Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- A Good Buddhist Ego… But the fact that you’ve experienced a level of consciousness that has nothing to do with any of the aggregates, not even the aggregate of consciousness, means that when you come back, you’ll never think of identifying with the aggregates ever again. You never hold to the view that you are the aggregates or that you own the aggregates or that they …
- A Questioning Attitude… They come under the physical aggregate, the aggregate of form, which is different from the feeling aggregate. So when you’ve got those sensations accounted for, what’s left? Where is the pain? You see it flitting around. You’ve unglued it. You see it as something separate. Then there’s also the perception of the pain. You want to learn how to see …
- On the Surface of Things… two different aggregates that we’ve glommed together. Can you see them as separate things—separate notes in the bird song? The same goes for perceptions, thought constructs, acts of consciousness: They’re all happening right here. Our problem is that we tend to be conspiracy theorists. We want to know: What’s happening behind the scenes? Who’s operating the lasers that shot …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… So you can exert some control over the aggregates. If you couldn’t exert any control, there’d be no path. Discernment, right view, is a matter of perceptions and thought fabrications. Right resolve—a matter of fabrications and perceptions. All the elements of the path—all the factors of the path—are composed of aggregates. So you learn how to develop skillful ones …
- Learning by Doing… The way you cling to the aggregates has to be comprehended. The way you take those aggregates and make them into concentration has to be developed. It’s a skill that you work on. So it all comes together right here. That’s why the Buddha said that right concentration is the heart of the path, whereas all the other factors in the path …
- The Path of Giving… These parts of ourselves, these aggregates we tend to latch on to, saying, “This is me. This is mine”: When the “me” becomes an end in and of itself, you’re going to get run over because you’re lying down on the road. If you learn to treat these things, these aggregates, as a path and learn to give of them, you don …
- Give Before You Get… After all, the Buddha’s analysis of suffering is the clinging-aggregates. The clinging-aggregates are how we define who we are, so we’re going to have to give up how we define who we are. That’s a pretty radical giving up. You have to work at it gradually from the beginning. Anything that you see is obviously unskillful, you give it …
- Using What You’ve Got… The Buddha says suffering is what? The five clinging-aggregates. How are you going to learn about suffering? Well, you put those aggregates all together right here. You learn to put them together in different ways. You can make them into different levels of concentration, and once the concentration gets developed, you apply it to different issues. Ajaan Fuang used to say that there …
- Battling Negativity… After all, the Buddha said, suffering comes from the clinging-aggregates. And the clinging-aggregates are also what we create our sense of who-we-are out of. Our sense of “I am this” or “I am that” can be centered on form, feeling, perception, thought-constructs, or consciousness. And as soon as we slap the label of “I am this” or “I am …
- Strength Training… Why do we suffer? The Buddha says it’s because we cling to the five aggregates. Okay, learn about the aggregates, learn about clinging. But also remember as he teaches those aggregates that you have to learn how to use the aggregates as your path. So as Ajaan Lee says, be a person with two eyes. See that the problems in the mind, the …
- Dispassion… But for intelligent people, Sariputta says, you answer their question by saying that the Buddha teaches dispassion for the aggregates. And then the next question would be, “What advantage does your teacher see in having dispassion for the aggregates?” The answer: “When they change, you don’t suffer.” It’s interesting that dispassion is the first thing Ven. Sariputta mentions. The Buddha himself at …
- Nostalgia for Suffering… When you look at the Buddha’s teachings about suffering, he gives a long list of the different kinds of suffering there are, but then he boils them down to five clinging aggregates. It’s not an intuitive summary but it gives you the basic principles, and from there you work out the details. If there’s suffering in the mind, you’re clinging …
- When Nothing’s Happening… Remember the Buddha’s statement about the different aggregates. Each aggregate is a potential coming in from the past, and then it’s fashioned through fabrication into an actual experience of the aggregate. That’s how you have the present moment. This is one of the tests for the deathless. There’s no sense of time or space at all, not even the present …
- Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart… He never explained how that consciousness was related to the consciousness in the aggregates, but it’s definitely something different. Consciousness in the aggregates has to do with consciousness that is near or far; past, present or future. In other words, it’s in time and space. Consciousness without surface is something else. But he never clarified the relationship between the two. There was …
- Right View Comes First… He would have them look more deeply into their minds and tell them that whatever suffering they had was something they were doing—they were clinging, to what he called the five aggregates—although he didn’t call them aggregates, he called them khandhas. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a really good translation in English. Aggregates sound like piles of gravel …
- You Should Heed These Shoulds… In other words, you use the aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness to create a path. Your practice of the precepts will involve these five aggregates. Your practice of concentration will involve them. Even discernment—the perceptions and thought constructs you use for discernment—will involve the aggregates, especially perceptions. And you have to hold on. And if it involves a sense …
- The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless… And you realize that when the aggregates fall away as you see the deathless, your awareness of the deathless is not annihilated. So there’s no reason why you’d ever want to identify yourself with the aggregates again. The mind has been unfettered from three fetters. It still has some more to work on, but the really heavy fetters have been put down …
- Question & Probe… It comes under the aggregate of feeling. The body comes under the aggregate of form. So there must be something different between the pain and the body. What is the difference? And as he noted many times, the questions you ask today might gain good results today, but the same questions might not get the same good results tomorrow. So you’ve got to …
- See Yourself as Active Verbs… Sometimes you hear it said that the Buddha defines you as the five aggregates, but he says, no, the aggregates aren’t you. They’re what you’re doing. You’re defining yourself in terms of those five aggregates, whichever activities you hold on to. Sometimes you identify yourself with your feelings, sometimes with the images you have in your mind, sometimes with your …
- To Comprehend Suffering… the five aggregates. If there’s any stress weighing the mind down, you can know for sure that it’s because you’re clinging to any one of the five aggregates or any combination of them. Even though we take our suffering very personally, these are tools for depersonalizing it, for learning to step back from the suffering so that we can watch it …
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