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Five aggregates of clinging (pancca upadana skandha)
upekka
Veteran
Form, Feeling, Perception, Volitional activities and Consciousness
what do we know about these things?
not that what we have read about these things so far, but what exactly we know? with our own experience?
shall we start with Form and then go for others one by one
what do you mean by Form exactly in your own words?
what do we know about these things?
not that what we have read about these things so far, but what exactly we know? with our own experience?
shall we start with Form and then go for others one by one
what do you mean by Form exactly in your own words?
0
Comments
It is that which is comprised of motion/energy, solidity, fluidity, and heat
Your body and breath are form.
Don't know if this is in agreement with the sutta's, but this is how I see it because I've never had an experience that fits into just one of the aggregates.
With lotsa metta,
Sabre
What about 'feeling'? I know it's one of the traditional 52 Mental Factors and one of the six ever present mental factors. I know when I'm conscious, I feel. I know my feelings change regularly and constantly throughout the day. I know my feelings can create intentions; for example, I feel hungry and I create an intention to eat.
Are we looking for our 'I' in the aggregates, or is this beyond the scope of this post.
the teachings say the five aggregates are to be comprehended. if there has never been an experience that fits into just one of the aggregates then practise has not been developed enough
"form" is "rupa". "rupa" means "that which will be broken" (ruppati). thus form is matter
the difference between "form" and mental aggregates is easily observable. take a suspected enlightened being. it is observable their mind in many faculties does not change. their wisdom, liberation & lucidity of mind does not change. but their body changes. if their body changes significantly, ie, neurologically, they can lose their mental faculties
but when body does not break, mind does not break. example, brain injury in accidents can cause mental faculties to stop working
thus we start with the grossest aggregate, i.e., the body/breath, as object of internal scientific spiritual research
each aggregate is observed until only aggregate can be seen (and until the "self" becomes isolated in one of the aggregates until seen for what it really is)
Just a small question please. Is there anything which is not subject to change in Buddhism? My current understanding is that everything is subject to change?
Except perhaps Nirvanna ("I am awakened").
yes, correct. all conditioned things are subject to change but the unconditioned Nirvana & the fully awakened mind are not subject to change (until the body of the fully enlightened mind ends)
thus the scriptures say:
So, you can't experience the body without consciousness of the body. Therefore it is not possible to say body exists independent of consciousness. Form is dependent on consciousness also if we look at the words on Dependent Origination. Of course, when one is dead, there is still a body, but it is useless to call that an aggregate because there is no person there anymore.
The thing that is to be comprehended about the five aggregates is not their seperability, but the fact that there is nothing outside of these aggregates. There is no self in or outside of them, this is the important thing.
Also I agree with @Iñigo that an enlightened beings mind also changes. They still have thoughts, change in experience, change in knowledge etc. Wisdom and liberations are not aggregates, but results of the path, thus not comparable.
Regarding Saber's last paragraph. I had assumed that WallyB was using the analogy of 'mind and wisdom' to show the impermancne of the agregates in comparison to something which most of us feel is permanent i.e. mind. WallyB's reply confirmed my doubts that all is subject to change, including mind. I read the document WallyB quoted and found it most helpful (Thanks again!), here is what I found specificially helpful in that document (I hope it serves others as well): Basically (and my explanation will not do justice to the original text), we are not able to grasp what we are unless we can first grasp what we are not. It is as if the mind cannot grasp its own dissolution. There is something about the text which provides the buddhist answer without actually putting it into words.
PS: not wishing to enter debate, but I would not distinguish normal mind from "enlighten mind" mentioned above, but I think I get WallyB's point. At this point words start to fail us.
http://www.dzogchen.org/teachings/talks/dtalk-95may22.html
I think this five skandha scheme is a very interesting one, in the sense that it can begin to
raise some very interesting questions and help us dig deeper, rather than just having a
vague, amorphous kind of understanding. We are individual. We are each responsible for
ourselves and our karma and our relations. Our individuality is comprised of these five
aggregates or skandhas. We can work with that. It is actually an expression of the Buddhanature.
Now, doesn't anybody want to say, "I didn't hear anything about Buddha-nature in the five skandhas. Where's the Buddha-nature? Who made that up?" That's the right question. What Buddha-nature? I never said anything about it. Who made that up? What enlightenment? What nirvana? Who made all that stuff up? Is it in us or elsewhere? How to get from "here" to "there"?
