< img src= "https://www.dharmanet.org/coursesM/23/images/buddhaquote12.gif">
|
A course of understanding On one event the Buddha
|
resolved his disciples: On another celebration he said:< img src =" https://www.dharmanet.org/coursesM/23/images/buddhaquote12a.gif "width="596"height ="74"/ > from this one can see that the Buddha’s path is a course of understanding. The understanding targeted at is not simple conceptual understanding or a collection of info. Rather it is an insight into the true nature of our presence. This understanding brings freedom, the release of the mind from all bonds and fetters and issues in the cessation of Dukkha or suffering.
The Buddha provides us the Dhamma as a search light that we can focus on our own experience in order to understand it in proper point of view. To understand our experience or our existence, includes 2 actions:
- We need to check out the makeup of our being to see what our presence includes, we need to take it apart psychologically, to see how it works, then put it together once again and see how it holds together.
- We need to analyze our experience in order to find its most pervasive functions, the universal qualities of phenomena.
In this lesson you will study the first of these actions, analyzing the 5 aggregates of clinging. In the following lesson you will find out about the universal characteristics of phenomena– impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and egolessness.
The 5 Aggregates Of Clinging To start with we must treat our experience analytically, dissecting our being, our own individuality.
What we are– our being or character– is, the Buddha reveals, a composite of 5 elements: the five aggregates of clinging. They are called this because they form the basis for clinging. Whatever we cling to can be discovered amongst the 5 aggregates.
The individual being is merely a complex unity of the 5 aggregates. |
The Buddha states that the 5 aggregates need to be totally understood. This is the very first Noble Truth, the reality of Dukkha. The five aggregates are our burden, however at the same time they provide us with the vital soil of wisdom. To bring suffering to an end we have to turn our attention around and see into the nature of the aggregates.
To bring suffering to an end we have to see into the nature of the aggregates. |
In order to not cling to the aggregates you must bear in mind them at all times. And the tools we utilize for observing 5 aggregates of clinging are effort, concentration, mindfulness, and some fundamental understanding of the 4 Noble Truths and of the impermanent, non-satisfactory and non-self nature of the five aggregates of clinging. We will now explore the 5 aggregates:
The product side of presence
Product type
The psychological side of existence
Feelings
Understandings
Mental developments
Consciousness
Material kind
This includes all the material aspects of existence– every type of material phenomena. The most crucial of these is the body, the physical organism through which one experiences the world. The Buddha groups the aggregate of material type into main aspects and secondary types:
Four primary elements– earth, water, heat and air
For Buddhists these do not actually refer to the natural earth, water, fire and air. Rather they symbolize four behavioral properties of matter typical to all material phenomena, the homes that every material body displays.
All product phenomena have these four elements to some degree. What differentiates them is the percentage in which the main elements are integrated.
Secondary forms of matter
There are a variety of secondary kinds of matter, product types originated from the main elements:
5 sensory receptors.The sense professors, eye, ear, nose, tongue and body.
The very first four sense data.
Colors, sounds, smells and taste are also secondary types of matter. The touch sensation however, is provided by the main aspects themselves.Life faculty The professors which revitalizes the body and keeps it alive.
Mental base
Organs and nerve tissues which operate as assistance for consciousness in the idea process.