to it … 
7. Play AudioTeachings to Rahula
    … When he talks about what are called the aggregates, there’s feeling—like feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain; perceptions—in other words the labels you apply to things; thought fabrications—the thoughts you put together; and then your consciousness of all these things. These are the terms that the Buddha has you use as you try to figure out what … 
8. Play AudioThe Wheel of Dhamma
    … You choose to stay with an object, your concentration object, and you choose to watch it carefully, because even these concentration objects are composed of those five aggregates. As you feed on them, you’re clinging to them. You’re clinging in a skillful way, but there’s still going to an element of stress there. You want to look for that. You look … 
9. Play AudioStrong-hearted
    … But when the Buddha defines suffering, it’s clinging to the five aggregates. This shows it’s not just ordinary pain. It’s something the mind is doing. We try to understand these things—why? Because we want to put an end to suffering. Why do we want to do that? Because we have goodwill for ourselves and goodwill for all the people around … 
10. Play AudioTwo Guardian Meditations
     … He had found something unconditioned, which didn’t depend on perceptions or thought constructs or any of the aggregates. It was totally independent. He came from there, he came back from the deathless, which is a grand achievement. So there was no reason for him to fear anything that anybody might say about how he was teaching wrongly or hadn’t attained the deathless … 
11. Play AudioLessons for New Monks
     … If you want to put an end to that suffering—the clinging to the aggregates—you’ve got to follow the path. That’s the one way out. So, the Buddha’s basically cutting off your normal ways of extending yourself to prop up your ideas about who you are—the kind of person you are, everything having to do with your self-image … 
12. Play AudioMature Strategies
     … Then he summarizes his definition of suffering with the five clinging aggregates. This is where he starts getting technical, and where he starts attacking another one of our common strategies, which is our sense of self. This is another one of the Buddha’s great insights — that our sense of self is an activity, a strategy for avoiding suffering, for maximizing happiness. We latch … 
13. Play AudioA Sense of Yourself
     … You’re just relaxing into the aggregate of consciousness—and yet that’s something you have to comprehend, to see where you’re clinging to it. It’s not a place to rest. It’s something you have to investigate. Learning how to investigate is when you have to use real mindfulness, which is the ability to keep things in mind, to keep your … 
14. Play AudioUseful Thinking
     … On top of that, the Buddha says that your experience of the five aggregates contains an intentional element. Your experience of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness itself has an intentional element that’s operating right here, right now. That’s what you want to see. Now, because you’re shaping the present moment in this way, you can’t simply sit here and … 
15. Play AudioAdmit Your Stupidity
     … So you ask, how should the fabrications be regarded? How should they be seen with insight? You regard them either in terms of the five aggregates or in terms of the three fabrications: bodily, verbal, and mental. Bodily fabrication is the breath. Verbal fabrication is the way you talk to yourself. The Canon calls it directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to … 
16. Play AudioThe Pursuit of Excellence
     … Of course, the Buddha’s analysis of suffering—the five clinging-aggregates—when you actually think about what it means, goes against the grain. It’s saying that we cling to the things we want to see as ours, want to see as us, because we like them, yet that clinging is suffering. In other words, we suffer from our likes. We have to … 
17. Play AudioThe World of the Noble Truths
     … The truth of suffering—What is suffering? It’s clinging to the aggregates—that’s to be comprehended. We don’t usually comprehend our sufferings in that way. We think, “Why is this pain afflicting me?” “Why is this situation in the world outside afflicting me?” But the Buddha is saying that suffering is the act of clinging to form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, or … 
18. Play AudioDetermination
     … This whole process of fabrication—where we fabricate the aggregates and create a sense of ourselves, create a sense of the world—is always done for the sake of something. And the Buddha’s basically saying the best “for the sake of” would be for the sake of awakening. That does give meaning to your life, and it certainly doesn’t involve doing nothing … 
19. Play AudioTherapy for the Mind
     … What in the mind is causing us to cling to the aggregates? Well, there’s delight. There’s an attitude in the mind that welcomes them in. That’s the origination—and that’s what you’re looking for, because you want to see what in the mind is causing all this. When you can take it apart and attack the problem at the … 
20. Play AudioYour Highest Aspiration
     … We cling to the five aggregates as us or ours. That’s why we suffer. So the trick is to learn how not to cling—in other words, to find out why we crave these things and to put an end to that craving. That requires finding something that’s more solid than these things. So we develop concentration to be able to look … 
21. Play AudioExamine Your Happiness
     … We often hear the Buddha talking about how the five aggregates are stressful because they’re inconstant, and as a result we’re taught not to identify with them, but there are levels of the teaching where the Buddha says you don’t focus on that yet. You focus instead on the fact that some aspects of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness … 
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