We're all looking for something to hang our hopes on, but when we really get down to the present moment, to our own experience, to clear seeing, we come to what Buddha said: "In hearing there is only hearing; no one hearing and nothing heard." There is just that moment, that hearing. You might think, "Oh, a beautiful bird." How do you know it's a bird? It might be a tape recorder. It might be bicycle brakes squeaking. In the first moment, there is just hearing, then we get busy, our minds and concepts get involved. The Buddha went through all the five senses. "In seeing there is just seeing; no one seeing and nothing seen." And so on, with tasting, touching, smelling, and thinking. Thoughts without a thinker. In thinking there is just thinking. There is just that momentary process. There is no thinker. The notion of an inner thinker is just a thought. We imagine that there is somebody thinking. It's like the Wizard of Oz. They thought there was this glorious wizard, but it was just a little man back there behind the screen, behind the veil. That's how it is with the ego. We think there's a great big monkey inside working the five windows, the five senses. Or maybe five monkeys, one for each sense; a whole chattering monkey house, which it sometimes feels like. But is there really a concrete individual or permanent soul inside at all? It seems more like that the lights are on, but no one is home!
Buddha (Shurangama Sutra):
"Ananda, you have not yet understood that all the defiling objects that appear, all the
illusory, ephemeral phenomena, spring up in the very spot where they also come to an end. Their phenomena aspects are illusory and false, but their nature is in truth the bright
substance of wonderful enlightenment. Thus it is throughout, up to the five skandhas and the six entrances, to the twelve places and the eighteen realms; the union and mixture of various causes and conditions account for their illusory and false existence, and the separation and dispersion of the causes and conditions result in their illusory and false extinction. Who would have thought that production and extinction, coming and going are fundamentally the eternal wonderful light of the Tathagata, the unmoving, all-pervading perfection, the wonderful nature of True Suchness! If within the true and eternal nature one seeks coming and going, confusion and enlightenment, or birth and death, one will never find them."
Also: It would be strange for all form to take shape in the womb... A mountain wouldn't even fit.
Anyway, to try and fit things into certain aggregates is not really what matters if you see the aggregates just as clumps of experience, not as real objects. As I said, I did not know if this was supported by anything, but because of Talismans confirmation, I started looking and this is what I found: In all this we have to take into account that theoretical knowledge and practical experience are two different things. The second is much more useful than the other. So try to answer, can you actually grab or experience an aggregate? And show: THIS is an aggregate. I don't think so and that's why they are just descriptions (piles) of activities/experience to me. So they don't define what you are, but describe what you are NOT.
Think this quote from the above article is also nice: ----
To go into tactile sensations, I see it mainly as body-consciousness. Of course a part of it is also form; without a physical nerve system, there would be no tactile sensations. But again, the aggregates are just a soup of things, not clear to distinguish one from the other.
OK, I tried to say too much in one reply. Hope it is still useful for anyone..
However, this is what I pulled off wikipedia, which makes me think that it's a little more subtle than just "a lake". But rather "a lake" in the context of it washing away you and your village, or something like that thereby teaching you about inconstancy, impermanence, destructibility, etc. What I want to know is "What does @upekka think?!
Thanks for clarifying!
I see aggregates as not separate because there is always at least consciousness of something else. (consciousness of the body, but also consciousness of the mind activities - fabrications for example). Therefore you can't have one aggregate separate; consciousness arises as a result of others. And in term others also arise as a result of consciousness.
You see them as separate, because a consciousness is just a mirror reflecting. I can also agree on this with the explanation you just gave.
I guess it just depends on how we relate to them. In the end the idea of aggregates is still just only a thought fabricated in the mind and however we try to put them, words never quite hit the spot.
But however we see them, I guess this is the most important quote in this thread: With metta,
Sabre
I bring this up because a lot of people -I'm not saying you (or anybody else in particular)- have the idea of some sort of consciousness apart from the rest of experience. But consciousness is always in relation to what it is conscious off. That's why there are six types of consciousness, one for each sense. Also, you can't have eye consciousness without mind consciousness following it to notify that there was sight. Same for the other 5 bodily senses.
This is what I mean with unseparate. Not that consciousness and its object are the same thing, but they are dependent on one another.
Maybe the wording not separate is inadequate to explain what I mean.
Also, after enlightenment an arahant can still learn new things, not for his own enlightenment, but for example about the suffering of others. I remember it was Ajahn Chah who supposedly said he learned more from teaching others than from his own meditation. Is this than defined as wisdom that changes, or is it knowledge? Again, depends on how we define wisdom. So does an enlightened mind change? Yes and no I guess is the best answer. It depends on how we see it.
