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Aggregates.pdfA Burden Off the Mind: A Study Guide on the Five Aggregates6928 viewsOne of the new concepts most central to the Buddha's teaching was that of the khandhas, usually translated into English as “aggregates.†Prior to the Buddha, the Pali word khandha had very ordinary meanings: A khandha could be a pile, a bundle, a heap, a mass. It could also be the trunk of a tree. In his first sermon, though, the Buddha gave it a new, psychological meaning, introducing the term “clinging-khandhas†to summarize his analysis of the truth of stress and suffering. Throughout the remainder of his teaching career, he referred to these psychological khandhas time and again. Their importance in his teachings has thus been obvious to every generation of Buddhists ever since.
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File09_Not-self.mp3Not-Self1245 viewsPatrick 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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