Search results for: "Aggregates"

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  2. To Make Suffering Crumble
     … But then he said what they all have in common is the act of clinging to five aggregates. This may sound abstract and far away, and not all that helpful, but actually the Buddha’s talking about things you’re doing all the time. And he divides things into five aggregates to make them more manageable. It’s like taking a big problem and … 
  3. Pushing the Three Characteristics
     … He never said that the five aggregates are totally stressful, totally inconstant, totally out of control. As he once pointed out, if there were no pleasure to be found in the aggregates, we wouldn’t be attached to them. We wouldn’t cling to them. There is some pleasure here. But there are different kinds of pleasure. What he wants us to do is … 
  4. A Game of Chess
     … You’ve got the five aggregates right there. You look at the other factors of the path and you find that the aggregates are all involved there as well. So it’s a matter of taking the aggregates you’ve been carrying around, you stop carrying them on your back, and you place them down. Suppose they were a load of bricks on your … 
  5. The Fourth Frame of Reference
     … You analyze things first in terms of the first noble truth—the five clinging-aggregates—to understand where’s the stress here, where’s the suffering here, where and how you’re clinging to these things. In particular, you want to learn how to identify each of the clinging-aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—as events, activities, to see what spurs them … 
  6. Antidotes
     … You look at the state of concentration and learn how to see it as aggregates. Then look at the aggregates as inconstant, stressful, not-self, a cancer, a dart, a dissolution, a void—all kinds of different ways of driving home the point that these are not things you want to stay attached to. Some people will respond to the inconstancy. Some people respond … 
  7. Love Me, Love My Defilements
     … Your identity is made up of clinging-aggregates. The clinging itself is an action. The aggregates are actions. Each of the aggregates is defined by an activity. Form de-forms—in other words it keeps changing. Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate the other aggregates into actual aggregates, and consciousness cognizes. These things are defined by their activity. And these activities are the raw … 
  8. How to Use the Three Perceptions
     … So first you’ve got to figure out where in your life you’re clinging to the aggregates, because that’s the Buddha’s succinct statement for the first noble truth: Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates. So where are you clinging to the aggregates? And how is it suffering? That’s when you start looking at the things you’re clinging to, and … 
  9. Your Committee of Addicts
     … We all know that the Buddha talks about clinging to the five aggregates. But he also talks about four ways of clinging. These are basically ways in which we put the aggregates together—our sense of our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our thought constructs, our acts of consciousness. We put them together into something that we actively hold on to. The Buddha’s … 
  10. Not-self for the Sake of Happiness
     … the five aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. Your sense of self as the producer, for instance, lays claim to the body and all your mental functions to do the actions that need to be done. Then you notice how much pain is involved in doing whatever needs to be done. The self as a reflector is going to take note of this … 
  11. The Path to Stream Entry
     … As a result, there’s no tendency to want to identify yourself with any of the aggregates ever again. You still have a lingering sense of self that hovers around them, but you never hold to the view that the aggregates are you or yours, or that you’re in the aggregates or that the aggregates are in you. That’s how the first … 
  12. It’s All in What You’re Doing
     … When you hear about the Buddha saying that insight comes from contemplating the five aggregates or contemplating the six sense media, where are you going to find them? You’re going to find them in what the mind is doing right now. When the mind is concentrated, you’ve got the five aggregates right there in action. You’ve got the breath, which is … 
  13. The Return of Chickens from Hell
     … As the Buddha said, it’s not simply that we feed off of the aggregates, but the aggregates chew us up as well. So as we sit here and meditate, we’re actually using aggregates but we’re trying to be more careful about which raw ingredients we take and what we do with them. And we’re trying to change our attitudes as … 
  14. Tranquility & Insight
     … Now, you’ve heard about aggregates. The Buddha said that when you cling to the aggregates, there’s going to be suffering. In fact, that’s what lies at the heart of the suffering that weighs the mind down: the clinging to the aggregates. You’ve got these aggregates right here in your concentration. You’ve got the breath: That’s form. You’ve … 
  15. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … After all, the Buddha said that the five aggregates, when you cling to them, are suffering. Yet this path we’re following is also made out of five aggregates. The concentration we’re doing right now has form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—all right here. We want to get to see that when we put these aggregates together in this way, even though … 
  16. Meditation as Play
     … You’ve got all five aggregates. You’re playing with the aggregates, trying to make them into a settled state of mind, a released state of mind. And you’ve gotten to know them because you’ve been playing with them. They’re your playmates. So when the time comes to let them go, you let them go not out of disgust. You just … 
  17. Practicing Meditation to Perform at Death
     … Reflect on the fact that even devas suffer from self-identity, identifying with the aggregates one way or another, either identifying with the aggregates themselves or feeling that they are someone who possesses these aggregates, wants to use them as tools, or they’re in the aggregates, or the aggregates are in them. Even a state of infinite consciousness: You can develop a sense … 
  18. Training Your Intentions
    One of the features of the Buddha’s teachings on the aggregates that makes you stop and think is the role of fabrication. On the one hand, fabrication—which the Buddha defines as intention—is one of the aggregates: basically, your intention is to fabricate thoughts. You start with perceptions of things, feelings about things, and then you make comments on them. Of course … 
  19. The Three Perceptions as Tools
     … We apply the three perceptions to the five clinging-aggregates to induce dispassion for the aggregates so that we can let go of our clinging and stop suffering. Now, as the Buddha said, the five aggregates do have their good side. They do offer pleasure. If they didn’t offer any pleasure, we wouldn’t latch on to them. But they can also be … 
  20. Disenchantment
     … What is it in the mind that wants these things? What wants to take the raw materials, the potentials in the present moment for these things, and turn them into actual aggregates? And then from the aggregates make all kinds of other things? It’s usually because we want pleasure of some kind or another that we delight in these things. In other words … 
  21. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … In fact, you could use that as a definition of clinging aggregates: being addicted to the aggregates. Aggregates, you know, are not things. They’re activities. Your body is constantly active. Your feelings are activities. Your perceptions are things you do. Thought constructs, fabrications are things you do. Consciousness is something you do. And we’re addicted to these activities. With the path, the … 
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