Search results for: "Aggregates"
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- Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes… It’s not the case that you get the mind quiet and then magically it’ll understand the five aggregates because it’s quiet. It understands the five aggregates because you’ve been using those five aggregates, learning how to look at these things as activities, as tools, to get the mind to settle down. If you don’t look at them in the …
- Learn from the Ants… Suffering is still clinging to the aggregates, and the aggregates are basically the same now as they were then: form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness. Once you read the definitions, you realize that these are things you do, and you’re doing them all the time. How the mind functions, how the mind works: That’s a constant. If it works certain ways …
- Wise Endurance… All the forms of suffering that are listed there boil down to the five clinging-aggregates: clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular, what are your perceptions, what are your thought fabrications about a particular issue? Remember that even with the aggregates, there’s an element that comes in from the past and an element of fabrication in the present …
- Common Ground… The clinging goes to the five aggregates, and everybody has five aggregates. The form of the body, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, these we have in common. And the ways we cling: We cling through sensuality, through our habits and practices, through views about the world, and through ideas of who we are. And although the views and the ideas of who we are …
- Abandoning Craving… You see that it’s at the clinging to the five aggregates. And the way we cling to the five aggregates seems to have a lot of reality. In fact, much of our sense of reality operates around that. We cling in terms of sensuality, and we use the aggregates for fantasizing about sensual pleasures. Then, of course, there’s the pleasure we’re …
- Beyond Natural Suffering… He started with a long list of the various things that are suffering, and then he came to a synopsis, which is that the five clinging aggregates are suffering: form as a clinging aggregate, feeling, perception, fabrication as a clinging aggregate, consciousness as a clinging aggregate. The usefulness of the synopsis is that you realize that clinging to these five things: That’s suffering …
- The Image of the Raft… The Buddha identifies suffering as clinging to the five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness. And there are four ways of clinging. You can cling in terms of sensual pleasure, sensual desire; you can cling in terms of your views; you can cling in terms of your ideas of what should and shouldn’t be done; and then you can cling in terms …
- A Touchstone at the Breath… So right here in your experience of the body is when you learn about the other aggregates as well: the feeling aggregate, the perception aggregate, fabrication, and consciousness. It’s when your attention is rooted in this awareness of the body from the inside that you can begin to see how those other aggregates function, and particularly how perception and fabrication can totally change …
- Learning by Doing… With the aggregates, it’s the same sort of thing: How do you get to know the aggregates? Through making a state of concentration out of them. How do you get to know the elements—the four physical elements, plus space and consciousness? By creating states of concentration out of them. It’s the things you work with, the things that you make: Those …
- Get Out of Yourself… Think about his teaching on the five aggregates. It’s not just your aggregates that are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. Everybody’s, no matter where, are not worth holding on to as you or yours. You could go anywhere—you could be born as a deva, you could be born as a Brahma—but that’s all you’d have: more of these …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… The Buddha never denies that the aggregates give their pleasures, but there’s something better to do with them than just wallow around in the pleasures they provide. We can use the aggregates to create a path. You can think of the aggregates as pieces of wood. You can take the wood and build a fire with it and burn yourself with the fire …
- sBeyond Acceptance… It’s possible to take that as meaning that you can’t do anything with these five aggregates, but then the Buddha himself doesn’t say that. After all, concentration is made out of the five aggregates. You’ve got the form of the body right now, which includes your sensation of breathing. You can make that pleasant. That’s the feeling: the pleasure …
- The Mind’s Eating Disorders… You’re clinging to the five aggregates and it’s important to realize that aggregates are not things. They’re not a pile of gravel weighing you down. They’re a series of activities that you get accustomed to doing, and you keep doing them over and over again. And the activities themselves relate to how you feed. The question often comes up: Why …
- Free from Animosity… The five aggregates are not self—and those aggregates cover a lot of territory: our sense of the form of the body as we feel it from within, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental constructs—mental constructs are the stories we tell ourselves, the analyses, the comments, we make on things—and then finally consciousness at the senses. These are the things with which …
- Think… Whatever you remember about the past, even if you remember past lives, comes down to just these five aggregates. And wherever you might go in the future of this life or of other lives is going to be composed of these same aggregates. You think about the implications of that. You realize that no matter where you go, no matter what you would latch …
- Here to Learn… You have five aggregates. Each other person has his or her five aggregates. And when we get into contact with another, it’s not like adding our five aggregates with their five aggregates, it’s like multiplying them or taking five to the fifth power—a lot of complications. So you have to realize when you’re dealing with other people, the same issues …
- Use Your Defilements… You work with the trees and twigs and branches on this side of the river—the things you identify with, the aggregates—and you make them into a raft that helps you as you swim across. So as you’re meditating, don’t be in too great or hurry to try to get rid of your defilements. Use them well first. Learn how to …
- Dealing with Pain… This is where the Buddha’s teaching on aggregates comes in. The word aggregate is a translation for the word *khandha. *It’s not the best, but it’s hard to think of anything better in English. It sounds like piles of gravel; it’s not. The Buddha actually was talking about activities of the mind. You create your sense of the form of …
- The Mind Undefined… He boiled things down to five clinging-aggregates, but those are things you have to explore. Those are activities that you do. Your clinging to the aggregates is an activity, and the aggregates that you cling to are activities. The question is, in every case, can you do those activities in a different way? So it’s good to leave some things undefined, especially …
- The Buddha’s Filters… to see where the things you hold on to dearly are constructed out of these aggregates, and question exactly how reliable those aggregates are. That way, you’ll be less inclined to cling to them and less inclined to crave them. After all, that’s where the cause of suffering is: It’s in the craving. You crave sensuality; you crave taking on a …
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