Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. The Second Noble Truth
     … The grasses here stand for the aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, mental fabrications, and consciousness at the senses. We try to grab onto these things, to pull ourselves to safety, to find some place to rest, because as the Buddha said, it’s only when there’s peace, when there’s a sense of resting, that the mind has any real happiness. And yet, this … 
  3. Using Perceptions
     … Then you have to put those perceptions down, because after all, they, too, are aggregates. They’re fabrications. When the Buddha says, “sabbe dhammā anattā,” all phenomena are not-self, that phrase itself is a phenomenon, which means that it, too, should be let go when it’s done its work. This is why these three perceptions are especially useful, because they teach you … 
  4. To Stay the Course
     … It gets involved with the aggregates for the sake of something. In other words, it sees them as a means. So look at your actions as a means to a goal, and be clear about the goal you want. Choose a good goal. Then do everything you can to keep yourself on the path, and shed any baggage that gets in the way. You … 
  5. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … You look, say, at your concentration, and you realize that it’s made out of the aggregates. The form is the form of the breath, the form of the body as you’re aware of the whole body. The feeling is the feeling of pleasure. Perception is the mental image that holds you with the breath. Fabrication consists of your directed thought and evaluation … 
  6. A Poker Mind
     … The five clinging-aggregates are activities to be comprehended. And then there are the four noble truths, which apply their duties to what you’re doing right now. For instance, your main duty right now is to develop concentration because that’s part of the path. So in the beginning, we take the first three frames of reference—body, feeling, mind—and we try … 
  7. Using Your Many Minds
     … Ultimately, you reach the point where you can let go of any form of concentration, because concentration contains the most subtle levels of the aggregates that we chanted about just now: form feeling, perception, mental fabrications, consciousness. They’re all there in the concentration. When you learn how to let go of the most subtle levels, then you’re totally free. But you can … 
  8. Training Your Selves
     … As long as there’s clinging to the aggregates, you’re still suffering. If you just resign yourself to these things, you may be equanimous, you may be accepting, but it’s like that line from Thoreau: people living their lives of quiet desperation. It’s equanimous desperation, accepting desperation. But the Buddha was not the kind of person who would leave you there … 
  9. Staying Still
     … I can drop it.” It’s playing around like this that you learn a lot about the aggregates, you learn about all the things that you need to know to gain insight. But you play around with them in the stillness. When you’re tired of playing, you just rest and be right here. It’s a good place to be. It’s a … 
  10. The Taste Is Release
     … There’s a passage in the Canon where a monk goes around interviewing other monks who are arahants, asking them, “What did you focus on that led you to awakening?” One monk replies that he focused on the five aggregates, another that he focused on the six senses, another that he focused on dependent co-arising, and another that he focused on the six … 
  11. A Connoisseur of Happiness
     … As the Buddha once said, if there were no pleasure in the five aggregates, we wouldn’t be attached to them. They do offer pleasure. And we need to understand the different kinds of pleasure they offer, so we can use that pleasure as a means to the highest happiness or the highest pleasure: nibbana. The Pali word for pleasure and happiness is sukha … 
  12. The Dead Snake Around Your Neck
     … He talked about how fabrication in the five aggregates—which he claimed was something different from the three types of fabrication—is not really karmic. It’s just the result of old kamma, but doesn’t create any new kamma. But if it’s not karmic, what are you doing? The way you look at things, the way you think about things, is going … 
  13. Mental Stirrings
     … these aggregates, these little events in the mind, these choices that are made. We think that we’re being disturbed by the thought, yet we’re the one creating the thought to begin with. Maybe that initial stirring was something unintentional but as soon as you latch onto it and begin to draw out its potentials, that’s intentional. That’s the kamma, and … 
  14. The Challenge of Faith
     … It’s not just knowing the definitions of the four noble truths or of the five aggregates or of any of the other terms the Buddha uses. It means knowing how to put them to use skillfully, being strategic in figuring out what’s skillful and what’s unskillful and how to talk yourself into doing the skillful thing that you might not want … 
  15. Why We Train the Mind
     … As the Buddha said, when you get into a deep level of jhana and you’ve mastered it, you begin to look to see what in this state of jhana, in terms of the five aggregates, is still stressful, inconstant, empty? That way, you’ll be able to get rid of your attachments and find a happiness that doesn’t have to latch on … 
  16. Working at Home
     … And even though you may not be directly applying the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self to the five clinging-aggregates, you’re learning to take a problem-solving approach to issues in your life, which is precisely the Buddha’s approach. The four noble truths are a problem-solving approach, focused on the problem of stress and suffering as a whole, and … 
  17. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … You begin to realize that this concentration state that you’ve got going here is composed of aggregates. As long as you’re clinging to it, there’s going to be suffering—something you have to comprehend. Up to this point, you’ve simply been developing it, but now you have to comprehend it. Which means understanding: What’s the perception here? What’s … 
  18. Faith in the Practice
     … There’s a sutta where a monk goes and visits different monks and asks them, “What is the point that you have to contemplate in order to gain awakening?” One monk says you have to contemplate the five aggregates, another monk says you have to contemplate the six sense spheres, another says dependent co-arising, another says the elements. He gets very confused. “Why … 
  19. Feeding Frenzy: Dependent Co-arising
     … The mind is thirsting for things, and so it latches on to the five aggregates and tries to feed off them. Form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, and sensory consciousness: These are the things we feed on. When we’re meditating we’re trying to create a good bhava, a good place for the mind to stay in the present moment. If you create a … 
  20. Adjusting the Flame
     … If you want to understand the aggregates, you’ve got to watch the mind in concentration. If you want to understand intention, well, what is concentration? It’s a mind that’s firmly intent. And it’s got to deal with other intentions that are going to come in and try to pull you away someplace else. So you’re dealing with these factors … 
  21. Negotiating with Death
     … He has us take things apart, like the five aggregates. It seems to be a strange way of dividing up the pie. You’ve got form, which is the body; feelings: i.e., feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions: the labels you place on things. Fabrications, which are all the things you put together in the mind, to make thoughts … 
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