Tag: sankharas

The Five Sentient Processes

On August 25, 2015

“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.

Turning Toward the Deathless

By admin

On July 10, 2015

In Meditation, Mindfulness, Practices, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

Ch’an master Huang-po (died 850 CE) said: When you are suddenly facing the end of life, what will you use to fend off birth and death? Don’t wait till you are thirsty to dig the well. If you neglect to do the work, then when the end approaches your limbs will not be properly arranged, the road ahead will be vague and you will whirl about in confusion bumping into things. How painful. I urge you all to take advantage of the period when you are physically strong to seek and find clear insight. This key link is very easy. It is just that you must mobilize your will to the utmost to do it.

Practising dissolution of the elements this morning, I was aware, during the process of a feeling, just a tad, of claustrophobia. Dissolution of the elements, sometimes called dissolution of the body, is a practice of dying. It simulates the dying process, and naturally, I was going to find my options somewhat narrowed down, heh?

I haven’t suffered seriously from claustrophobia, but sometimes I feel a touch of it, when in movies I see cavers in a tight spot; or when I’ve had to stay put in an MRI – as I had to do last August, to explore my cxancer. At these times, I can feel a touch of suffocating feeling. I can’t imagine what full-on claustrophobia must be like. I’ve met people who can’t get in elevators, for example.

Anyhow, while I was practising dying – as I came to the part where the senses diminish in their acuity, and the body grows weaker, then I began to feel a little of that feeling, the MRI feeling. But I stayed there for it, included it. Why not? It’s just something that moves. And, it passed naturally. Because all things do pass.

Then, as the meditation progressed, at deeper levels where the sankharas diminish, that feeling came back again. How interesting! Sankharas (its Sanskrit, but this will be an English word some day) are mental factors that are constantly at play, fashioning our experience. In their unrefined mode, they are mostly motivated by orienting toward pleasant experiences, and away from neutral or negative ones. When I was in the MRI back in August, my meditative task in there – the mindfulness task – was to not follow those tendencies to dissociate; habitual tendencies to get away from the unpleasant features of the experience. In such circumstances, I usually invite space, so that the unpleasant can be accommodated.

Maybe this description is for another day, though. Right now, back to the Mediation on the Dissolution of the Elements. At the level of encountering the dissolution of the fashioning tendencies, then I began, again, to feel a touch of claustrophobia.

I sensed into the suffocating experience quite directly, including it in awareness. And, later, I was able to recall it, to investigate it further. I felt into it, knowing it from the inside. I could see what was happening with the loss at each level of the meditation: there was a dropping away of familiar behaviour possibilities. This means a loss of sense of a static self. (See this explanation here about the sense of self and behaviour possibilities, if you like.) The familiar sense of a permanent ’I’ constructed on the known behaviour possibilites, dissolves. This disappearance of behaviour possibilities is where the claustrophobia comes from. I’m reminded of something that John Tarrant Roshi said once, about Zen practice. (I’ve looked for the reference, but can’t find it; but it was something like:) In Zen practice, it’s like digging a well, and at some stage you find you have dug very deep, and you realize: there’s not much room in here!

This could be said about any honest self-inquiry, that it’s meant to humiliate my egoic pretension that I am the master of my reality. Actually, that pretension is just the sankharas talking, fashioning their version of mastery, which is false mastery. At this point, lest I give the wrong impression. Not all sankharas are so troublesome. The fashioning processes that were at work in shaping this meditation, and in maintaining my mindful attention during the process, these are healthy sankharas. They aid in the process of turning toward the deathless. Dying practice is good for finding this out. “You must mobilize your will to the utmost to do it.” Neither is all ‘sense of self’ false. (Read that other post.)

However, just now I’m helping us be familiar with the terrain of a mind getting used to its certain death. In the meditation, my thoughts went occasionally to unresolved things, between me and others, and also to some pleasant thoughts. But the fact that there is no room to move in dying, only showed how irrelevant these things were, and how irrelevant having small-minded thoughts will be at the time of death. Yet, isn’t this the habit that we daily foster, by following such thoughts? So, we’re daily, whether know it or not, are training wrongly for death. How so? I’m daily training my mind to follow any old fashioning tendency that arises, in response to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling-tones or experiences. If I don’t daily investigate the nature and condition of this mind, and if I don’t get to know its habits, then – though my digital gadgets, my books, my fave scarf, and even my loved ones can’t follow me into death – the result of my mental habits will accompany me into the dying process, diminishing my capacity for the marvellous discoveries to be made there.

I heard once of men on death row, who who after some mindfulness training, were quite amazed to find their minds were still plotting revenge, plans that were to be fulfilled when they got out! Such scenarios reduce one’s energy for the kind of presence needed, for peace and awakening, at the time of death. Because, regular dying practice is a help to utilise death as an opportunity for awakening.

As the process went to its end, there was the still, silent space of fundamental, boundless, luminous ground. Here exist and not-exist wouldn’t make any sense, if there was any sense of false self left to apply those labels. Because of the accumulation of habit tendencies (sankharas, again), this luminous space is traditionally said to flash by incredibly quickly for those who have not become acquainted with it during life, before the rebirth process occurs. I don’t know about the rebirth process, but if you train yourself in this process, I’m sure you will verify that bit about how quickly the space could pass, if your not familiar with the fundamental nature of the mind. Bounlessness is so intimate that it’s easy to miss. It’s said to be what water is to a fish.

And, even just to relax in the earlier stages of the death process – let alone talk about resting in boundlessness – it’s clear to me that one needs to be like space, at all times. Any identity founded in what comes and goes – that is, built on the five sentient processes (khandhas in Pāḷi) – any kind of identity goes at death.

So, the good news is: Sit out the claustrophobia, and space opens up. I could sense this morning, stronger than usual, in the meditating body, the space element corresponded with a point in the heart. That’s the good news.