Five-Aggregates

Also called the Skandha. It means five elements that combine to conceal the true nature of a person. According to Buddhist scriptures, the five aggregates are: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. However, the Master now explains them as: greed, anger, delusion, cause, and self. These two explanations, although different in terminology, have the same underlying meaning.

A) The Five Aggregates: According to Buddhist scriptures;

1/- Form Aggregate: This is the physical body composed of the four elements. Wherever there is a physical body, there is birth, aging, sickness, and death… Yet sentient beings develop deluded attachments and seek material things to serve it.

2/- Feeling Aggregate: When there is a physical body, there are naturally the six senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind, which constantly receive the six objects of perception: form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mental objects… causing sentient beings to develop attachments, aversions, craving, and aversion.

3/- Perception Aggregate: After the six senses receive the six objects of perception, these feelings of grasping, letting go, love, and hatred cause sentient beings to
generate and remember them forever.

4/- Volition Aggregate: When imagining and remembering these feelings of grasping, letting go, love, and hatred, sentient beings develop a mind to
resolve to actually practice them.

5/- Consciousness Aggregate: Regarding the actions that have been and are being performed, each one causes sentient beings to develop a mind of discrimination between self and others, superiority and inferiority, good and bad…

How to break the Five Aggregates: according to Buddhist scriptures:

To destroy the five aggregates, the practitioner must eradicate the deluded mind clinging to the ego. Once the ego is destroyed, the physical body will no longer be so important. When the physical body is no longer so important, the arising delusions—feeling the six sense objects, thoughts of love and hate, actions of gain and loss, and consciousness of self and others—will naturally disappear. Because these delusions—feeling, thoughts, actions, and consciousness—only serve to nourish the physical body; once the mind clings to the physical body, they cease to exist. The Heart Sutra states: “When one sees that the five aggregates are all empty, one transcends all suffering and hardship, and attains freedom and peace” (seeing that the five aggregates are all empty, one transcends all suffering and hardship).

B) The Five Aggregates: According to the Master’s explanation here:

1/- Greed: This refers to the desire and attachment to love. From a single thought of greed and attachment, the mind creates karma, leading to rebirth and the creation of a human body.

2/- Anger: This refers to the feeling of being hot-tempered. When there is a physical body, there must be six senses, which are in contact with the six sense objects; However, the insatiable craving of the six senses gives rise to anger.

3/- Delusion: is a deluded mind. When anger arises, it obscures the mind, “anger blinds reason,” like the surface of a lake being disturbed by waves, thus preventing the discernment of right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

4/- Self: refers to a person. From this state of delusion, one distinguishes between oneself and others, always viewing others as inferior, lacking, contemptible, and oppressed, regardless of others’ suffering.

5/- Ego: refers to the mind that clings to itself. It always sees itself as superior to others, worthy of respect and admiration, and is therefore possessive, wanting to encompass everything for itself. This is the discriminating mind, the craving, the seed of birth and death, leading to rebirth in another body, and thus endlessly ascending and descending in the six realms of reincarnation: “As long as the worldly mind distinguishes between self and others, how can one escape reincarnation?” (People’s Verse, Vol. 2).

How to Break the Five Aggregates: According to the Master’s teachings: To break the five aggregates, one must first cultivate wisdom, then use that clarity to contemplate and eliminate greed, attachment, and ego. If the attachment to the ego is gone, then anger, delusion, and the distinction between self and others will not arise. At that time, the mind becomes equanimity and peace, realizing the “true nature of reality,” ending the cycle of birth and death:

“Breaking the five aggregates gradually eliminates greed,
The root of anger and delusion must also be eradicated.
Bringing back to the true nature of enlightenment,
The golden body manifests, ending the cycle of birth and death.”

(For Mr. Co Tau Hao)

Similar meaning:
Why are the two methods of “Breaking the Five Aggregates” explained above considered to have the same meaning?

Because according to ancient scriptures: from the physical body, there arises the six senses, perceptions, feelings of love and hate, actions of gain and loss, and consciousness of self and others. Therefore, once attachment to the physical body is eradicated, sensations, perceptions, volition, and consciousness also cease, thus attaining “true reality.”

However, the Master now explains: from the root of attachment arises the physical body, as well as anger, delusion, self, and ego. Therefore, when the root of attachment is eliminated, anger, delusion, and self are completely eradicated, thus attaining “true awakened nature.” Thus, although the two explanations above differ somewhat in practice and wording, they both ultimately achieve the same goal of liberation…