Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A desert traveller dying of thirst opens Ven Jampa Gendun’s account of the three types of faith — convincing, longing, and clear — that he argues must precede genuine spiritual progress. In this 45-minute session from his Three Principal Aspects series, he shows why real motivation requires both anxiety about recurring suffering and aspiration toward transformation, then widens the purpose to Mahāyāna scope: developing oneself to benefit all beings, not merely easing personal pain. The second half introduces a structured meditation technique for investigating whether the self is identical to the five aggregates, walking listeners limb by limb through the body — arm, hand, organ — asking whether any piece matches the solid, permanent I we fear losing at death, before applying the same test to feelings, which fail because they constantly change. Suited to practitioners with some grounding in Buddhist psychology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 3 PA 1989 08 04.mp3
UUID: 60f6aa6c-172b-49ae-a1fc-85ad4188ffec
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-08-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~5,840
We’ll just begin with the usual few minutes of mindfulness of breathing. Generation of your motivation. The basis of going through refuge is simply the motivation for taking a direction, a commitment to a path and a method of growth. It is faith and anxiety. More simply put, that one has gotten an acute awareness of one’s suffering, of one’s problems, and their reoccurring nature that one ceases to deal with.
The problems of being an ordinary human being in a piecemeal fashion begins to see that there’s a theme, there’s a reoccurring pattern which is permeating your very life, and therefore begins to recognize the undercurrent of anxiety in one’s life, that it’s not sufficient simply to deal with each and every problem as they occur. Even though we have to solve our problems, the very fact that these problems are reoccurring so that there’s some underlying substrata that we’re not dealing with properly. The universal quality of our problems rather than the particular nature of each of the individual problems. A type of existence based upon ego, for example. One becomes concerned about that way of existing.
So this develops an anxiety. Also coupled with anxiety is a very positive quality necessary for faith. Faith in the Buddhist sense has the idea of a longing, aspiration. It’s almost a quality of respect. That which we have faith in, we seek to emulate, we want to become, to join with, to become part of ourselves.
There’s said to be three types of faith. Convincing faith, longing faith, and clear faith. Initially we have to become convinced that there is a possibility of solving our problems in a very deep and meaningful way, gaining real conviction. Otherwise there’s no aspiration, there’s no motivation to take a spiritual journey. It’s a matter of curiosity perhaps, a matter of one becomes a dilettante, a spiritual supermarket shopper.
One has to have some convincing faith, some real belief that it’s possible to transform oneself, to actually solve ones problems. in dependence upon that develops a longing faith. Convinced that there is a possibility one longs for that transformation to take place. What are the methods, what are the means by which I can actualize the possibility of really solving my problems on a deeper level. Then there arises clear faith, some actual taste, experience of in some small way solving your problems.
That you feel you’ve actually integrated the method within yourself, and you’ve actually taken a step on the spiritual path. It’s very much like a person who’s very thirsty in the desert, And they’re very much convinced without doubt that water is going to solve their problem. They’re in pain from thirst. They’re very convinced, they believe very deeply that this pain that I’m feeling, if I had water I would alleviate it. This is like convincing faith, coming to a definite conclusion that there’s a real possibility of solving your problems.
Then they’re searching throughout the desert and they hear some water flowing nearby. A great longing arises in their mind. Like coming in contact with the teachings, you are convinced that there is some possibility of really solving your problems and you begin to hear about the methods and you begin to think about them. You begin to see that they are a legitimate, logical, reasonable, rational way to skillfully conduct your life, your behavior. That you can see that it’s a possibility of going beyond some of the unskillful patterns, some of the unhealthy, unwholesome patterns, which you’ve been down up until now.
That you’re having heard about the possibility of transformation, gaining the conviction that it’s possible, and actually seeing the logic of the method when you develop a real longing, an aspiration to really begin to integrate the practice in one’s thinking and behavior. Then you’ve heard the water trickling nearby, and there’s a great longing that arises. You actually go down to this a bubbling stream and take a sip, and you’re refreshed. Your thirst is quenched. This is clear faith, directly seeing, directly experiencing, having actually integrated the path into your own mind, having really, in some meaningful way, solved some of your problems.
This is the levels and different types of faith. Faith in the sense of becoming that which we respect. Faith in the sense of incorporating, developing. Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, was at one time an ordinary person. There’s no unbridgeable gulf which exists between ourselves and Śākyamūni Buddha.