I feel that most discussion here is just a play of words. Some words may be closer to the truth than others, but they will always miss. So is this discussion very fruitful? Maybe not so much. The essay I quoted before here ends with a paragraph on this:
mountains, cars, bikini's or whatever, so therefore I think those are included in the aggregate of form
Maybe you should reconsider what is the use of a discussion. Is it just trying to "win" it by proving my ideas may be not in accordance with the recorded scriptuers or is it helping others get new ideas or new ways of looking? Don't let the suttas become the point of the discussion, because that is not getting anyone any further.
I suggest to get back to the topic, but I think it is wise for me not to go into detail on the things you just said.
With metta,
Sabre
thank you all eye (a part of the body) is form and a shape and colour that eye can see is form
ear (a part of the body) is form and sound that ear can hear is form
nose and smell are form
tongue and taste are form
the whole body and any tactile are form
have you ever think about the shape, colour, sound, taste, smell and tactile as form?
if not just pay attention and see how we can put them as form
thanks
it is wiser to simply say: "my personal opinion is....." or say: "my personal understanding of dhamma is...."
Just some parts of my posts: I think that's more ontopic than: "as taught", "the teachings say", "thus the scriptures say:"
But ok, you win. I'm out of here. At least this is teaching me about the aggregate of annoyance.
With metta,
Sabre
what do we think?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.067.than.html
I've been thinking about these for a long time, and personally I don't find them a particularly useful way of classifying experience.
For me the point is that our experiences are all dependently arisen and impermanent, and that clinging to them leads to suffering.
Spiny
Spiny
I agree with the point I feel you are making. It is a interesting paradox that the method serves to arive at the conclusion and an end to reincarnation (or samsara), but before then rebirth is taken as natural. However rebirth/reincarnation isn't itself refuted, but rather that which reincarnates is questioned and broken down until there is an "Unbinding in the here-&-now" (liberation whilst living).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Consciousnesses
you say 'clinging to our experience'
from where do we get any experience without 'form, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness'
if we do not know exactly what is 'form' how do we know we do knot clinging to form
same goes with the feeling, perception, volition and consciousness
that is reason for the OP
@upekka: my understanding of Buddha's teachings: Form is matter. Our eyes are sense organs of body, so matter, so form. The object which our eyes perceive is also matter, so form. Now coming together of eye, object, attention towards object and light leads to arising of eye-consciousness. So eye-consciousness is the process of seeing. Now eye, object and eye-consciousness leads to arising of contact. From this contact, feeling arises which is based on our perception. Perception is the labelling of phenomena in our memory database like labelling a colour as red, green etc. So when we see a rose, eye-consciousness sees a rose but does not recognize it as a rose, it is perception which tells that the object being viewed is a rose, and perception knows it because we have labelled that flower object as rose in our mind which leads to it getting stored in our memory database. The same goes for other 5 sense organs. Volition is will or mental activity for an action, which generates karma. For example, attention, intention etc are volition.
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2012/03/sun-that-never-sets.html?m=1
http://diydharma.org/five-aggregates-ajahn-brahmavamso
(Quickly browsed through it. It seems like he also interprets 'form' as referring (mainly) to the body.)
but if you are married you have ten aggregates to worry about (or if you have a family, you have fifteen, twenty, twenty-five or thirty aggregates to worry about)
if you are a Mahayana Bodhisattva, you have 34,202,535,015 aggregates to worry about, based on the last World Bank count
or
just the contact is enough for feeling?
(it is true Buddha's Teaching says that as soon as there is seeing (eyes see a rose) all five aggregates arise and in a split second all five aggregates fall, but if we try to see within ourselves whether that saying is true, we have to try it and see using our own eye)
and
what do you feel when you see a rose (or any pleasant thing)
have you tried it with the knowledge of Buddha's Teaching?
if we try this way, we ourselves could know what exactly mean by pleasant feeling/unpleasant feeling/ neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feeling
once we really grasp the feeling it is our own understanding
not just someone's saying or something we read or something we think
all others are external sense bases
all those form are in space
all those form you know through your Consciousness
as soon as you see them or hear them you feel
you may feel happy, unhappy or indifference
as soon as you see one form you may think that is my wife, my mum or my dad
that is the perception
then you may want to say something to your mum
or you may think you must do this and that with her
that is Volition ( vacci sankhara -vitakka/viccara)
your eye is the Form
your mum is the Form
happy/unhappy/indifference state of mind is the Feeling
you gave name to the form like my mum (you identify the form as my mum)
that is Perception