Ch. 9 - Questions and Answers on Five Aggregates Practice, Sense of Self and the Cognitive Process
Difference Between Vipassana and the Purification of View
How Much Reviewing of States is Necessary?
The Shaking of Bhavanga Receiving Experiences Causes the Sense of Self
Five Aggregates Practice is the Preparatory Work for Vipassana
[This discussion arose during a five month retreat and is concerned with breaking down the mental experience. It explains how to review each mind moment and looks at the experience of sense of self within the cognitive process.]
Difference Between Vipassana and the Purification of View
Q: What would the difference between vipassanā and what we’re doing now be?
A: Vipassanā strictly speaking is taking the three characteristics – impermanence, suffering and no-self – as the objects of meditation. Currently you are still investigating formations to see them more clearly, putting the spreadsheet together, but when you are seeing formations as no-self then it is vipassanā. Whilst you are seeing feeling as feeling, perception as perception then it is really filling out the spreadsheet of understanding with wise attention. It will still have a beneficial effect on you, but when you meditate on no-self, suffering or impermanence that is when the practice starts to really do its work of cutting off clinging. Hopefully your insight into no-self is maturing. The purpose is gradually to work towards a definitive experience of no-self.
At this stage it is hoped that even while you may not yet have experience of no-self, you start to experience self more clearly as a construct that you are entangled with, rather than not noticing you are entangled in it. Is that something that’s happening? That’s the purpose of the exercise really. It is to root out and to illustrate how much we are entangled with perception of self in every moment of consciousness. And we can start to begin to disentangle this, so we start to get into a more awakened experience, gradually on a more regular basis, until eventually we find that we just tend to abide in a more immediate state and less of a contrived, self-observing, wrapped up with self, state.
Start to notice how much of your energy is consumed with self and how much energy could be freed if you could just let it go. What percentage of your energy do you think is consumed with obsessing with self? Almost all of it, isn’t it? Almost everything you do is wrapped up with self. How exhausting!
Q: Even with the amount of four elements practice we’ve done when I look at materiality so often I’m amazed that my view, my perception, is wrong.
A: Yes. Well now you are starting to sharpen your investigation so you see how the insight is now becoming quite sharp. This is the prep work for vipassanā so that your insight is sharp when you do vipassanā. Now look at how much of your meditation practice, your spiritual practice has been actually polishing your ego and coming to a more pleasing idea of self. All of it is, right up until you finally get that that is not what the practice is about.
These ideas: How much wisdom do I have? How enlightened am I? How well am I doing? Self is right there in the way, all the time, until you start to spot that it has started to not be in the way. That is what awakening is. Starting to spot that self is not in the way. It has got nothing to do with how well and how long you can sit and meditate. The real practice is whether it translates into a shift in your experience that means you are more present, more immediate, less contrived, less self-obsessed, less self-observing and less self-scrutinizing. That’s it really.
So there’s a huge paradox – you have to do an exhaustive process of self-investigation for the purposes of getting beyond self. So yes, just let it gradually have its effect on you. Don’t try and contrive that experience. This doesn’t work. It is about noticing a gradual shift in your experience. This is why I keep saying to you sometimes it takes quite a long time to figure out really where you are at, and really where you are at is: How does the practice translate back into your momentary day to day experience?
How Much Reviewing of States is Necessary?
Q: What happens when you are unclear about what you are looking at? Do we have to know the whole cognitive process? Like when we talked about the fear, the doubt? Sometimes you get stuck, you can’t actually see clearly what you are looking at.
A: When you do get far enough to experience no-self, then try to see self, i.e. your idea and sense of self encroaching upon your experience every moment.
Q: But does it matter if you don’t know all the bits that are contained within the cognitive process?
A: No, what you have to notice is that which is still too compact to remove self from. So in this instance it is the fear and your experience of fear that we were talking about yesterday. You are trying to see no-self but you can’t see no-self in the fear because the fear is a result of self and attachment to self, producing compactness in the experience. So see how ego-clinging is absolutely wrapped up with the experience of fear.