There’s no qualitative difference between Śākyamūni Buddha and ourselves. There is a difference in the sense that we have imperfected emotions within our mind stream. He does not. He has embodied all the potentials of humankind. Realized and actualized them.
We have not. But the very nature of ourselves, the nature of the mind, the working basis for transformation, there’s no difference, that we have the exact same potential as Śākyamūni Buddha himself realized, actualized. So there’s no unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and Śākyamūni Buddha. So when we go for refuge, we’re going to refuge to something which has been actualized, which lies potential within ourselves. So there’s an outer refuge and an inner refuge, and having faith that someone has actually done it.
The Buddha acting as an exemplar, as a guide, as a teacher, trying to help us to actualize what is potential within all of us, within all sentient beings. Within the great vehicle, the great vehicle. Buddhism, we talk about the lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle. It’s a matter of motivation. There’s nothing other than that.
There are doctrinal differences, but the essential difference is the vision, the expanse of one’s horizon, perspective, and what it means to actualize fully the human potential. Within the great vehicle we’re going for refuge not only for ourselves, but we’re trying to raise the level of aspiration, the level of our vision, of our horizons to go for refuge for the sake of all sentient beings, Develop the attitude that I must develop myself. I must realize my potential. If I’m ever going to be of any real service to others, if it’s ever going to be anything more than the blind leading the blind, If it’s anything more than my helping others, it could be more than simply creating more confusion to others. I’m available to be of real service, to be of real help, to alleviate sufferings.
It all comes down to a question of becoming aware of one’s own suffering, the very first of the four noble truths that the Buddha taught. It’s not meant to be in any way pessimistic. As I said, it’s one of the two factors necessary to have a real motivation for transformation. No change will occur unless there is a necessity to change. As long as there is no necessity to change, there’s a tendency to maintain the status quo.
There’s a resistance to change. Even just sitting in a chair, as long as that chair is comfortable to you, then there’s no reason to move. There has to be some overriding reason why you’re going to get up out of the chair. It’s just a simple matter of when it becomes painful to sit in a particular position, you naturally change your position. You don’t even have to think about it.
So change necessitates some tension, some awareness that the present situation is dissatisfactory. Otherwise no change will take place, because change requires an element of going beyond the person who you are presently, and we grasp to that person. We’ve been looking into the question of ego grasping, the nature of perpetuating our particular style, our particular preoccupations, our particular patterns, and how in order go beyond these patterns, even in a conventional, let alone in ultimate sense, requires a great deal of determination. We are very much our habit, these reoccurring patterns. We focus on particular patterns We grasp at these in order to secure our identity.
This is who I am. In order to break out of these, to get unstuck, requires a great deal of energy, a great deal of determination. This energy and this determination is not going to arise unless we begin to see that my present situation is dissatisfactory. This dissatisfactory quality has two aspects to it. For oneself, I’m tired of my suffering, my dissatisfaction, all of my alienation, my inauthenticity, whatever.
Looking into very profoundly gaining awareness of the pervasive quality of dissatisfaction within our ordinary human existence, but beginning to identify the same quality within others, that others are just like myself, that others want to be happy, they don’t want to suffer. Aside from very superficial differences, we’re all very much alive. We’re all going through the same trips, the same numbers, the same difficulties, the same loneliness, the same sorrows, the same frustrations, disappointments. There’s not much difference between any of us. Therefore if I’m never going to be of any service to others in helping them to solve their problems, If I’m never going to be of any service to myself in helping solve my problems, then I have to change, I have to develop myself.
Therefore going for refuge is the refuge of complete realization of one potential. Not just simply pacifying one’s own difficulties, but developing yourself to the to the level where you can be of real service to others and thereby be of service to yourself. Beginning to understand that this artificial distinguishment, this isolation, this separateness that we conventionally understand between ourselves and others is simply that it’s an artificial distinction based on delusion. That’s very much how we look at others, how we see others, how we respond and interact with others is how we see and react within ourselves. It’s very much simply a reflection about how we feel about ourselves, and understanding that the person exists as both a social being and as an experiential being.
Experientially we’re trying to achieve peace. We’re trying to solve our problems. But socially we exist in relationship to others, and we can never run away from this fact. Someday a person who is bound up with anger, who is bound up with unskillful modes of relating with others, simply cannot be a happy person. We have to develop a sense of harmony both within ourselves and between ourselves and others.
