“Now what, friends, is the noble truth of stress?
Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful;
sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful;
not getting what is wanted is stressful.
In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.”
… “This, friends, is called the noble truth of stress.”
- An Analysis of the Truths (Sacca-vibhaṅga Sutta MN 141)
Aggregate – “Aggregate” is a translation of the Pali word khandha, which means, “heap,” “group,” or “mass.” It also means the trunk of a tree—a meaning that, we’ll see, is actually relevant to this context. The use of the English term “aggregate” to translate khandha comes from a distinction, popular in 18th and 19th century European philosophy, between conglomerates of things that work together in an organic unity—called “systems”—and other conglomerates that are mere random collections of things, called “aggregates.” Translating khandha as “aggregate” conveys the useful point that even though the physical and mental processes that are classed as khandhas can seem to have an organic unity, they’re actually shaped by discrete choices. Still, it’s important to bear in mind that the mind does shape the aggregates toward purposes, and that although those purposes can often be random or conflicting, they can also be more or less consistent—a fact that makes a path of practice possible.
The five aggregates are:
- form: any physical phenomenon—although the Buddha’s focus here is less on the physical object in itself, and more on the experience of the object; in terms of your own body, the primary focus is on how the body is experienced from within;
- feeling: feeling-tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain;
- perception: the act of recognizing, mentally labeling, and identifying experiences;
- fabrication: the intentional shaping of experience; and
- consciousness: awareness at the six senses (five physical senses + the mind)
It’s important to note that the Canon defines the aggregates in terms of verbs—feelings feel, perceptions perceive, even form “deforms”—making the point that these aggregates are processes and activities, rather than solid things.
As for “clinging-aggregates,” this expression doesn’t mean that the aggregates cling. Instead, it refers to the act of clinging to the aggregates. In fact, the suffering lies in the clinging. The experience of the aggregates on their own, without clinging, may involve some stress, in that the aggregates continually change in dependence on conditions, but if there’s no clinging, that stress doesn’t weigh down the mind. This means that the suffering referred to in the first noble truth is the suffering of clinging. The aggregates aren’t the problem. The clinging is.
Clinging – To understand clinging, you need to get a sense of what it clings to. Each of the aggregates is associated with the act of feeding. In the Buddha’s analysis, the act of feeding is something that all beings have in common. In fact, that’s how we define ourselves as beings: by latching on to these five activities as we feed. When you feed—either physically or emotionally—all five of these aggregates are involved:
- Form: When you eat physical food, “form” refers both to the form of the body that needs to be nourished—as well as to the physical objects that will be used as food.
- Feeling: You start with the painful feeling of physical or mental hunger that drives you to look for food; then there comes the pleasant feeling of satisfaction when you’ve found something to eat; followed by the added pleasure that comes when you actually eat it and assuage your hunger.
- Perception: You use perceptions to identify the type of hunger you feel, and to identify which of the things in your world of experience will satisfy that hunger. Perception also plays a role in identifying what is and isn’t food.
- Fabrication: In the context of feeding, this covers the ways you contemplate and evaluate strategies for finding food, for taking possession of it when you find it, and for fixing it if it’s not edible in its raw state.
- Consciousness is the act of being aware of all these activities.
When we use these activities to feed, they acquire positive associations in our minds. But in the first noble truth, the Buddha tells us that the act of clinging to them is suffering.
As for the Pali word for clinging, upādāna, that means (a) sustenance and (b) the act of taking sustenance—as when a tree takes sustenance from soil, or a fire from its fuel. The same meaning applies to the mind. This is where the interpretation of khandha as the trunk of a tree is relevant: We feed off the aggregates in the same way that a fire feeds off the trunk of a tree as it burns.
The implication here is that suffering comes from a double level of feeding: feeding emotionally off the activities that go into the act of feeding to ease our physical and emotional hunger. Ordinarily, we enjoy clinging not only to our food, but also to the act of clinging itself.
To accept the Buddha’s analysis of suffering in the first noble truth, we have to develop some dispassion for the things to which we cling and for the act of clinging itself. This makes the first noble truth difficult to accept, but it’s also what makes it noble. It teaches us to step back and raise ourselves above our hungers.
~ Four Noble Truths, Chapter 5: The First Noble Truth, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, DhammaTalks.org