this is important stuff, so listen up…or read up, whatever - my buddhist beliefs run deep and in recent times i’ve felt like i lost sight of why i’m even here. i thought My Path was so damned important, i forgot about things i truly believe in when my attachment to something (and someone) beautiful ended.
so here i am reminding myself, about suffering, about why we suffer, and why it’s silly of me to continue to suffer. i need to let go fully. i am challenging myself, my own will-power to release the attachment - to practise non-attachment with another human being.
i’d felt i’d done so well at detaching from worldy goods, i lost almost everything i owned in a divorce, i’d never really had anything before that as i grew up in s8 housing and then one day i fell in love with a truly emotionally unavailable man and then…BLAM!
someone blindsided me. i was attached. i was probably more than attached. i called him Daddy. he called me his baby girl slave angel. i wore a rhinestoned dog tag that said “PROPERTY OF HALCYON”. but then that all ended abruptly, i relocated and now - over 3 months later, i’m finally ready to deal with the fact that i haven’t been true to myself, my ideals, My Path in these past few months … and dare i say in the few months before that even?
The First of Four Noble Truths - Dukkha: this is the noble truth of suffering:
The Buddha said “…birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”
this is only the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. but i figured one would be enough for me to try to sit with for the night.
a “person” is made up of the five aggregates, beyond which there is no “self”. suffering arises when one identifies with or otherwise clings to an aggregate; hence, suffering is extinguished by relinquishing attachment to aggregates.
here are the 5 “aggregates” or skandhas or khandas, depending on your flavour of buddhism and/or where you come from:
- “form” or “matter” (sa., pi. rūpa):
includes both external and internal matter. Externally, rupa is the physical world. Internally, rupa includes the material body and the physical sense organs.
- “sensation” or “feeling” (sa., pi. vedanā):
sensing pleasant, unpleasant or neutral (neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant). Generally considered not to include “emotions.”
- “perception” or “cognition” (sa. samjñā, pi. saññā):
registers whether sense data is recognized or not (for instance, the sound of a bell or the shape of a tree). From samyutta-ñana, conditioned knowledge. It is ordinarily conditioned by ones past sankhara, and therefore conveys a coloured image of reality.
- “mental formations” or “volition” (sankhāra) :
all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, compulsions, and decisions. Sankhāra arise from contact with form or from other mental factors. Sankhāra are the source of karma.
- “consciousness” (sa. vijñāna, pi. viññāṇa):
conscious base that support all experience.
*** these 5 aggregates have been brought to you by wikipedia.org, which we all know rocks. so go be good to them. thanks! i have a lot to think about, it may be awhile before i have a response to my own challenge to my Self.