This is embodied in the qualities of peace within, unremitting peace, and working without, motivated by compassion and love to help others gain peace within themselves. This is the working basis of the great vehicle, and this is the mahayana, the great vehicle, motivation for going for refuge. This is the attitude that we try to develop. The quality of becoming aware of one’s own difficulties gaining faith in the possibility of a method of a spiritual means to solve your problems, but going beyond that in developing the vision and the perspective which seeks to develop oneself completely, not only to find your own peace, but seeing it becomes necessary to help others to achieve their peace. If we’re going to achieve complete actualization of what it means to be a human being, to be completely born.
We’ve been born physically, but it’s the process of being born psychologically, spiritually, in this evolution of mind. This becomes the central focus of our lives. It becomes a commitment to the direction of growth, to a spiritual journey. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Through the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened.
Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Through the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all We’re going to complete the hearer’s level. We’re talking about seeing deeply into the nature of reality, and we’re talking about in stages, like the rungs of a ladder.
We’re going to have four rungs on this ladder: The rung of the hearer’s level, mind only level, autonomy middle way level, and the Consequentialist Middle Way level. These four levels until we come to the final, the ultimate thought of the Buddha as to the actual final nature of reality, what it’s all about ultimately. We’re going to complete tonight the hearer’s level. You won’t hear about it anymore. The hearers are finished.
Last week we looked at the evolution of the ego in terms of the initial impetus of ignorance and the process of the five stages which embody the five aggregates, or most technically the five contaminated aggregates. Ignorance is the instance of, we talked about, bewilderment. The five aggregates are the struggle to cope with the panic. We panic, The situation hasn’t changed, but we now view it with a sense of insecurity, bewilderment and panic. The entire five aggregates represent a coping mechanism to secure the self in space and time.
It becomes quite necessary to have a feeling of what the five aggregates are, identifying them. The first aggregate, the aggregate of forms, represents the initial sensory input. I’m going to go through this in a sense that we’re going to look at how we can meditate on this very simply, in a very straightforward way. Aggregate forms is the initial sensory input. The aggregate of feelings represents the initial reactivity, our first reaction to that sensory input, the aggregate of feelings.
The aggregate of perceptions is the first discrimination. There’s an object which is being felt in a subject which is feeling. So we had an initial input, then we had a reaction about that input. By input I mean we see something, we taste something, some sensory input, and we have a reaction, we have a feeling about that input. Then we begin to discern, make a discrimination, recognize that there is a feeling, and there is a feeler who is experiencing that feeling.
It’s beginning to build up, elaborate, building this huge structure in order to secure more and more solidly the self, the I. The aggregate of mental construction represents the we’ve discern that there’s an experience, there’s a feeler, and there’s an object being felt. And now all the mental patterns, emotions, they’re associated with that feeling begin to arise. All the thoughts about the self, whether I like this or not, whether I’m now feeling something. Do I like this?
All my associations, all my thought structures. This is mental constructions, emotional patterns, reactive patterns. And then finally the aggregate of consciousnesses. This aggregate of consciousness is both just the simple effect of awareness, but when we say consciousness we mean that which is clear and knowing, that which is aware, But also it has its sense of filling in the situation, all the gaps. We finally create a recognizable world, a situation myself in the world.
This is the way in which the ego is fabricated, elaborated upon, and we create the world in which we live, in which we find ourselves. We’re trying to investigate this, trying to see the process, we’re trying to de reify the sense of self. Reifying is what I mean by that word. Making something which is very intangible, something which is transparent and solidifying it, making like freezing water or something like that. You can push your hand into it quite easily, but to reify it is to freeze it, make it nice and solid.
So what became this began as a moment of panic, has now, in order to secure it, been reified, solidified. In order to secure it, it’s become very solid, concrete. I know who I am. I’m questioning. We accept the fact of a solid concrete self, I ego.
We’re going to reverse this process through the development of wisdom, through the development of discriminated awareness, through the process of analysis. We want to make what appears very solid. Just in the sense of like a physicist up to a few hundred years ago, this table is very solid. It appears very solid. But to a physicist, they to analyze it, begin to question, look into it.
They begin to see, well, it’s all that solid as it appears. It’s made up of a whirling mass of atoms. There’s great deals of spaces. The spaces aren’t apparent to us. There’s more space in this table than there is matter, so it’s not apparent.
