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.

Aggregates and Chariots - Greco-Buddhist Contemplations on the Nature of "Self"

Greco-Buddhist Contemplations ...

You may recall one of our previous posts entitled "Intro to Emptiness" outlining a set of five overlapping factors of experience that are often mistaken for a metaphysically substantial self or what pertains to a self. While that may be a bit of a mouthful, perhaps biting off more than one can chew in a single article, we wish to follow up on this subject here in simpler terms.

Understanding these "aggregates," as they're called, in terms of emptiness and dependent origination may feel like an abstract endeavor. Fortunately, however, several useful similes from the Buddhist tradition exist (conventionally) to help contextualize the nature of these so-called aggregates, the building blocks of our experience, and their relationship to a presumed self.

Here, we thus examine a segment of the Milinda Pañha, a nexus of Greco-Buddhist contemplative philosophy and practice. Considered canonical in Burmese Buddhism, it claims to document an exchange between the Buddhist sage Nāgasena and a king of the Indo-Greco empire, Menander the First of Bactria - spanning modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. A historical figure, Menander ruled from roughly 160 to 130 BCE. His name is "Pāli-cized" as Milinda. Among their dialogue's major motifs is the image of the chariot, tracing itself to the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, now widely used as an analogy for the concept of "self" in Buddhism.

Aggregates and Chariots

The simile of aggregates and chariots surfaces in a series of questions posed by King Milinda to the sage Nāgasena. Most of these questions orbit around the notion of selfhood. Prompting the chariot simile, in the middle of this discussion, Nāgasena remarks that "Nāgasena" is but a name, while in actuality, there is no Nāgasena. Befuddled, the king presses further, to which Nāgasena responds by employing the simile of the chariot. Their dialogue unfolds with Nāgasena asking King Milinda how he was able to come to their present location in the first place.

"How did you come here, by foot or in a chariot?"

"In a chariot, venerable sir."

"Then, explain sir, what that is. Is it the axle? Or the wheels, or the chassis, or reins, or yoke that is the chariot? Is it all of these combined, or is it something apart from them?"

"It is none of these things, venerable sir."

(trans. Bhikkhu Pesala)

Here, we find Nāgasena pressing King Milinda to identify exactly what it is that he calls a chariot, positing each of its parts as possible identifiers. The king is unable to pin it down. Nāgasena asks if the chariot is the sum of its parts, or if it extends beyond them. Seemingly elusive, the king replies with none of the above.



Clearly the wheels of thought were set in motion here. As the king searches for a rational response to give to his questioner, he arrives fully to their present exchange, prompting his invocation of the chariot as simile. Certainly he had some notion of what made the chariot a chariot despite his struggles to put it into words. After a brief interlude, the chariot again takes center stage as the king, after much reflection, finally formulates an answer.

"It is because it has all these parts that it comes under the term chariot."

"Very good, sir, your majesty has rightly grasped the meaning. Even so it is because of the thirty-two kinds of organic matter in a human body and the five aggregates of being that I come under the term ‘Nāgasena’. As it was said by Sister Vajīra in the presence of the Blessed One, ‘Just as it is by the existence of the various parts that the word “Chariot” is used, just so is it that when the aggregates of being are there we talk of a being’."

(trans. Bhikkhu Pesala)

Importantly, the sense of self arising from the aggregates is comparable to a constellation, assemblage, conglomeration. A whole comprised of parts, "self" serves as a conventional appellation for an aggregation of bodily form, feeling, perception, volitional activities, and consciousness. "Self" is an at-times useful tool that humans have constructed (like a chariot) to serve conventional ends, but need not be mistaken for an ultimate identity or ultimate reality.

Given that the self is constructed, it has only a conventional existence. In the same sense that a chariot consists of its component parts - which alone are not the chariot and even together amount to no ultimate chariot - the conventional self is likewise made up of five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. Like a chariot, explains the Buddhist nun Vajīra in the Vajīra Sutta (SN 5.10) referenced by Nāgasena, the self is a conventional designation for an assemblage of parts, a heap of phenomena.

"Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word 'chariot' is used,
So, when the aggregates are present,
There's the convention 'a being.'"

(trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Indeed, Vajīra's remarks here are the origin for the chariot analogy within Buddhism. The image also traces itself to the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, a text of the Vedanta tradition, a precursor to and modern Hindu schools. It's unclear where its exact origins lie, but the chariot is nonetheless a familiar image with significant symbolic value in Indic contemplative circles.

As we can observe from the Buddhist nun Vajīra's remarks, a distinction is drawn between conventional language and ultimate reality, although the latter is not mentioned explicitly. Acknowledging the widely accepted worldly usage of "chariot" and other terms to refer to compounded objects, Vajīra clarifies that no one is denying the utter existence of chariots all together. Rather, the chariot does not exist as it appears to exist.

The Nature of "Self"

Unpacking the nature of "self" can be a thorny issue in Buddhism, for these very reasons. On one hand, the self is a conventionally experienced process, but on the other, it is not an ultimately existing thing. Notice the difference, which we hope to draw out through these key terms.

• Conventionally
• Experienced
• Process

vs.

• Ultimately
• Existing
• Thing

The second set of descriptors (ultimately existing thing) helps convey that what we grasp as self appears relatively unchanging, a lasting identity, some kind of persistent entity that remains the same from moment to moment.

The first set of descriptors (conventionally experienced process) helps convey that upon scrutinizing its supposed solidity, the sense of self is in actuality instantaneously arising and subsiding, changing from moment to moment, flowing onward like a stream.

Certainly not all see it this way. The Buddhist theory of self (or theory of "not-self") is definitely an outlier among other philosophies and world religions. Further, it has been variously interpreted throughout history and up to the present. We offer these reflections as a means of framing the question differently, not as whether there is or is not a self, but by offering two angles from which one may contemplate the situation, consistent with the "two truths" of conventional and ultimate reality.



We now turn the question to you. Does the chariot have a driver? Who or what has hold of the reins? Let us know below.