The Five Aggregates Of Clinging

This particular teaching from the Buddha is around something called in English as the Five Aggregates and the word that translated as aggregates in the Pali is called Khanda. And Khanda means something like a bundle or a bunch of stuff. So translators settled on aggregates as the English translation instead of the five bunches of stuff.

This teaching of the five aggregates is a teaching about the primary places we get caught. Where we get stuck and we suffer.

Transcript

So this morning I'd like to share a particular teaching from the Buddha around something that is called in English the five aggregates.

And the word that translated as aggregates in the Pali is called khanda.

Khanda.

And khanda means something like a bunch or a bundle of stuff.

So translators settled on aggregates as the English translation instead of the five bunches of stuff.

And so this teaching of the five aggregates is a teaching about the primary places where we get caught.

Where we get stuck and where we suffer.

And learning to have some insight into them so that we can get unstuck.

And in this tradition,

The Vipassana tradition that I offer,

It's mostly done by zooming into our inner world.

So we're zooming in to see the five aggregates are kind of like this way of seeing and going deeper and deeper into your own experience within the body of this world that we're living in.

So we're going inward to our direct,

We're seeing through our direct experience.

This is the idea.

So the first aggregate is called form.

And form encompasses everything in the physical world.

Particularly oriented towards objects and the body and bodies that we see.

Form.

The second,

And this is how we get caught,

We get caught in the body,

Right?

The second is how it feels in the most primitive way.

So feelings.

And the way that it's described,

It's sort of like pleasant feelings,

Unpleasant feelings,

Or neutral feelings.

This is another area that we get caught.

We get caught in our feelings.

As true.

The third is the label we put on our feelings in our form.

And it's known as perception.

So the labels we put on experience.

We often get caught in our perception.

The fourth is called mental formations.

So this is all the stories that we start making up about our perception.

The interpretations,

The commentary that we make up about experience.

So we have the experience,

That's the form.

We have the feeling of it.

We have the labels that we have the labels that we assign to it.

And then build upon our perception with much more involved mental fabrication.

The mental world of ideas.

And commentary and interpretation.

Sometimes this world of mental formation isn't connected to the real world at all.

Like we're living in a fantasy,

Just kind of wandering off.

And it can be a huge part of human life.

This world of,

You know,

Inner thinking and feeling and imagining that goes on.

So these are the first four.

And again,

They're translated as the aggregates of form,

The aggregate of feeling,

The aggregate of perception,

And the aggregate of mental formation.

Again,

The bunches,

The bunches of feelings,

The bunches of perception,

Whatever works for you.

And then the fifth one is the quality of being aware of sensory experience as it's happening.

And that's the form or that's consciousness.

And it doesn't consciousness,

The aggregate of consciousness does not refer to consciousness as a kind of self,

Or a kind of true nature.

Sometimes people think of consciousness as sort of the true nature.

Consciousness is always conscious of something.

It's never separate from the sense experience.

And because of this,

Like all the other aggregates,

Consciousness cannot be described as I,

Or mine,

Or me.

Consciousness is not self,

It's not self.

So this teaching on the five aggregates,

As I said,

Is a teaching about the primary places that we get caught.

We get stuck,

And we're learning to have insight into them,

So we can get uncaught.

And again,

As I've said,

In the Vipassana tradition,

We zoom into these areas.

I like an analogy that I heard that might be helpful for you as well.

So let's say that the five aggregates are like a house.

And when someone comes into the house,

They go through the front door,

Right?

And once they're inside the house,

They enter the hallway.

And if they go further,

They maybe they come into like a sitting room or a parlor.

And if they go further,

They come into the living room,

And then into the kitchen,

And and then into the kitchen.

And then if they go all the way,

And they come into the bedroom,

The most intimate part of the house.

So if you're a salesperson,

Likely you won't even get past the door.

Sometimes you get into the hallway.

But you know,

When we have,

You know,

People who have better friends,

You invite them into the parlor or the sitting room or the living room,

Into the kitchen,

You know,

The kitchen is where you're,

You're really in your life.

All the stories happen in the kitchen,

Right?

All the exciting stuff and the finance,

Like the family dynamics.

This is where a lot happens.

And so,

You know,

Our good friends,

We invite into the kitchen.

But where you can really be yourself,

Where you can really relax and be yourself and kind of put it all down is in the bedroom.

So in this sort of analogy of the house,

The five aggregates are kind of like seeing in this way,

We're just going deeper.

So you know,

Deeper into the world that we're living in.

So many people stop at the kitchen.

You don't want to go any deeper than the kitchen.

Some people on the path are still kind of in the hallway.

And some people are sort of outside looking at the front door.

Because these aggregates are going inward.

So if we stay with this analogy,

This house analogy,

We're zooming into the house.

And as I zoom in closer,

Then there's a big,

Like we begin to distinguish that there's different elements in my present moment experience.

Oftentimes we stay on the level of the form,

This body,

This could like the this could like the objects in our world.

These are things that we get caught in.

But also,

You know,

There's that contact to what's happening in the moment,

Then there's the perception.

And that's another area that we get really deeply caught in.

So we go deeper into that.

There's feelings that we have about our perceptions.

There's labels that we put on to the experiences that we have.

And then we add all kinds of mental formation with our stories and our ideas and our interpretation.

And as we get deeper,

There's the consciousness that can distinguish and see this all.

Most of the time,

We're not conscious of what we're seeing.

But as we start to distinguish these different elements,

Going deeper into our own,

Our house,

The house of the body,

We see that there's kind of space between them,

These different bunches.

And when we start to see that there's space between these aggregates,

Then we can actually experience for ourselves the spacious awareness that is within them,

We can actually,

There's a quality of relaxing.

So this zooming in is quite important in our practice to see what's actually going on in the to see what's actually going on in the moment.

To,

You know,

Before we put everything in one big bundle,

We start to see,

Well,

What makes up all these smaller bundles?

And as we look at this,

You know,

At what point do we start zooming into these different parts?

Well,

We're not actually living in the story,

In the drama of our interpretation,

And begin relaxing and stepping back.

So this zooming in is a big part of our practice of seeing how this operates.

And one of the functions,

One of the benefits of meditation is as we do this,

We're calmer and less involved in our thoughts.

We start to understand that they don't need to stop.

But our thoughts,

Our mental formations,

Our perceptions,

They get lighter and lighter.

As we practice,

In our practice,

Thoughts get more insubstantial.

They truly become like wisps in the mind,

Like clouds.

The tendency is that thoughts are quite solid and important and urgent.

And through practice,

They don't have so much authority.

We could start to see them for their,

As a bundle,

As a bundle of stuff.

So form,

Feeling,

Perception,

Mental formation,

And consciousness.

These are the areas that we all get stuck.

We get caught in the perception,

We get caught in the feeling,

We get caught in the labels,

In the stories.

And we also get caught in the consciousness of knowing it all.

It's like,

Oh,

I see it.

It's like,

Oh,

I see all of my neuroses.

I see all my bundles.

But caught there.

So by zooming in and really being mindful,

It's possible to begin to let go of how we're caught.

Our practice tends towards discovering what we think is self,

Discovering how we identify as self,

And seeing that it's not self.

So in sharing these five aggregates,

My hope is that this supports you in paying attention to where you are.

To where you get caught.

And we all do this.

But the intention is to be free.

So thank you for your attention and consideration.

And I look forward to exploring this with you.

Reviews

I appreciate your sharing this breakdown of the 5 aggregates, and I can see examples in my own thoughts moment to moment of most of them. I will return to this again for further contemplation 🙏🏼

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