Patrick Kearney's Vipassana Retreat Talk at Bodhi Tree Monastery (2009)
We come to Anattalakkhana Sutta (Characteristics of not-self), where the Buddha presents the five aggregates associated with clinging and reveals their real nature. The five aggregates are one of the two main ways in which the Buddha analyses the nature of the human being. They represent what we cling to to create our sense of who we are and what the world is.
We look at the Buddha’s description of how we construct our identity through the three movements of: craving (tanha), the drive to possess; conceit (mana), our fundamental sense of separation and identity; and view (ditthi), the completed concept we have of ourselves-within-our-world. We consider how the Buddha's understanding of not-self (anatta) plays out in his understanding of life-after-life. If there is, fundamentally, no-one here, then who moves from one life to another?
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