Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. Issues of Control
     … In the same way, as we deal with our aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness—there are unskillful ways of trying to control them and there are skillful ways. You can actually turn them into the path. All five aggregates, for instance, are involved in concentration. Form, of course, would be the breath. Think of the breath going through the whole body. Feeling … 
  3. Self-Bypassing
     … As the Buddha said, there’s still some conceit left—the idea that “I am” is still lingering around the aggregates. But the sense that “I am this” with regard to any of the aggregates—either, “I am one of the aggregates; or “I’m a combination of the aggregates”; “the aggregates belong to me”; “I am in the aggregates”; or “The aggregates are … 
  4. Not-self in Context
     … There was one night when the Buddha was talking about how the five aggregates are not-self. One of the monks sitting in the assembly said to himself, “If the five aggregates are not-self, then what self is going to be affected by the actions of what is done by not-self?” In other words, he saw not-self as a way of … 
  5. Twigs & Branches
     … So you look at every factor of the path and see that there’s going to be some combination of aggregates. The point here is that we don’t just let go of the aggregates and throw them away. We try to figure out which ones are useful right now, which ones we can lash together to make a path, and which ones are … 
  6. Cook Your Mind
     … As you do that, you begin to see how the aggregates function in the mind. The aggregates aren’t things. It’d be good if there were a better translation in English—the word khandha in Pali means “heap” or “mass,” but even those translations don’t convey the point that the aggregates are activities. As you’re holding to the precepts, as you … 
  7. The Uses of Pleasure & Pain
     … What you’re doing is taking one of the aggregates — the aggregate of feeling — and instead of latching onto it or pushing it away, you learn how to use it as a tool. When pain and stress and suffering come, you want to comprehend them. Comprehending pain and stress teaches you a lot about the mind. The Buddha never said that life is suffering … 
  8. Discernment
     … It’s a different aggregate. This is where the aggregates and the elements can get together, and this is where we can distinguish among them. But one way of distinguishing between feeling and form is just that: try to see which sensations in that sensation of pain are simply the aggregates of form, the properties of the body, and which are the actual feeling … 
  9. To Comprehend Suffering
     … the five clinging-aggregates. The first word that strikes you is aggregates: These are the activities of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. But theimportant word there is the clinging, because there are places where he says that the aggregates on their own are experienced by arahants. Arahants have form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, but they don’t suffer, because they don … 
  10. Comprehending Suffering
     … The Buddha said suffering is the five clinging-aggregates, which means not that the aggregates are clinging, but the act of clinging to the aggregates. So when there’s pain, that’s a feeling, but that’s not necessarily the suffering that’s going on in the mind. The suffering the Buddha’s talking about is the suffering that comes when you cling. And … 
  11. The Hedgefox
     … So even though you’re focused mainly on feelings here, you find that they connect up with the other aggregates. In the beginning, you don’t have to think about the other aggregates that much, just get to know your feelings. But then you begin to see, “Oh, it’s because I had these perceptions around that pleasure that it causes problems.” Or the … 
  12. Four Noble Truths to One
     … the five clinging-aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. The aggregates don’t cling. We cling to them, and the clinging is the actual suffering. Once we learn how to be with these things, to engage in these things without clinging, then there’s no suffering around them. So you have to comprehend: How is that clinging suffering? We have to … 
  13. Antidotes for Clinging
    Antidotes for Clinging October 7, 2007 There are some places in the Pali Canon where the Buddha says that the five aggregates are stressful, and others where he says the five clinging-aggregates are stressful. It’s important to notice here that he’s talking about two different kinds of stress. The sense in which the five aggregates are stressful is related to stress … 
  14. The Questions of Suffering
     … Five clinging-aggregates: That’s the essence of suffering. That doesn’t sound so familiar. If you go in the street and ask people, “How are your aggregates?” they’ll think, “Are you talking about the gravel in my driveway?” It’s not a term people are familiar with. But it’s something we’re doing all the time. The Buddha defines each aggregate … 
  15. To Discern Suffering
     … So you’ve got the five aggregates right here. In fact, this is the one part of the path that the Buddha specifically analyzes in terms of aggregates. You could, if you wanted to, think about the other factors of the path in terms of aggregates as well. While you’re practicing, you have to hold on to these things. You don’t just … 
  16. Death Is All Around
     … So when you value these aggregates, learn how to value them in the right way. They are useful tools. They can be used to achieve the deathless. After all, with the deathless being unconditioned and unfabricated, you can’t use the deathless to find the deathless. You’ve got to use these fabricated aggregates, these makeshift things. But that’s the beauty of the … 
  17. The Dhamma Eye
     … And the fact that there is an awareness that has nothing to do with the aggregates: That’s why you would never give your allegiance to any idea that your self is in any way related to the aggregates—because there are no aggregates in that experience, and yet there is an awareness. You don’t take that awareness as your self, although the … 
  18. To Know the Noble Truths
     … That’s when you end your passion, aversion, and delusion around those aggregates, because you see that your ideas of the world and yourself really are made up of these aggregates, and the aggregates are not really all that reliable. If you hold on to them, there’s a lot of suffering. That’s when you lose any interest in craving for more, because … 
  19. Conceit Defanged
     … The longer explanation is that with self-identity view, you can create a sense of self around any of the five aggregates, and there are four ways you can do it with each of the aggregates. Take form, for example: your body. You can either identify yourself as being the body, or you can identify yourself as being the owner of the body. You … 
  20. The Power of Your Actions
     … as clinging-aggregates, clinging to these activities of creating the form of your body, creating feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, acts of consciousness. We cling to these in four ways: We create sensual fantasies about the sensual pleasures we would like—these are created out of aggregates. We have our views about the world—these are created out of aggregates. We have our ideas, habits … 
  21. The Five Aggregates
     … And so you analyze the concentration into aggregates again. You work at perceiving these things as not-self, stressful, not-self, changing all the time. These are perceptions, of course, are aggregates, too. And how do you develop these perceptions? The Buddha gives an example. He says to start asking questions about them. “This form that I’m so attached to: Is it constant … 
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