Discussions

Great topic, Yeshe! So you know, I used the 5 aggregates in the Weekly Practice for two of the practices:

http://secularbuddhism.org/2012/02/01/weekly-practice-mindfulness-concentration/

http://secularbuddhism.org/2012/02/15/weekly-practice-5-aggregates-mental-formations/

So, obviously I feel they are very important:-) But I welcome your thoughts on those if you care to share. I feel being mindful of the aggregates is essential is seeing they are not self, in seeing our processes at work, and helping to loosen our fixation on the ego we build in our minds. I also feel they can be a good grounding point when the mind wants to go running off in undesirable directions.

But, I too, and interested in reading what others have to say. But to answer you, yes, I feel the aggregates fit into the secular approach.

I always forget what they are. I could look them up. I will probably but it would be good to be able to just do a quick revision on the thread itself.

I'm trying to remember if they are different types of sense experience or if they are another set of five behaviours or something. sigh. Brain = sieve.

Your question reminds me how no one ever challenges the six senses as laid out by the buddha. Do we really think that mind is a sense organ akin to the other five. Is thought a sense light sight, touch smell etc. Perhaps i should start another thread but yeshe what are your thoughts on this.

Hi Yeshe,

Yes, although I am careful to word it as "not self" rather than no self. We can see through mindful investigation that each of the aggregates is not self. We also see there is a selfing process, but the way self is created is an arising and disappearance of reactions, thoughts, emotions, that are not self because they are impermanent, changing, and shifting process that "feel" like self. So I see the 5 aggregates as needing the 3 characteristics for observation. Because of all that it's pointless to get attached, and I find the processes fascinating to watch.

BTW, neurobiology validates much of this now, and studies and fMRI are showing that the brain creates two illusory selves, one that feels like it experiences, and the other to observe what one experiences. We certainly observe this in meditation, and if we watch closely we see these are not static, unchanging selves, but shifting processes. It might not be accurate to say there is no self, as our minds certainly creates what feels like self, but through observing what is not self, and seeing the processes at work, we realize we need to let go of what we have mistaken for a solid feeling of self.

So, yes, secular Buddhism finds this process to be very much a naturalistic, real world phenomena, that if not observed, can create a great deal of suffering through the mistake of an inner driver, a self that is a solid being. Not so at all on mindful observation!

Great questions, Yeshe. I'm wondering if you've talked with any practicing cognitive psychologists about how they would analyze the mind. I expect there will be some overlap, but it might be interesting to learn if there were any differences. Maybe the Buddha's picture could be sharpened or improved?

I take it from your posting you do not have any problem believing the five aggregates, so that answers one of my questions.

No do not take my post to mean this. I did not look at them or consider them from the point of view of whether or not they exist or are useful.

The thing is for me, the argument that dana outlines as being one where these things have any bearing on our experience of existence of self i take to be a nuisance. I don't think we much need it. I don't like it and it does nothing for me.

If i want to think about not self, i prefer to do it in terms of our ultimate interconnectedness at hte material level. But when it comes to our experience, i cannot feel as acutely what others feel in teh same as what i feel. And certainly if don't know anything about what others are experience i can not experience any thing at all for them.

So there are degrees of intensity of experience accoring to how close it comes to our own self. This is meaningful to me and i know it has biological sense.

On the other hand the teaching on not self i can see as being important and that should be developed as being of value to human kind and i also believe it is an excellent thing to cultivate for heightened buddhist being. A more day to day word for not self is altruism. But still not-self is a useful concept.

That said it can be helpful to be acutely aware of the aggregates as processes and how little control we have over them and definitely to be able to observe them. So there is merit in the five aggregates but i still haven't looked at them as individuals and im not ready to do that right now.

Yeshe, I do happen to know someone that may be just what you're looking for -- Philippe Goldin. Though it doesn't say so on this page, he was also a monastic, though I don't recall which tradition. Let me know if you would like me to reach out to him for you (I already do plan to schedule another interview with him):

http://secularbuddhism.org/2011/12/03/episode-93-philippe-goldin-brain-changes-with-meditation/

I concur with Mark. The aggregates are not a matter of belief. It's a matter of being mindful of how they work, and many of us are in agreement with how the mind wants to attach to the aggregates as though they are self, and how they lead to emotions and reactions that cause suffering.

Aggregates exist, no doubt about it, as do our reactions to them:-) It takes a lot of mindfulness and observation to see how processes interact with aggregates. No magic here. Just a willingness to look, watch, and see what's going on.

