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The Five Aggregates
Hello
Im an average 19 year old from England. I just recently became interested in Buddhism while being at college. I'd did a quick 10 minute search around google to see what it was all about. As you can tell there is alot to learn so I searched the internet for reviews on books. I found a good one called "What The Buddha Taugh" by Walpola Sri Rahula.
The book itself seems fairly good although i've been struggling with the words (im not much of a reader) anyways plodding on I came upto the section about the four noble truths. When explaining the first one Dukkha (which i've interpretated as suffering except the book tells me suffering does translate fully this word and that it can be suffering such as[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] stress, unsatisfactoriness[/FONT]) Which I understood but then it came to apart about the five aggregates. Well this has threw me all over I just couldnt understand what it meant. I read it over a few times and it just seems to be confusing me I dont know if its the book or just me being me. I want to understand it before I move onto the next part of the book.
Can anyone help?
Im an average 19 year old from England. I just recently became interested in Buddhism while being at college. I'd did a quick 10 minute search around google to see what it was all about. As you can tell there is alot to learn so I searched the internet for reviews on books. I found a good one called "What The Buddha Taugh" by Walpola Sri Rahula.
The book itself seems fairly good although i've been struggling with the words (im not much of a reader) anyways plodding on I came upto the section about the four noble truths. When explaining the first one Dukkha (which i've interpretated as suffering except the book tells me suffering does translate fully this word and that it can be suffering such as[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] stress, unsatisfactoriness[/FONT]) Which I understood but then it came to apart about the five aggregates. Well this has threw me all over I just couldnt understand what it meant. I read it over a few times and it just seems to be confusing me I dont know if its the book or just me being me. I want to understand it before I move onto the next part of the book.
Can anyone help?
0
Comments
Sensation - Is this the contact of the external world which we feel through our senses whether it is good or bad?
Perception - How you recognise objects both physical and mental, but also felt through the power of the external world?
Mental Formation - Is this to do with the choices we make knowingly and willingly?
Consciousness - The awareness of something but not the recognition of something that is what perception is?
Matter I don’t feel is described well in the book so I’m not sure what that means?
And am I right to think these are ways suffering is caused and can be felt?
*I’m really sorry if I sound like an idiot I feel a bit stupid, but I’m really keen on learning about Buddhism. I've never really studied any religion even though I went to a Christian school I’ve never had that much interest in it.
I'm unsure of course.
Hi Luke13 (any significance).
You are neither an idiot or stupid - in fact you acting in a beneficial way - and you are on the right track.
Matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness are another way of drawing attention to the five senses, also referred to in the Dharma as skandhas.
We take in information via our senses and if we rely on that information as 'reality' then we will suffer.
You are apparently conversant with the web - have a look for the 'Heart Sutra'. This is the quintessence of the Buddha's teachings. What is being taught here is Emptiness.
Emptiness is a difficult subject and it best to get taught by a skilled Buddhist teacher.
In the meantime I urge you to learn about the Eight Fold Path and to apply those precepts to your life. You would benefit from joining a Buddhist centre. It is always good to rub shoulders with fellow travellers.
Travel well my friend.
Buddhist doctrine describes five aggregates:
"form" or "matter"<sup> </sup>(Skt., Pāli rūpa; Tib. gzugs):external and internal matter. Externally, rupa is the physical world. Internally, rupa includes the material body and the physical sense organs.
"sensation" or "feeling" (Skt., Pāli vedanā; Tib. tshor-ba):sensing an object<sup> </sup>as either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.
"perception", "conception", "apperception", "cognition", or "discrimination" (Skt. samjñā, Pāli saññā, Tib. 'du-shes):registers whether an object is recognized or not (for instance, the sound of a bell or the shape of a tree).
"mental formations", "impulses", "volition", or "compositional factors" (Skt. samskāra, Pāli saṅkhāra, Tib. 'du-byed) :all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by an object.
"consciousness" or "discernment"<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference">[10]</sup> (Skt. vijñāna, Pāli viññāṇa, Tib. rnam-par-shes-pa):
In the Nikayas/Āgamas: cognizance, that which discerns
In the Abhidhamma: a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance.<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference">
</sup>In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.
Put another way, if we were to self-identify with an aggregate, we would cling (upadana) to it; and, given that all aggregates are impermanent (anicca), it would then be likely that at some level we would experience agitation (paritassati), loss, grief, stress, or suffering (see dukkha). Therefore, if we want to be free of suffering, it is wise to experience the aggregates clearly, without clinging or craving (tanha), apart from any notion of self (anatta).
