“All appearances are unstable.”
When ones sees this through wisdom,
Then one forgoes the unsatisfying.
This is the path of purity.
– Dhammapada, verse 277. Translated Christopher J. Ash
Before returning to my fictional dialogue with Kent – in which he makes a break-through into a different order of reality, and a new way to experience himself, by enquiring experientially – I’d like to correct something that I wrote recently. At the same time I will take the opportunity to speak about a core Buddhist model for experiencing: that of the five sentient processes (khandha); which are usually unhelpfully named the five aggregates.
Kent is familiar with this teaching, and his experiential enquiry is underpinned with much meditation experience, in which he has explored his experience of being a person in terms of these five processes. If I can give a short introduction to that model, it will help you understand why he has the experiential shifts that he does in our dialogue. (Its only one of several models of experience which the Nikāya Buddha taught, but its a basic one.)
But, firstly the correction. In my post of few days back – in Process Never Arises, Never Ceases – I incorrectly named the fourth of the five sentient processes. I said it was ‘states of the psyche (or, attitudes).’ This was a lapse of attention on my part, because the fourth of the ‘five sentient processes’ is saṅkhāra in Pāli, which, in this context, I translate as fashioning tendencies (or, intentional factors). This word has a great number of translations, and it actually has a few different meanings, depending on the context. I don’t have the space to go into it’s other meanings, here. Translations of saṅkhāra in this context, include: fabrications, intentional factors, mental dispositions. formations or mental formations; and, volitional factors, volitional activities, or volitional formations – and more.
From that range you can see that it’s obviously an important aspect of ‘self and world creation.’ In all my conversations with Kent, we are particularly interested in how he creates his self/world experience. We begin, in the present dialogue, with how he creates his slight feeling of being depressed. Fashioning tendencies (saṅkhārā) play a central part in that.
As I said, the five sentient processes are more commonly called, the five aggregates (Pali: khandha; Sanskrit: skandha). It is not unusual to read, in beginner’s texts on Buddhism, that “The human being is comprised of five aggregates: body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.” However, ‘aggregates’ doesn’t convey anything experience-near for me, so I don’t use it. My version of these five primary categories for naming sentient processes in Buddhism are: form (or body), feeling-tones, perceptions, fashioning tendencies, and consciousness.
On what the Pāli-English Dictionary calls the ‘crude’ level khandha can mean: bulk, massiveness, or (gross) substance; and is used of an elephant and a tree! How are we to make experiential sense of such a word? The Nikāya Buddha spoke of the “five khandhas of clinging.” So, actually, the ‘bulk’ thing might be useful, because, out of the openness of primordial experience we cling to our sentient processes and create a bulk, a substance, and call it ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ Just like a child does to its mother. All the sentient processes play a part in this, and in the creation of sub-personalities.
Khandha, when translated as ‘aggregates’ can be misleading. ‘Aggregate’ in English gives the reader the impression that separate bits that get collected together to make one unit – they are ‘aggregated.’ It makes it sound, and sometimes it is said, that these are originally separate things – like the parts of a cart. That is probably humankind’s earliest example of reducing the human being through a machine analogy, as though a human is made up of bits. That’s an inaccurate notion, because it doesn’t fit experience. No human being is made of parts. That’s merely a way of thinking, and we shouldn’t mistake the map for the territory, the model for the person.
This is a short note, but I hope it helps.