I wonder, Yeshe, whether you think of the aggregates as the parts that make up an individual, or whether you think of them as the relationship we have to the parts? I am aware that some teachers describe the aggregates as the bits that make up a human being -- there is the body (form), and the mind (consciousness), and our feelings and our volitions and our perceptions. That when one is born, all these come together to form a person.

Linda I do not see the aggregates as parts that make up an individual. I believe the aggregates are just how we experience the world. The one physical and five mental factors come together and it is through them we experince all the different aspects of our world. They are ever changing factors, so our experiences are also ever changing.

When we cling to these aggregates and believe them to be permenant and a self we will experience dukkha. Dana has done two great meditations on the aggregates in her daily practice section of this website. I think if you follow her instructions you will be able to see the aggregates for what they are; five ever changing mental and physical factors. As Dana puts it - 'We can see through mindful investigation that each of the aggregates is not self.'

I will claim to have taken a long time to consider this question!

Actually, I'm glad I had the chance to read Linda's article and her pieces on DO before I answered, because they have helped to clarify my thinking on this topic. One clue is that the aggregates are often referred to in the suttas as "the five aggregates subject to clinging." If we cross-reference the aggregates to DO, then, and remember that clinging is the condition of becoming, one tends to see the aggregates as a description of factors that are functioning in the dependent origination of consciousness, which in turn (as Linda points out) is a description of how the "self" comes into being. In Linda's interpretation, what drives DO is the self seeking to know itself by seeing itself reflected in phenomena. The aggregates are the elements by which that process takes place, and so they must be predicated on a conceptual self-other dualism (or else there would be no rupa for vedana to arise from).

By "make up from birth" do you mean are they endemic to human consciousness? Or just of the "false consciousness" of the self (or our inability to realize the not-self nature of what we take to be a self)? I don't think either Gotama or Sartre were playing word games when they said that consciousness is always consciousness of something. Consciousness exists as a process of self-regulation, and so it too is predicated on the duality of self and other and is bound up in perceiving what the self wants (and ignoring everything else). As long as we need to find something to eat and drink and some way to protect ourselves from various hazards, that duality is operating and the elements described in the skandhas will be functioning.

So what happens if we fully internalize the truth that all phenomena are not self, and that the dualities that our consciousness is based on are just convenient fictions? Is a consciousness without duality possible? Or does the fictional nature of duality simply become something we are conscious of, so that, while the aggregates still function, they no longer cling? That shuffling you hear may be angels dancing on a pinhead. What I experience in practice is that as I come to recognize impermanance and emptiness, first on an experiential level and then on a visceral one, my self is less reactive, insists less on its demands and is less afraid of its aversions, and so I move through the world with less suffering and less conflict with others. Slowly, gradually, and only perceptably when I remember what my life used to be like. I have glimpses in practice where I experience that there is no difference between the perceiver and the perceived, but then I get up from my zafu and make breakfast. Could one live that way? Would one want to? And do these questions matter, given that at my present rate of progress I'll maybe get to be half as clinging as I am now?

Oh! Do I remember correctly that you made some reference to this idea in your article?

I think you may be having a bit of a circular argument problem here. If we assume that the aggregates/birth in DO are describing a moment in the process of the production and maintainance of the self, then the aggregates are not a "parts list" as you put it but, as I said, the elements through which that selfing process takes place. But this reciprocal nature of aggregates/DO here is a result of your base assumption. Similarly, if you take the Theravadin view that DO describes physical rebirth, than it would reinforce the idea that the aggregates are a parts list. Interestingly, this would be to assign the aggregates stable identities, once again contradicting the principal of anatta. I guess I don't see the inclusion of the aggregates in Sariputta's description of DO in MN 9 as "evidence" that he is referring to the birth of the self concept as opposed to physical rebirth -- the fact that your interpretation of DO is consistent with Gotama's core teachings, and that the traditional Theravadin interpretation is not, is much more compelling, in my mind anyway.

Here's my question: Does a baby, at birth, *have* perception? Does a baby, at birth, have "sankhara" -- however it is defined -- "volitional actions"? "formations"? Can the five aggregates ever actually be "a parts list" for a being from the moment of birth?

Linda -- I saw your post on that. As much as I'd love to do it, my spousal unit is being very understanding and compassionate to let me do four days in Boulder this summer for Buddhist Geeks. I suspect that compassion would dissipate if I told her I also want to spend two weeks in California studying Pali. There is also the question of whether I will have two weeks of vacation left after the upcoming campaign season. Are you going?