Q: Also, what I meant was; for this session do we have to break down all the cetasikā?
A: You can’t break the cetasikā down. They are the discrete mental factors that make up your experience of mind. In the same way that you cannot break hardness down into something simpler, so you cannot break attachment or restlessness down into something simpler. So in this instance you at least have to break down the compactness of your mind to get beyond your fear. So you have to see what this experience of fear is made up of. And then you have to try to get beyond perception of self to no perception of self. That’s the point. No-self is not an idea we are trying to come to. No-self is literally when there is no sense of self in our experience. This is what starts to free up.
It first arises in our samatha practice when we enter jhāna and starts to appear in our vipassanā practice when equanimity matures to the point that bhavaṅga is no longer disturbed. It comes about because of our absorption in the suchness of what we are doing or experiencing, and the quieting of the mind that this brings. Please pay close attention to this because there seems to be much vagueness about this idea of no-self. It is not enough to come to the view that, “because my experience is made up only of the five aggregates, and these five aggregates are conditioned, therefore there is no self”. This is only the view that is reached through reasoning.
Many people have been practising only from this perspective, but it is not enough to bring us to a definitive experience of no-self. That starts to arrive as bhavaṅga mind states are brought gradually to cessation through the development of equanimity and finally cut off in the moment of Path Knowledge. Please try to understand there is a process that comes about and performs a function upon the mind. And that process is the clear, definitive experience of something that is beyond the mind. That is ‘No-Self’.
Prior to this it is only cittamayapaññā. I have already explained that while this helps to bring conviction it is not enough to free us. Only the experience of no-self frees us, and that is the point where all sense or experience of self is removed. This is the point that shows us that it is the appearance of sense of self in our moment to moment experience that makes it not satisfying, or suffering.
I cannot emphasise this point enough to you. It is the very heart, the very essence of the practice and often glossed over in the texts and commentaries. So please take a look at my previous chapter “Don’t Get Lost Down the Rabbit Hole...” Really we are stalking the ego. When you go far enough there will be no fear, but when we don’t go far enough fear and attachment to self will remain.
The purpose of wise attention is to break down that attachment to self. So, for example, it’s like when you couldn’t see four elements in pain when you first started meditating you only saw pain in your knee. Gradually you saw your knee as four elements instead. When it was pain in your knee you couldn’t see it as no-self. When you could see it as four elements you started to see it as materiality, the sense of self in the experience was gone.
The pain didn’t disappear when you reflected on no-self. In fact it probably comes back at that time, because actually when you start reflecting on no-self you actually tend to become smothered in self again, don’t you? It only disappears when you are absorbed deeply enough in your experience that momentarily all perception of self is gone. If you review your practice with enough mindfulness you will see this clearly.
The same thing goes for while you are experiencing fear, you experience it as self, ego-clinging and dhukka. But when you break the compactness down, then you strip that fear of its component parts in the same way you strip the pain down into four elements, then you start to see, “Ah, that’s how it is.” And whilst you are doing this the fear loses its grip on you. And that’s basically how you let the fear go.
So it’s just a deeper, more skilful way of doing what you’ve started to do before. But now you are developing the capacity to review all the five aggregates in a similar sort of way to the way you’ve reviewed the body before. See the body, see the feeling, the perception and the formations aggregate that all together create the experience of fear. Fear is a compact experience of all of these things together. This is why concentration is so important. Without enough concentration we will not see clearly enough what is going on, and so have to fill in the gaps with reflection. There is still so much self in reflection. Try to see this.
Q: So would it be a good time to sort of go and re-look over all the mental factors in the text?
A: You can keep reading through the text so they are more in the front of your mind, so when something comes up you might spot what it is. But only use what you read to break the compactness down of that which can’t be seen as feeling, perception, volition and consciousness. Otherwise your mind will just be too busy. You only need to go far enough to break down your experience into a momentary experience of five aggregates. If you are stuck at fear and you can’t break it down into five aggregates, you can’t see the feeling, you can’t see unwise attention that conditions your perception, you can’t see where the clinging to self is. Then you should look for self and see all five aggregates as smothered in self.