Accept the existence of this type of hearer’s level I or self. At the hearer’s level we’re talking about a singular, unchanging, independent self. This we’ve talked about to some degree. It’s gone unquestioned. We’ve never even bothered to analyze it.
It’s normal. Now we’re beginning to look into it, we’re beginning to question it. The more methods, the more ways we can look into the nature of the self, question it, what is its nature, how does it appear, it becomes slightly less solid. The water begins to melt just a little bit. It’s not quite as opaque.
The speed in which the patterns are evolving, we can begin to see gaps. We begin to see patterns where before we saw a continuous stream. It’s like this whirling firebrand, It looks like a solid ring of light. And now we begin to see it’s just a point of light moving in a very fast and predictable manner, in a circular pattern. The ego starts to become a little more transparent.
Its power, its influence and frequency begin slowly to fade away, to diminish like the mist as the sun rises in the morning. It begins to clear. We’re wearing it out. Have to carry on an investigation. We’re looking into the nature of the eye, this type of self, at the hearer’s level, in order to carry out this investigation into the nature of the self as systematically as possible so that when we’re done with our investigation we won’t be left with any doubts as to what we found.
We can come to some different kind of conclusion, some kind of surety in what we find or don’t find. We organize our experiences into a number of comprehensive sets of categories. There are many ways that we can analyze the self, different methods. We categorize the self, our world, and ourselves included into the five aggregates, the six elements, the twelve sources, eighteen constituents. There’s many different varieties of ways.
Here we’re looking at, well, simply, the body mind complex. Here we’re looking at the five aggregates. All of our experiences arise moment by moment as isolated, impersonal events. There are physical events, mental events taking place. We experience these events.
After they have arisen, as soon as they’ve arisen, almost simultaneously, it appears simultaneously, we become emotionally involved in them. We create a whole scenario of self and the world, self and other. Based purely on an emotional vague feeling of a solid concrete self, there’s a sense that somebody’s running the show, that there’s someone feeling my feelings, thinking my thoughts. There’s something standing in the background, making decisions, who’s in control. We take this all very much for granted and questioned.
We interpret everything in terms of this supposedly existent self. When something confirms the existence of that self, we experience pleasure toward that. We foster that object. That is to be fostered. When we interpret an object as threatening to that self, we are defensive with respect to the object.
We may even seek to destroy that object. If we interpret an object as neither fostering or neither threatening nor confirming their self, then we simply are indifferent to it. It doesn’t matter, we don’t care about it. When we begin to investigate by means of this analysis, such a type of self, we can never isolate it, we can never find it. We never looked for it up to now.
We’ve taken it for granted that it exists, and now we’re no longer going to take it for granted. We’re going to look for it and look for it in a very systematic fashion so that we can be sure at our conclusion that we’ve left nothing out. What do we say? We’ve turned every stone. The more we investigate, the less solid the sense of ego becomes, the sense of I, the more transparent the ego becomes.
So we have to over and over again investigate from many points of view the nature of this self, the nature of this I. We have to become experts on who we are, the nature of our being. This self which we’ve been so emotionally bound up with up to now that we’ve always grasped that, that we’ve always clung to. When we find, and if we find, if we find that the self does not exist in the way we imagined, there’s a release from tension and suffering because the cause is gone. The cause of tension, the cause of anxiety, of suffering is attachment to something which has never existed.
In coming to this conclusion, we have to become very much an expert into the constituents of our being, what it means to be a person, what it means to have a self, the eye. As a method to help us develop the expert ability, at the hearer’s level we’re making use of the technique of the four essentials. The essential of ascertaining the object of negation, the essential of ascertaining the pervasion, the essential of ascertaining the lack of oneness, the essential of ascertaining the lack of difference. We’ve talked about these. We’re talking about the third of these four.
In the first essential, we must identify the appearance of the self. How does that self appear? You try to get a feeling, a sense, form some kind of image of what it looks like. As I’ve emphasized, this is the most important of these four essentials: identifying what it is, the appearance of the eye, how does it feel. If we don’t have this identification, then when we look for it, we aren’t going to be sure what we’re looking for, and therefore we can come to no forceful conclusion.
We’re trying to recognize in this case a singular, unchanging, independent self, what that must feel like, what that must look like. In the second essential we determine that if such a type of self exists, it must be either one with the five aggregates, one with the body mind complex, or it must be different than the five aggregates, different than the body mind complex. There’s no third possibility. It either must be identical or it must be different. We come to that determination.
