Pancha-Upadana-Skanda

 Stop being the flame attached to the fuel of your afflictions.

Br Phap Lu'u

We are not the ideas we cling to. 

In Buddhism there are said to be five aggregates or Skanda's that we tend to cling to thus fueling, and energizing our adherence to these ideas like wood to a fire. Our aggregates are the wood we feed the fire...our clinging is the way the flames grasp the wood...and the fire is our suffering. The five aggregates are:

• Body
• Feelings
• Perceptions
• Mental Formations
• Consciousness

Clinging to the Idea of "Me, Mine, Myself" 

We tend to see ourselves as a separate body, distinct and separated from other bodies be they human, sentient or non- sentient by our body lines.  We look at our body in the mirror and say "Me, Mine, myself". We tend to adhere to the idea that our feelings are all important and that we must strive for , grasp and cling to pleasant feelings over the unpleasant as we dismiss the neutral.We look at our feelings and say , "Me, Mine or Myself".  We are very attached to what our five senses pick up determining that those sensory experiences are reality belonging to "Me, Mine, and Myself".  We believe that our thoughts, our moods, our emotions and mind states are who we are.  We say things like "I am angry therefore I am an angry person." Our mental formations, we cling to as "Me, Mine, Myself." And we cling to what we think we know, our consciousness, as "Me, Mine, Myself."

Clinging to the idea of "me" and "you"

So we see ourselves as a copulation of these five things and cling to this idea of "me" and "you".  I call you by your name and you become that name with that body I identify as you, with those feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness that I identify as you.  You call me by my name and "I"  become that body you identify as me, as well as all the feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness I have somehow shared with you.  This is who you believe me to be.  That is what I believe you to be.

Fire of Suffering Feeding On the Fuel 

But..is that who we really are? Or is it just an idea of self and other we cling to...Pancha-Upadana- Skanda?  As long as we grasp and cling to this idea of who we are based on these five aggregates, we are like fire feeding on the fuel these aggregates provide and we are just burning ourselves up.  We are suffering in this fire we are feeding. 

Questioning

Let's look at our so called identity as these things and question what we cling so ferociously to. 

Are you and "I" a separate body?  Do our bodies  not share and pass onto others on this planet  the same air, the same water, the same gases? Are they  not made up and dependent on the earth and the atmosphere...on its oxygen, its water, its minerals? Are they  not a collection of genes passed on through many generations?  How can you or I be separate, independent  bodies then? How can the body I look at in the mirror be "mine"? Where is the "I" in all this.

Nothing lasts in this physical world so how can we cling to an idea of "Me, Mine and Myself"  passing it off as permanent based on a body that is ever changing and impermanent?  When this body changes as it changes day to day, do "I" as the "Me, Mine, Myself" change as well? When it expires as all physical things will do...what happens to the "Me. Mine, Myself" then ? Does it expire too? Or does form just change?  The oxygen escaping back into the atmosphere, the water minerals back into the air and earth?  

How can my feelings, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and knowing be "me" when they are always changing, flowing in and flowing out?  When they arise from a 100 different winds around me? How can I be an angry person when I am only angry for a few minutes before that emotion is replaced with another? Our feelings, thoughts, emotions, moods are always changing, are they not, moment to moment? How then can we be these things? And what do we know really?  What we learn in school, family, society, from others, is that true learning, true knowing? How can that be us when it came from someone else.  The only way to know who we truly are is to experience who we really are.  

Going Beyond the Concept of "Me-ness" to Essence

"Me, Mine, Myself" is just an idea we cling to. Who we really are goes beyond ideas and concepts . It is mind stuff and mind, we know, is always trying, for preservation of "me-ness" , to create a threshold between what we are and what we are not.  It does not recognize "essence" ...the essence beneath all matter. It does not recognize that essence  as who we are. Though matter is constantly changing...this essence isn't ...It is that which witnesses the form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness in this beingness we call "me.".

Brother Phap Lu'u uses a wonderful analogy from Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching in the below video. I look deeply into this analogy and come up with so many questions. Look at river, its flow dependent on everything around it... the time of year, the amount of boulders and stuff floating around in it, its banks and strictures, the muddy bottom, the wind, the weather.  The river is all these things yet these things are  constantly changing so it is none of these things.  If you take a jar of water from the river, do you have the river in the jar?  Does the river from which the water was taken cease to be? Where does this river begin and where does it end? (And I don't just mean on a map...I mean really...in the clouds or the earth?) In a drought when the waters are evaporated back up into the atmosphere, is the river no more, or is it just in a different form until the rains come again? 

Hmm! So many wonderful questions arise the more we let go of our clinging to ideas and simply accept we know so little.

All is well

Joseph Goldstein ( 2013) Mindfulness: A practical Guide to Awakening. Boulder: Sounds True

Plum Village ( March, 2019) First Person Applied Neuroscience/ Dharma Talk with Br. Phap Lu'u. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDB4L68Pius