The fear isn’t just in the formations aggregate, it’s in perception, in feeling, in all five aggregates. Fear smothers the whole five aggregates. It is not just a cetasikā. Do you understand what I’m saying? Think about the role your feeling plays in the experience of fear for example. Sometimes you can only perceive the self part, self-clinging in one part of the five aggregates. When something as overwhelming as fear is there, it’s like your whole being is consumed with it. There’s self in every aspect of your experience. But the more you can break your experience down, the more you find the practice has a sort of unravelling effect on you. You see the impermanence of things, their instability or you see their no-self.
Q: What about the idea that when you are experiencing fear you ask yourself, “Who’s afraid?” You can come to a shift of perspective, rather than analysing.
A: Who’s afraid? That’s right. Because it’s a projection and this stops the projection in its tracks. What am I afraid of? You could try that. But you still need to break the compactness of the experience down. Even if you just feel the feeling in the body, “Ah look, there it is in the body. What am I afraid of?” You see the ideas that you are clinging to that are making you afraid, and then see it as all wrong view, it is all illusion. Or you can see it in terms of the mental states. What’s afraid?
The Shaking of Bhavanga Receiving Experiences Causes the Sense of Self
Like I said, eventually you come to the point where you can start to recognise that it is bhavaṅga that causes the perception of self to remain. When you break the five aggregates down you are still left with bhavaṅga receiving the experiences momentarily. And it’s the intensity with which bhavaṅga receives that experience, and the shaking it produces in bhavaṅga, that gives the sense that this is me.
So you’ll finally come to see why equanimity is the key to removing self completely from your experience. Eventually, because of equanimity your experience lands so gently in bhavaṅga, it doesn’t shake the heart base. So when fear is in the mind-moment that registers in bhavaṅga, there is such a strong impact. There is so much self in it. But once the volition disappears from the mind-moment then the experience becomes more impersonal. It is experienced more directly and less personally until such time as the bhavaṅga mind states are cut off in the moment of Path Knowledge.
Prior to that, it is the presence of equanimity that removes the sense of self from your experience. The disturbance of equanimity that impinges on bhavaṅga brings the sense of self back into the experience. This is the experience you have to come to. So keep doing it, keep doing it. This explains why it is equanimity to formations that opens the door to cessation, to Nibbāna. Nothing short of that will remove self completely from your experience. So let me repeat. Don’t get lost in trying to formulate the view or idea of no-self. That is absolutely not the point.
Q: With the sense of projecting yourself into the future or memories from the past, there is a sense of self. So when you think in the future this will happen and this will be nice it creates a sense of self, when you see yourself in the future, there’s a strong sense of self there. How do I unpick that?
A: Well, you just see the five aggregates in that projection of self into the future. You can review the feeling that you have with you now that is associated with the projection into the future. You can review the formations that arise with you now associated with the idea of the future and you can look at the perception as that projection which sees myself in the future instead of realising it is just a continual process of five aggregates arising and passing away.
Eventually you’ll become more and more skilful and you can snapshot any experience and break it down. That’s the purpose of what you are doing now. It is to break down your experience so that when you are doing vipassanā there is no hiding. It is like I said – while you are reviewing whatever you are reviewing when doing vipassanā, it is the preparatory work that feeds your reviewing.
So all the elements of the aggregates have been known to you. You don’t always have to be seeing four elements in materiality, it is the fact that you are not seeing materiality as your body. So when reviewing perception you don’t always have to be seeing the no-self view, you just have to know that perception is not self.
There is a point once you have reviewed the five aggregates enough that they are known for what they are and having been known you can review their arising and passing. Your mind now accepts this is the truth – formations are impermanent, feeling is impermanent, perception is impermanent, consciousness is impermanent, body is impermanent, none of it is self. You know it as surely as you know that the fire is hot once you have been burned by it enough times. Now you can practice vipassanā.
