I recently had begun making chanting a daily practice and, after enough rote repetition, I stated getting curious…I started reading the English, considering the meaning of the passages more closely. There were a few that really struck me, but over and over I kept coming back to a part of the morning chanting that talk about the five aggregates of clinging. Per the Buddha, those bitches bring about a whole world’o’suffering. Its all “sorrow, lamentation, pain distress and despair … the five aggregates for clinging are stressful”.

Apparently, it is so critical that we understand these five, that chanting verse itself explains, “So they might fully understand this, the Blessed One, while still alive, often instructed his listeners that:”

Form is inconstant
Feeling is inconstant
Memory is inconstant
Mental processes are inconstant
Consciousness is inconstant

Form is not self
Feeling is not self
Memory is not self
Mental processes are not self
Consciousness is not self

All processes are inconstant
All processes are not self

Well if the Buddha himself thought this was worthy of a little consideration, who was I to argue…so I decided to begin considering the aggregates, each in kind: How they are a sources of stress? Changeable?  Not self? I felt like I had already really spent time considering form, so I thought maybe I would skip ahead a bit and try feeling. Now strictly speaking, in Buddhism feeling is just 3 things: positive/negative/neutral.  I know the academics of this, but to make my contemplation more interesting, to get the creativity flowing, I considered feeling a bit more openly. I used our day-to-day definition of emotions for my exercise. In doing so, I was able to capture more than just a strict definition of +/- and could consider a broader aspect of nama –my inner life, the me I think I am, all wrapped-up ‘safe and sound’ in this body.

Feelings, they change so quickly, I can be angry in one minute and then feel calm, happy, even elated the next. What is more, my feelings, they are out of my control: I don’t want to feel angry, I don’t want to feel afraid, but ultimately I can’t just will these feelings (really imagination–#4 –when we are speaking of the aggregates) away.  What is more is that these feelings of mine don’t reflect me, sometimes I am downright ashamed of how I feel. I can’t use these feeling, or my thoughts, to manifest my sense of self: They are fickle, changeable, out of my control, they cause me distress, so how could they be me?

Memories too seem to fade. In fact in any one moment I can suddenly remember one thing and forget another. I know for sure these are out of my control, otherwise I would never forget a deadline, or I could easily shake the memory of a nightmare when I wake instead of continuing to feel haunted by it. I guess I feel like my memories are a part of me, but at the same time, I realize they reflect moments that are gone. No more. They are phantoms of what was. So how could these insubstantial things, that live in my mind alone, be me?

Imagination of course is a bear. It is always trying to steal the stage, be the star, direct the play. But if I am honest, it too is capricious. I imagined NY was a fabulous new adventure, and then I imagined it was a hell I would be trapped in forever. I imagined SF was my forever home, then I imagined how the fires would flare my asthma nonstop. If I controlled imagination would I stress so much about moles and lumps? I don’t want to imagine illness, death, but as soon as I see a sign that reminds me, makes me remember a danger, my imagination literally runs wild. It runs me right into stress and despair. So is imagination the me I want to be? Is it who I am

The problem is, when I get to the not self part of the teaching, I hesitate. I am willing to say what I feel, remember, imagine, arrange physically is not me. But I assume I am the imaginer, the arranger, the feeler. I many not be a given aggregate, I may not even be the collection of aggregates, but I  keep thinking there has to be an entity behind all these and that is who I am. I assume that the symphony, the system, the process, needs a conductor. I am the conductor, the great entity in  possession of the aggregates.

I decided then to review some of my prior contemplations on possessing –what evidence had I found before that made me question whether or not a claimed object was really a possession of the claimer, and if a possession could prove a claimer’s sense of self. My mind zoomed-in on the story of my old Bite Me Socks: Socks that I had once found so funny, I had claimed as a reflection of my humorous self, which degraded and became worn just as my own sense of humor shifted and changed. Socks and sense of humor both evolving, at their own rate, in their own direction, ultimately away from each other. The things we claim, shifting, just as we who claims them shift, so how exactly can a possession prove an owner? How would shifting aggregates that I identify with –claim — really be able to prove me?

In fact, on closer inspection, it is clear that if there is an entity that does the imagining, the feeling, the arranging, the remembering, it must be shifting and changing just as do the aggregate. After all, over and over I see the same stimulus, like a song, can fuel different feeling, different memory, different imagination across time. If the owner of these aggregates were unchanging, than how could the same externalities trigger different mental processes at different times? And, if the processes change over time, don’t they impact the supposed owner? Doesn’t a new memory need to change the person doing the remembering? If I say that the changeability of any given aggregate is part of the ‘proof’ that the aggregate isn’t who I am, don’t I need to apply the same standard to the supposed self/possessor of the aggregate? Is something that keeps changing, in ways I don’t drive or determine (I am not after all forcing a song to make me fee a certain way), who I am?

The other evidence I weigh when considering each individual aggregate is its propensity to cause me suffering. The whole chanting verse basically leads with the dukkha –the assertion, upfront, is that the 5 aggregates of clinging are stressful. In each aggregate, I see causes of my stress. If I really am the great aggregate possessor, don’t my own ‘possessions’ cause me stress? If I conduct a bunch of processes that stress me the fuck out, isn’t that claiming myself to be a victim of the stresses brought about by my supposed possessions? A conductor that can’t even evoke a symphony that sounds good to them, that doesn’t really control the sounds of the instruments at all, isn’t really much of a conductor. Doesn’t identity, possession, require some measure of control?

For several months I had been doing a little exercise: Tracing daily suffering back to it’s cause, and over and over the exercise showed me that if I want to find a cause of my suffering, the first place to look was at my desires. What is it that I want, that I cling to, that I wish to acquire or avoid, that spins up my emotions, my suffering, in the first place? When I really consider the aggregates closely, desire seems to arise as a product of the aggregates working together. Desire needs a physical form to sense a physical world trigger, a memory of that trigger and an imagination of what it means/ will do for you later, and a feeling of it being fun or crappy. In other words desire is a product of the aggregates as a process. Then the aggregates go and create a plan/ action to satisfy desire. Along the way desires change, aggregates change, new desires are born and on and on goes the aggregate process. It is a continual shifting process.

The aggregates aren’t a self. So why do I think they need some self, some possessor or conductor (who isn’t even possessing or conducting) to function. Processes don’t need a puppet master, they can just  unfold and change and then unfolds further from their changed state. Ad Infineum. This is normal. The problem is claiming the processes, identifying with them, being ignorant to the fact that they are all inconstant. Not self. This is the teaching that the Buddha felt was worthy of frequent admonition, and while I can’t claim, in my heart of hearts to deeply understand it, at least I am closer to understanding that the machine doesn’t need some great overlord to run. Aggregates don’t prove a possessor, processes don’t prove a conductor.