Quote from Joshin on June 21, 2012, 06:44
To me, this seems like a bit of a trick question....I would love to better understand the rationale for asking this question in the context of secular Buddhism.

Which question, Joshin, the original post? Or mine down here toward the end?

Thanks for the clarification, Joshin. It has more to do with what I call "the front door" than it does with anything else. The answer is complicated -- many-layered, like the way the Buddha teaches! -- but definitely not academic, mostly because I'm not just concerned with how what the Buddha taught is received and practiced by secular Buddhists, but I think about everyone: all current Buddhists, and those who will be approach it with interest in the future.

Sometimes I get accused of being a Buddha-worshipper, or making arguments from authority: What difference can it possibly make what he "actually" said or meant? I have huge admiration for the man, but I don't worship him; I don't consider him an ultimate authority (I would not defer to him on a point I thought he made where he was wrong, so he's not, for me, that sort of authority).

The argument I am making is that what I learned early on of his teaching -- just the very-most basics -- has been extremely sensible, clearer and more straight-to-the-point than anyone else's system; and usable too. When I look more deeply, I keep finding it even moreso. The more deeply I look the better it gets; in particular the more effective it is in my life. I'm not saying that we should look deeply at what he says "because he's an authority" but "because he's damned good at seeing us clearly and helping us see ourselves clearly".

Point one about this is that the better we understand what such a smart man was saying, it seems likely the more helpful it will be. Point two is the one relevant to "what the five aggregates are". Point two is that if it can be shown that he really did have an entirely pragmatic, secular approach -- that rebirth really wasn't an integral part of his method -- then when those becoming interested in Buddhism start exploring what it's about (before they've even quite understood that what matters is not what some authority says is important, but how the practice works in one's life) they'll feel as comfortable exploring secular Buddhism as traditional Buddhism. Whereas, right now, what I am seeing is that many newcomers aren't drawn to secular Buddhism because it is perceived as inauthentic. They start off with the classic questions about how rebirth can work where anatta is understood, and when they get both answers (the traditional -- but authentic! -- tap dance, vs the secular -- but made up! -- logic) they go for the tap dance because it sounds so good and has a 2,500 year history that gives it legitimacy.

All this secular talk about "bracketing off" some of the Buddha's teachings and "re-inventing it from scratch" and coming up with a "Buddha-inspired system that is a better fit for our times" is all well-and-good for someone who knows the people involved, their intentions and methods, but is off-putting for those just beginning their investigations.

And where this leads: the difference between practice-with-belief-in-rebirth and practice-with-an-agnostic-approach-to-rebirth is HUGE. I know it is the PC thing for a secular Buddhist to say, "Oh, we love the traditions. We don't want to change a thing about the traditions." But I'm not *really* a secular Buddhist (I'm a skeptical Buddhist) and though the traditions may want to squash me like a bug for saying it, I do hope they'll come to see that teaching rebirth undermines what the Buddha was trying to get us to see in a really significant way.

This is why "Are the aggregates ever a parts list or are they only ever about how we think about what makes up a human?" is so important, because it is one of many key points that will show us that the Buddha did not want us to spend time living life as if rebirth was a fact -- because (1) that worldview puts the emphasis on doing good deeds for all the wrong reasons (good deeds are good! but the reasons foster a concern with self) and (2) it teaches people how to look for evidence and fit it to theory rather than look at evidence and let it knock down theory if it should.

The last thing I would say about this is that I get told to beware that I'm not inadvertently "inventing the Buddha in my own image". I understand why this is said; I understand that it could be so. But I also have seen enough of what's in there to be pretty certain that the Buddha was actually pragmatic and secular -- the reason I was able to uncover what (I am, again, pretty certain) is the original structure of dependent arising when no one else has managed it is *because* I've seen the way so many of the pieces fit together in that secular, pragmatic way. Because I don't let the traditionalists and the naysayers take over my brain and believe them when they say, "2,500 years of teachers can't be wrong..."

I keep the doubt they plant in place in my brain to keep me paying attention to how I'm researching, and what my motivations are, but I have to keep this in mind, too: If the Buddha *was* a pragmatic, secular teacher who took an agnostic approach, how will we ever see that if we all fall for the "He wasn't -- all our teachers say so! -- so don't even bother to look!" line?