Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “What is the ‘I’ that fears dying?” — Ven Jampa Gendun uses that question to anchor this 47-minute talk, which moves through two arcs. He first maps three levels of faith required for genuine motivation: convincing faith (real belief that transformation is possible), longing faith (aspiration once the path’s logic takes hold), and clear faith (the direct taste of integration). He then completes the hearer’s level of selflessness analysis — the first of four philosophical rungs his series is ascending. The core meditation instruction: stop examining the object of fear and turn attention to the subject — identify the felt sense of a singular, unchanging “I,” then search for it methodically through the five aggregates, limb by limb, feeling by feeling. Neither the body nor constantly shifting feelings match that assumed self. Suited to practitioners following this ongoing series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 3 PA 1989 08 11.mp3
UUID: 5e060098-2760-47aa-8cbb-67dc1aa22f11
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-08-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.7 minutes
Words: ~5,912
We’ll just begin with the usual few minutes of mindfulness of breathing. Generation of motivation. On the basis of going for refuge, that is simply the motivation for taking a direction, commitment to a path, method of growth, is renunciation and faith. Most 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. It 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 shows 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.
This develops an anxiety. Also coupled with anxiety is a very positive quality necessary of faith. Faith, in the Buddhist sense, has the idea of a longing, aspiration. In some sense, it has 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, 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. Becomes a debutante in the spiritual supermarket. One has to have some convincing faith, some real belief that it’s possible to transform oneself, to actually solve ones problems. Then, in dependence upon that, there 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. They’re very much convinced without doubt that water is going to solve their problems. They’re in pain from thirst. They’re very convinced, they believe very deeply that there’s pain in a feeling.
If I had water, I would alleviate it. This is a 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 trickling nearby. A great longing arises in their mind. Like coming in contact with teachings, you are convinced that there’s 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’re a legitimate, logical, reasonable, rational way to skillfully conduct your life, your behavior. That you can see that there’s a possibility of going beyond some the unskillful patterns, of the unhealthy, unwholesome patterns which you’ve been down until now. That you have heard about the possibility of transformation, gaining the conviction that it’s possible, and actually seeing the logic of the method, one develops 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. There’s a great longing that arises.
You actually go down to this maybe a bubbling stream and you 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. So this is the different levels in different types of faith. Faith in the sense of becoming that which we respect.
Faith in the sense of incorporating, developing. There’s no The 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 afflictive 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.
There’s no unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and Śākyamūni Buddha. When we go for refuge, we’re going to refuge to something which has been actualized, which lies potential within ourselves. There is an outer refuge and an inner refuge, and having faith that someone has actually done it. 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. In 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 various doctrinal differences, but the essential difference is the vision, the expanse of one’s horizon, perspective, on 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 to be more than simply creating more confusion to others, to that degree that I develop myself, to that degree that I’m available to be a real service, to be a real help, to alleviate sufferings. It all comes down to a question of becoming aware of one’s own suffering.
The very first are the four simple 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 that 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.
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, particular patterns, and how in order to go beyond these patterns, even in a conventional, let alone in ultimate sense, requires a great deal of determination. We are very much our habits, these reoccurring patterns. We focus on particular patterns, and 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. We’re 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, 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. It’s 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. Socially, we exist in relationship to others, and we can never run away from this fact. Some day, 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, 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, or 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, and 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, into this evolution of mind.
This becomes the central focus of our life. 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. 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. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until enlightenment through the merit I create by practicing the giving and the other perfections. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. 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, the 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, the five aggregates. Ignorance is the instinct of, we talked about, bewilderment. And the five aggregates of the struggle to cope with the panic. We panicked.
The situation hasn’t changed, we now view it with a sense of insecurity, bewilderment, 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 for 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, a very straightforward way.
Aggregate of forms is an initial sensory input. The aggregate of feelings represents the initial reactivity, a 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’s a feeling, and there’s a feeler who’s experiencing that feeling. So 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 constructions represents We’ve discerned that there’s an experience, there’s a feeler, and there’s an object being felt. And now all of the mental patterns, emotions that are 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, begin to see how it’s 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 it 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 very 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. Don’t question.
We accept the fact that 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, as they begin to analyze it, begin to question, look into it, they begin to see, Well, it’s not all that solid as it appears. It’s made up of 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, but it’s not apparent.
