Search results for: "The Five Clinging Aggregates"

1. Play AudioClinging-Aggregates in Context
   When the Buddha talks about the five clinging-aggregates, it’s always in the context of the four noble truths. In fact, it’s his definition of the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, or stress: Clinging to the five aggregates is stress. It’s important to keep that context in mind because sometimes you hear the five clinging-aggregates defined as the … 
2. Play AudioThe Fourth Frame of Reference
    … You can look at things in terms of the five hindrances, the five clinging-aggregates, the six sense media, the seven factors for awakening, or the four noble truths. Each of these lists provides a useful framework for looking at what’s actually going on in different aspects of the practice. And not just looking: They also give you guidance in what to do … 
3. Play AudioThree Parts of Right View
    … He gives some examples with which we’re all familiar, but then he boils it down ultimately to what he calls the five clinging-aggregates. At first glance, those aggregates seem less of an explanation, and more something that obscures what’s going on. The other forms of suffering we recognize: There’s birth, aging, illness, and death; separation from things you like, having … 
4. Play AudioUnderstanding Aggregates
   In the Buddha’s first sermon, he defines suffering—or stress, the word dukkha—as the five clinging-aggregates. He states that our duty with regard to those five clinging-aggregates is to comprehend them. Elsewhere, he says that comprehension means getting rid of all passion, aversion, and delusion around them. In his second sermon, he shows how to do that. He talks about … 
5. Play AudioThe Noble Truth of Suffering
    … Actually, when the Buddha talks about what suffering is, he doesn’t say it’s the five aggregates, it’s the five *clinging-*aggregates. He points to problems that people recognize in their lives: the suffering of aging, illness, death, being separated from what you love, having to be with things you don’t love, not getting what you want. Then he boils the … 
6. Play AudioOnly Natural
    … As the Buddha said, when we’re suffering, it’s the five clinging-aggregates. And how do we identify ourselves? We identify ourselves with the five clinging-aggregates. We’re identifying ourselves with suffering. But there’s an alternative. Our problem is that we identify with suffering and we don’t imagine any other way. The Buddha’s allowing us to imagine something else … 
7. Play AudioHappiness is a Skill
    … When he analyzes all those forms of suffering down to their common denominator, he defines suffering as the five clinging-aggregates, a point that’s not immediately obvious. When he assigns a duty to this suffering, he says it’s something you want to comprehend. It’s because we don’t really comprehend suffering that we keep on suffering. When he defines right view … 
8. Play AudioFour Noble Questions
    … He starts with a long list of different things that we’re all familiar with in terms of the pain they cause, but then he says the common thread among them is the five clinging-aggregates, an observation not all that immediately apparent. But we take his guideline here. When you ask yourself what’s the suffering right now, where’s the stress, he … 
9. Play AudioThe Battle of Your Selves
    … Because when you first read the Buddha’s analysis of suffering, the five clinging-aggregates, first he starts talking about the suffering of birth, aging, illness and death, being separated from what you love, having to be with things you don’t like, not getting what you want. It all sounds very familiar. And he says the five clinging-aggregates are what lie at … 
10. Play AudioThe Equanimity of a Victor
     … When the Buddha says suffering is the five clinging-aggregates, our immediate reaction is “What? What does that have to do with my suffering?” It seems abstract, far away, technical. But it really has to do with what you’re doing. Because the aggregates are activities. They’re actions. Even form is something you actively maintain. Your perception of form is something you have … 
11. Play AudioClinging & the End of Clinging
    When the Buddha formulated his first noble truth—the truth of suffering and stress—he didn’t say something useless like, “Life is suffering.” He didn’t say something vague and obvious like, “There is suffering.” He said something more specific, useful, and insightful: “Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates.” As he pointed out elsewhere, the problem isn’t with the aggregates of form … 
12. Play AudioFeeding the Mind
     … Four is the four noble truths, five is the five clinging-aggregates, and so on up through ten. The most interesting question, though, is, “What’s one?” Some teachers might answer that there’s the oneness of the world, or the oneness of the underlying principle of all things. But the Buddha’s answer was something totally different. “What’s one” is “All living … 
13. Play AudioThe Need for Right View
     … He gives you a pragmatic definition, the five clinging aggregates, which means that you’ve got to look for the clinging. The way you’re feeding on something entails stress. You’re trying to figure out what is it you’re feeding on, and why you want to feed on it. Keep looking at that until you get a sense of dispassion, a sense … 
14. Play AudioWise 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 … 
15. Play AudioChewed Up by Your Food
     … He talks about how suffering boils down to the five clinging-aggregates. You’ve got the form clinging-aggregate, the feeling clinging-aggregate, the perception clinging-aggregate, fabrications and consciousness clinging-aggregates. The word for “clinging,” upadana, can also mean sustenance. We try to feed off of these things. Particularly, we try to feed off the pleasure that these things have to offer. We … 
16. Play AudioRefuge in the Dhamma
     … all, not getting what you want. We all have lots of stories about those things. But then he points out what’s common to the suffering in all those things: the five clinging aggregates. Now, those are not personal things. When you think about your thoughts, or your mind states in terms of aggregates, that way of thinking helps to pull you out of … 
17. Play AudioThe Bright Tunnel
     … Where is it? How is it happening? The Buddha says, basically, that it comes down to what he calls the five clinging aggregates. There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of which are affected by clinging. The clinging is what turns them into suffering. The clinging is what tries to wring a happiness out of them … 
18. Play AudioAppropriate Attention, Appropriate Intention
     … He boils it down to the five clinging-aggregates, which is not an immediately clear or obvious way of explaining it. To see it in those terms, you have to look at it carefully and take it apart. That way, when you see what suffering is, you can watch it carefully enough to see what the cause is, to develop dispassion for the cause … 
19. Play AudioThe 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. Play AudioClinging
    The Buddha identified suffering as the five clinging-aggregates. And the problem is not the aggregates. It’s the clinging. It comes in four forms: clinging to sensuality, to views, to habits and practices, and to doctrines of the self. But regardless of the form, you can feel it physically, as a tightening in the breath energy in the body. Now, the physical feeling … 
21. Load next page...