Suffering arises via Dependent Arising (2nd Noble truth)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/depend.htm
The aggregates themselves, for example, aren't simply descriptions of what constitutes a human being as some people mistakenly think—they're one of the many ways of looking at and dividing up experience that we find throughout the Pali Canon (e.g., aggregates, elements, six sense-media, etc.). But more importantly, they represent the most discernible aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self in a process of, as the Buddha called it, "I-making" and "my-making" (e.g., MN 109).
The first noble truth states that, in short, the five clinging-aggregate (panca-upadana-khandha) are dukkha (SN 56.11), i.e., it's the clinging in reference to the aggregates that's dukkha, not the aggregates themselves. But what does this really mean?
According to the commentaries, dukkha is defined as 'that which is hard to bear.' In MN 9, clinging is defined as:
In addition, the Buddha says that the five clinging-aggregates are not-self. He calls them a burden, the taking up of which is "the craving that makes for further becoming" and the casting off of which is "the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving" (SN 22.22). The way I understand it, becoming (bhava) is a mental process, which arises due to the presence of clinging (upadana) in the mind with regard to the five-clinging aggregates, and acts as a condition for the birth (jati) of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta).
Looking at it from another angle, there's rarely a moment when the mind isn't clinging to this or that in one or more of the four ways (MN 11). Our identity jumps from one thing to another, wherever the clinging is strongest. Our sense of self is something that's always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli, and yet at the same time, we tend to see it as a static thing. It's as if our sense of self desires permanence, but its very nature causes it to change every second. As the Buddha warns in SN 12.61:
Change is, of course, a fact of nature. All things are in a perpetual state of change, but the problem is that our sense of self ignores this reality on a certain level. From birth to death, we have the tendency to think that this 'I' remains the same. Now, we might know that some things have changed (e.g., our likes and dislikes, our age, the amount of wrinkles we have, etc.), but we still feel as if we're still 'us.' We have the illusion (for lack of a better word) that our identity is who we are, a static entity named [fill in the blank], and we tend to perceive this as being the same throughout our lives.
That said, the conventional use of personality is a function of survival, as well as convenience. However, clinging to our personalities as 'me' or 'mine' is seen as giving continued fuel for becoming, i.e., a mental process of taking on a particular kind of identity that arises out of clinging. Our sense of self, the ephemeral 'I,' is merely a mental imputation — the product of what the Buddha called a process of 'I-making' and 'my-making' — and when we cling to our sense of self as being 'me' or 'mine' in some way, we're clinging to an impermanent representation of something that we've deluded ourselves into thinking is fixed and stable. It becomes a sort of false refuge that's none of these things.
These attachments, particularly our attachment to views and doctrines of self, keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail us and our mental well-being (MN 18). Thus, with the presence of clinging, the aggregates have the potential to become suffering (i.e., 'difficult to bear') when our sense of self encounters inconstancy. That's why the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self:
"Inconstant, lord."
"And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?"
"Stressful, lord."
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"
"No, lord."
Thus, monks, any form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousnes] whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'
In order to break down the conceptual idea of a self (i.e., that which is satisfactory, permanent and completely subject to our control) in relation to the various aspects of our experience that we falsely cling to as 'me' or 'mine,' we must essentially take this [analytical] knowledge, along with a specific set of practices such as meditation, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event that radically changes the way the mind relates to experience.
As I've often mentioned before, in one of the ways I like to look at it, the conventional viewpoint (sammuti sacca) explains things through subject, verb and object whereas the ultimate viewpoint (paramattha sacca) explains things through verb alone. In essence, things are being viewed from the perspective of activities and processes. This, I think, is incredibly difficult to see, but perhaps what happens here is that once self-identity view (sakkaya-ditthi) is removed, the duality of subject and object is also removed, thereby revealing the level of mere conditional phenomena, i.e., dependent co-arising in action.
This mental process is 'seen,' ignorance is replaced by knowledge and vision of things as they are (yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana), and nibbana, then, would be the 'letting go' of what isn't self through the dispassion (viraga) invoked in seeing the inconstant (anicca) and stressful (dukkha) nature of clinging to false refuges that are neither fixed nor stable (anatta). And without the presence of clinging in regard to the aggregates, they cease to be 'difficult to bear.'
BTW, Seeker242 has got it.