So we’re presently looking at the third essential, the essential of ascertaining lack of oneness. Is this self identical? Is it the same? Is it one? Is the self the same as the five aggregates?
In order to carry out this investigation systematically, we’re discussing the body mind complex in terms of the five aggregates. How can we actually meditate? In very practical terms, using the five aggregates, these groups, these heaps of tendencies, a way of categorizing comprehensively all phenomena that we’re going to investigate to find as to whether the I is the same as, whether it’s identical to. The aggregate of form simply refers to the body and the environment. We take for granted that there is a world out there beyond our senses and that our body partakes of this world, that is the world out there, our body is making use of this world, that we live in this world.
When we sit down to meditate, it is the body and mind that first catch our attention. We start our investigation there. I am sitting here because my body is sitting here. Is I therefore the body? Is the self the body?
Is the body the self? We have to investigate the body systematically, taking it limb by limb, part by part, organ by organ, and see if we can isolate that self, that I, in any part of the body. Is anything the I? Is there anything that we can find which corresponds to this I that we’ve identified in the first essential when we identified the self? Is the hand the I?
Am I still I without my hand? If I cut my hand off, do I lose my I, myself? What do we mean by hand? That was easy. What happens if you had all your fingers chopped off, is that still a hand?
What happens if it’s paralyzed? It doesn’t work. Is that still a hand? What does it take to have a hand? What’s necessary?
Some lepers don’t have any fingers or thumbs. We say they’ve lost their fingers on their hand. They still have a hand because that’s where they lost their fingers from. Some people are paralyzed, the hand doesn’t work. So a hand doesn’t have to be able to grasp things to have a hand, to be a hand.
Don’t know. Don’t have to begin to question what you have to have in order to call something a hand. What does a hand have to be to still be a hand, to still be my hand? And we look at the leg. Is the leg the I?
Is that the self? Is the head? Is the heart? Is the lung? It’s moving through the entire body, looking at every part, every organ, every limb, trying to see is this the I that I identify?
Is this the self? Identifying and examining the body in this way, one comes to the conclusion, one may come to the conclusion that the I and the body are merely convenient concepts for dealing with the world and experiences. Just convenient concepts. They have a certain conventional reality, but they are not ultimates. They are not ultimates.
In the conventional truth there are streams of events. The body is a stream of events that one identifies and labels as I or body. This is my body. But the I or the body, the body is not partless, is not singular, is not unchanging, is not independently existing. Therefore it cannot be the I that we identify.
If the body were singular, having no parts, that is to say, if it were unchanging and if it were independently existing, then we could call the body the I. That’s I. We found the I, the self. We identified the I, the self, in the first essential. We develop an emotional experience.
We look at the self which arises associated with emotional experiences. The I which worries about dying. I’m going to die someday. That I. And it has certain qualities, It has a certain feel about that I.
At this level, the feeling, the sense, the image that we get from that type of I, it’s a whole. It doesn’t have any parts. We get a feeling, I’m going to die. I’m worried. I’m going to die.
That I doesn’t have any parts. We don’t have a sense of parts with that I. It just feels like some mass, some whole. I’m going to die. That’s a feeling of unchanging, not a sense of constantly changing.
That’s unchanged. I’m going to die. That I has a sense of not being dependent upon causes and conditions. It seems to be always there, permanently. Unchanging.
This is the quality, the sense, the feeling that we get about this type of I. I’m going to die. I’m worried. What’s going to happen? I’m afraid.
Trying to identify the I, get an image of it. These are some of the qualities that we can begin to sense associated with this I. We’re to look. We’re looking through the five aggregates to look to see if we can isolate. The reason that we look at the five aggregates is because we’re looking at the body mind complex.
The place that we see the I, the place where the I appears, is at the body mind complex, somewhere in here. We don’t look for it in the next room because we don’t sense the eye in the next room. We sense the I somewhere here. I’m worried. I’m going to die.
That I which is going to die feels like it’s somewhere in here. This is where we’re going to look for it, try to isolate it. What is here is the body mind complex. More systematic, more detailed way of looking at the body mind complex is in terms of the five aggregates. We’re looking at the five aggregates.
The first aggregate is the aggregate of forms. Simply most, it’s the body. First we’re looking at the body. We’re looking all through the parts of the body, the various organs, the limbs, the parts. None of them correspond to this I that we felt.