The Buddha said; “I do not teach the Ariya path that leads to the remainderless cessation of the cankers to those who have not come to the knowledge of: This is the body, this is its arising, this is its passing away. This is the feeling, this is its arising and its passing away, and likewise for the other aggregates. But to those who have come to know these five aggregates thus, I teach the Ariya Magga Phala for the cessation of suffering.”
Five Aggregates Practice is the Preparatory Work for Vipassana
So the point is, this five aggregates practice that you are doing is the preparatory work that makes the mind suitable for the practice of vipassanā. Otherwise you will be doing vipassanā on concepts, and then no matter how long you think you are watching arising and passing your mind will not take Path Knowledge because it will find somewhere to cling to self.
So, how far do you have to go down the rabbit hole to make you feel, “Ahh, maybe this is enough?” So maybe when we start doing vipassanā, this reviewing phase will be enough to take you to Path Knowledge. If it is not, then we go to the third round after Christmas when we will really look in even more detail. And when there is really no refuge, the really, really stubborn clinging to self gets dismantled, by the absolutely exhaustive method. But hopefully you don’t have to go all the way to the very, very bitter end. It would be nice to think you would give up the ego without that much of a fight. No? That is how it is.
So, my teacher’s way of teaching was for those who won’t give up without a fight. Well, I am now introducing you to the fight. Let’s see if you are still clinging after this. But remember we aren’t introducing you to the fight because victory lies in knocking your opponent down. No. It lies in reaching the point where you don’t have to fight any more. Remember that.
Why do we teach you the eight jhānas? Not so you can delight and bliss out but so you don’t take refuge in clinging to those subtle states. At the end of the day it is not for any other purpose but to show that the most subtle states of bliss that you can experience are not ultimately satisfying.
Why would you review twenty or one hundred past lives? Not out of egoic interest. That is just obsession with self. We do it to see how much we have suffered and caused suffering, and to break down attachment to self. Not so you can learn about what you did in the life before this. That’s actually only attachment to self. So how far down the rabbit hole do you have to go until you say, “Okay, I’ve seen enough. I let go.” That remains to be seen for each and every one of you.
Q: What’s the best way to structure the practice during our sits. Should we just abide for a bit then snapshot?
A: Every one of you now will be inclining differently, there will be some things appearing clearly to you, that you’ll just be able to snapshot clearly each moment. Actually the process that is occurring is: After the experience registers in bhavaṅga, in bhavaṅga you catch it as that which has just passed, and you are actually bringing it back up out of your memory. While you are watching your experience it’s too quick.
But after the event, with enough mindfulness you pull what has passed back up from bhavaṅga and hold that experience that you have just been through as if you’ve just pressed pause on the movie. In that moment you can break it down and see what was going on there. I’m just leaving you to develop that for now. You are really doing it in bhavaṅga – snap shotting the experience, holding it, pressing pause and then you should investigate it and you will start to see; “Okay, that’s what was going on there.”
You can do it on any past moment. When the experience becomes too compact and you can’t see the five aggregates then grab that compact experience and stop on it so that you can break it down. In that way you become familiar with what it is that is responsible for your experience of self, and you gain confidence in what part that plays in suffering or making the experience unsatisfactory. You will start to get a fluidity to the practice and the experience will break down, “I can see the perception, I’m looking at the feeling, etc.”
But if it becomes too compact, grab it and stop on it, instead of following the present stream. Hold that past moment and break it down. This skill is a skill you have to develop. Eventually you will become very skilful at it. You can grab any mind-moment and resolve it and unwind it.
It is the same process by which you can see your bhavaṅga object, your rebirth-linking mind-moment, as it appears in the instant you emerge from jhāna. In that moment it appears fleetingly; but by reviewing the moment that it appears in bhavaṅga you can break it down to see what lies therein. Here you do the same process, you grab the mind-moment and you can watch it in bhavaṅga and you can review it. You can break it down into ignorance, craving, clinging, volitional formations, kamma, and you can see those five causes for the present five aggregates.