First, we unquestionably 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 never even bother 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. Now we’re beginning to see that 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, the mist as the sun rises in the morning. Begins to clear. We’re wearing it out. Have to carry on 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’s many ways that we can analyze the self, different methods. We categorize the self, our world, 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, or most 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 is running the show, that there’s someone feeling my feelings, thinking my thoughts. There’s something standing in the background, making decisions, controlling 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, then we are defensive with respect to the object. We may even seek to destroy that object. If we interpret an object as either fostering or neither threatening nor confirming their self, then we’re simply 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 at, that we’ve always clung to. When we find, and if we find, if we find that the self does not exist, 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. 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 I. As a method to help us develop that expert ability, at the hearer’s level we’re making use of the technique of the four essentials. The essentials of ascertaining the object of negation, the essentials of ascertaining the pervasion, the essentials of ascertaining the lack of oneness, the essential of ascertaining the lack of difference. We’ve talked about these.
We’re talking about a third of these four. 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 looks like. As I’ve emphasized, this is the most important of these four identifying what it is, the appearance of the eye, how does it feel.
If we don’t have this identification, when we look for it, we aren’t going to be sure what we’re looking for. Therefore, we can come to no forceful conclusion. We’re trying to recognize singular, 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.
Either it must be identical or it must be different. We come to that determination. We’re presently looking at the third essential, the essential of ascertaining lack of oneness, lack of is this self identical, is it the same, is it one with the body mind complex, 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 environment. Take for granted that there is a world out there beyond our senses and that our body partakes of this world. There is a world out there and 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?
So we have to investigate the body systematically, taking it limb by limb, part by part, organ by organ, and seeing 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 chop my hand off, do I lose my I myself? What do we mean by hand? Sounds easy. What happens is if you had all your fingers chopped off, is that still a hand? What happens if there’s paralyzed?
It doesn’t work. Is that still a hand? Now what does it take to have a hand? What’s necessary? Some lepers don’t have any fingers or thumbs.
They 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, and the hand doesn’t work. A hand doesn’t have to be able to grasp things to have a hand, to be a hand. Don’t know.
Guess it may be asked 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 the I. We found the I, the self. We identified the I, the self, in the first essential and developed an emotional experience. We looked 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. It has a feeling of unchanging, but not a sense that it’s constant changing. It’s unchanging.
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. We’re trying to identify that I, get an image of it.
These are some of the qualities that we can begin to sense associated with this I. Then we’re going 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 eye, the place where the eye 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 eye somewhere here. I’m worried. I’m going to die. That eye 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. So we’re looking at the five aggregates, and the first aggregate is the aggregate of forms. And simply most, it’s the body.
So first we’re looking at the body, 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. The I which is worried, I’m afraid I’m going to die. My leg isn’t that I. My arm isn’t that I.
We’re searching for this eye, and we’re going to look at the next aggregate of it. 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’re always looking for the object of that fear, 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 it 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. And 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 questioned it.
So it’s very difficult to develop this new type of awareness. So it takes a very sensitive, acute awareness. But really, it can do this. It’s something you can customize yourself to. It’s something new.
It’s a new craft. It’s like learning a new sport or something. Whatever. You know, play piano or something. And of course, your fingers are very clumsy.
They don’t work very well. You hit a bunch of bad notes. Then you begin to recognize a tune, then you develop your own techniques, then other people can appreciate your abilities. The aggregate of feelings, the second of these five aggregates, refers to most simply think last week we went through it in a much more abstract way, but it can be placed simply now. I have good feelings, feelings of pleasure, displeasure, and neutral feelings.
Pleasure, displeasure, neutral feelings. Those are all our feelings. For example, when 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, want to get up very quickly.
This displeasurable feeling occurs. Or the only other possible alternative, 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 it, but there’s always one of these three types of feelings, constantly. There is one group of secondary mental factors called the ongoing five, and among these one of them is feeling. Every moment of consciousness is 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 am I going to do with my body when I die? It’ll rot and decay. It means I am thinking about that.
That’s the I we’re looking for. Now we’re looking at feelings. Are any of these three feelings the I, the self? We’re beginning to break down and we’ve looked at the body. Now the other four aggregates are the mental component of the body mind complex.
We divide it into four parts. We first this, the feelings. 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, practically.
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 really apparent that our pleasurable feelings arise in dependence upon causes and conditions, In 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 ever-changing causes and conditions. The I that we’re looking for is singular. It has no parts. 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 look. 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 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, moment 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 traditionally within Buddhism, the mind, mental sense, is the sixth. We’re sitting in meditation.
We may be experiencing our breathing, practicing mindfulness of breathing, experiencing the in and out of the breath. Then images begin to float in our mind. We experience some kind of images, and we hear a car.