This I which is worried, I’m afraid I’m going to die, I. My leg isn’t that I. My arm isn’t that I. We’re searching for this I. Now we’re going to look at the next aggregate.
Is that clear? As I said, the most difficult is the first essential. When I say, I’m worried, I’m going to die, I’m so afraid, to give a feeling of what that I is is very difficult. We were always looking to the object of that fear, death, and death. We have never, up till now, taken a look at what is that’s being afraid, that I which is afraid of death.
We’ve always taken for granted that this I is there and it’s fearful. It’s experiencing fear. The only thing to be worried about is the death. That’s what we always look at. We always look at other people, what they’re doing to us, other things, how they’re affecting us.
We never look from this side, from the subject side, to see the nature of the I which is going through all these various experiences. We’ve never done that up to now. It’s been taken for granted. We never question it. So it’s very difficult to develop this new type of awareness.
It takes a very sensitive, acute awareness. You can do this. It’s something you can accustom yourself to, something new, it’s a new craft, like learning a new sport or something. Whatever. You know, you can play the piano.
At first your fingers are very clunky. They don’t work very well, and you get a bunch of bad notes. Then you begin to recognize a tune and develop your own techniques. Then other people can appreciate you. The aggregate of feeling is the second of these five aggregates.
Refers to most simply, think last week we went to it in a much more abstract way, but we’re looking at it very simply now. The aggregate of feelings, Feelings of pleasure, displeasure, and neutral feelings. Pleasure, displeasure, and neutral feelings. Those are all our feelings. For example, one sits down to meditate and or not.
One may like it and want to stay. One has a pleasurable feeling. One may sit down to meditate, not like it, and you get up very quickly. A displeasurable feeling occurs. Or the only other possible alternative is it doesn’t matter.
One sits down, neither wants to get up nor remain sitting one feels a neutral feeling, just indifference to what’s happening. No other possibilities. These are the three types of feelings. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we are always experiencing one of these three types of feelings. You may not be aware of them, but there’s always one of these three types of feelings constantly.
There’s one group of secondary mental factors called the ongoing five. Among these, one of them is feeling. In every moment of consciousness it’s associated with feeling, one of these three. We’re always experiencing one of these three types of feelings. They are not the self, the I.
However, none of them is unchanging. We’ve identified an I. We always have to keep referring back to the I that we identified. This is the I that we’re looking for, the I that was so fearful about dying. I’m so scared.
What are they going to do with my body when I die? A rotting in the grave. There’s I thinking about that. That’s the I we’re looking for. Now we’re looking at feelings.
Are the aggregates of feelings the I? Are any of these three feelings the I, the self? We’re beginning to break down. We’ve looked at the body. Now the other four aggregates are the mental component of the body mind complex, and we divide it into four parts.
The first is the feeling. None of these can be the I, the self that we identified, because none of them is unchanging. Sometimes we feel happy, sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we feel indifferent, neutral. Constantly our feelings are changing moment by moment, particularly. They come in turn, one arising after another.
So the self could not be the feelings because they are always changing, and they are also dependent upon causes and conditions. It’s readily apparent that our pleasurable feelings arise in dependence upon causes and conditions, Dependence upon causes and conditions we suffer. But this ‘I’ that we’re looking for is unchanging, but our feelings are constantly changing. This ‘I’ that we’re looking for is independent of causes and conditions. But our feelings are constantly arising in dependence upon changing causes and conditions.
The I that we’re looking for is singular. It has no part. But feeling has parts. Pleasurable feelings, displeasurable feelings, neutral feelings. Three parts at least.
So this can’t be the I that we’re looking for. Feelings are not the I. We looked, it’s not there. It doesn’t correspond to this I that we’re looking for. We have to carry on, we have to search onward.
The aggregate of perceptions, sometimes called aggregate of recognition discrimination, refers to the first moment of recognition of an input through the senses. We recognize what it is we’re looking at, what we’re experiencing. For example, when one experiences the color blue, one recognizes it as blue. When one feels an itch, one recognizes that feeling. When one hears a car start up, one recognizes that sound.
We’re always experiencing a constant stream of perceptions through our senses. All the time we’re awake, perceptions, after moment we’re experiencing. For example, we’re either listening to something, we’re looking at something, we’re tasting something, touching something, smelling something, or receiving or experiencing mental images within our mind. Constantly there’s never a moment that perception is not operating. We’re always recognizing something.
We have six senses: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and