Drifting Like Foam - Disintegrating and Reintegrating Aggregates in the Phena Sutta

Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick —
this has been taught
by the Kinsman of the Sun.
However you observe them,
appropriately examine them,
they're empty, void
to whoever sees them
appropriately.

Impermanence and Insubstantiality

Poetically evocative in its weaving together of imagery to convey the impermanent, we find in the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta a sweeping landscape portrait depicting the frequently overlooked realities of lived experience. As the world erupts in chaos upon crisis upon catastrophe, some may seek ways to deny the reality of mortality, the reality of epidemiological, societal, and environmental illness, the reality of impermanence. In some ways, we are wired, numbed, conditioned to ignore these realities in a desperate struggle for self-preservation. The "Kinsman of the Sun," however, suggests an alternative.

Perhaps counter to popular opinion, it's in our best interest to fully realize the insubstantial nature of not only the external world but the very constituents of who we think we are in order to sustain some semblance of sanity.

Poignant and piercing in how succinctly he summarizes the reality of impermanence, here the Buddha compares the aggregates, the psycho-physical heaps of phenomena that comprise a person, to insubstantial aspects of the natural and mental spheres. Given its timely content, relevant as much to today's challenges as those of yesteryear or yester-millenia in the case of its original context, we stew in the Pheṇa Sutta, letting its teachings on impermanence and insubstantiality percolate.

Aggregates

In each line of the verse section, we find reference to one of the aggregates, the clumps, piles, heaps so often mistaken for me and mine. Accompanying each of these aggregates is a carefully chosen simile.

Form is like foam erupting from pressure as a river's current flows downstream.

Feeling is like a bubble at the water's surface that pops shortly after floating up from the depths.

Perception is like a mirage whose shimmering distortions manifest out of sunlight.

Fabrication is like a banana tree whose core consists of insubstantial onion-like layers.

Consciousness is like a magic trick conjured at the hands of another.

A common theme pervades all of them. In every case, they are not what they appear to be. Some element of illusion or deception is present, even if unintended. The aggregates, these mental and material pieces of our lived experience that so often become objects of attachment for us, are unreliable.

Disintegrating and Reintegrating

Notice that in none of these similes are any of these phenomena said to be non-existent. Rather, they're not as they appear to be. Foam disintegrates when the conditions for its arising are absent, but reintegrates when those conditions return. And yet one never steps in the same river twice.

Form, the body and its elements, disintegrates in every moment. While not apparent to us on such an immediate timescale, this becomes especially clear as we age, grow sick, and die. The form aggregate's constituent parts decay, disintegrate, decompose. Those atoms inevitably find their way into the soil, water, or air consumed by other beings, whether plants or animals, and reintegrate in other shapes and configurations. The same applies to each of the other aggregates, although form is most visible in its transformations.


That all goes to say that the process of disintegrating and reintegrating is, for us, inevitable. We drift like foam through this world. Coming to terms with our own impermanent and insubstantial nature may provoke resistance and discomfort, but to see form as foam also offers us the opportunity to release it when the time comes for it to disintegrate. It never was "me" or "mine" to begin with and when it reintegrates elsewhere it will likewise be ownerless.

This in no way absolves me of responsibility in the present, but it dissolves the tendency to cling desperately to foam that cannot be grasped. In dissolving this clinging, we stand a successful chance at resolving existential dread of what lies ahead. To be continued.