That’s what you are doing each time you snapshot. Not in this detail just yet, but keep looking for the five aggregates now. Later you will be able to see the five causes. But please don’t overreach. Keep working at that which your discernment is keen enough to be able to discern clearly. Then your meditation won’t fall down, it will just get more stable. If you try and discern what isn’t clear to you your meditation falls down and your mind becomes unstable.
But remember that all of this is still just an exercise in preparatory work. The transformative experience comes from absorption in the process, from meditative stability that opens the way to an experience beyond self.
Q: When it goes smoothly as you are describing, quite often I’ve noticed myself leaning towards three of the aggregates rather than the full five. Is that alright?
A: That’s okay as long as you don’t ignore all the others all the time.
Q: What if it takes a while to break down the materiality aggregate for example?
A: Then you should know it briefly, know materiality as rūpa. You’ve done the four elements exhaustively, so know the body as rūpa and you should work on mentality. It is coming, I feel it’s coming. You’ll start to see the impermanence of the aggregates as well. One moment the five aggregates pass away, another moment another set of five aggregates arise and pass away, this goes on moment by moment. It is in the same way that you had to see that material states were passing away, pass away and don’t re-arise, you have to see that all five aggregates pass away and don’t re-arise. In each mind-moment all five aggregates arise and pass without remainder.
Q: I still don’t know what consciousness is in the context of these five aggregates?
A: That moment of consciousness is what you are breaking down. But the consciousness aggregate is the knowing of that which is being experienced. That citta is consciousness and it contains within it those mental formations. Just watch the cognitive process you are engaged in – it will contain all the other cetasikās and the body is the basis of that consciousness.
So let’s say you are thinking about tea, “What am I having for tea?” Okay, what’s the object? So, the consciousness is the thinking about tea. What type of consciousness is it? It’s a mind-door process, with heart base as the material support. It is not seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting or feeling in the body. So the material aggregate is what? It is the heart base that supported the consciousness. And in that consciousness what were the other three aggregates of feeling, perception, volitional formations? What was the feeling? The feeling was that pleasant feeling associated with something which is desirable. The perception is the wrong view of self and the unwise perception that food isn’t just four elements and I’m not just five aggregates. Wrong view in the perception aggregate sees that tea would be a satisfactory experience. Well, momentarily maybe it is!
And with regard to the volition, you spot the arising of attachment or craving which stops it simply being a satisfying experience. What was the proximate cause for it – the wrong view in the perception and the feeling that came up in you. You can break it down like that. So you are reviewing the citta and each moment of consciousness needs to be resolved. Basically you’ve got to catch it in the mind-moment.
Here I am looking at the christmas tree. Seeing the christmas tree is an eye-door process, and then everything else associated with how I’ve interpreted it is a mind-door process that occurs after I’ve registered the visual impression. Don’t worry now about eye-door, only because that is just the bit that registers the visual data. The evaluating it and the registering it and coming to conclusions about it is all done in the mind-door.
Q: So the perception is in the mind-door?
A: Perception is in every moment of consciousness, in the eye-door etc. Gradually it will reveal itself more clearly. You need a lot of mindfulness to do this. However, eventually you’ve got to see that as you remove self from the experience you can let all of this analysis go. Eventually your experiences won’t always be so intensely scrutinized. This is only so you can catch the wrong view in the experience so it can be relinquished. So that you can abide with less attachment.
Eventually, you just sit and listen to the fire and feel its warmth and observe the dance of light and flame and the rest of the mind remains empty because there’s no formations that arise there. All the personal part of it is gone.
You’ve just got to watch this happen. You are not trying to come to a definitive experience in the moment, it is the effect of your work that transforms your experience as an on-going process. It is almost like with hindsight you notice what’s happened to you. That your experience has become more expansive and less contrived. There’s less ‘you’ there and yet you are totally present. How amazing!
