“What are we made of? What is this thing we call “self”? We assemble it ourselves, according to the Buddha.” Lion’s Roar Magazine

Buddha taught that our sense of self, the process of building an identity, is based on the five aggregates or heaps…skandhas in Sanskrit.

Most of us have spent a lot of time–and money–trying to figure out who we are and what our purpose is in this life. It seems that we are are this body and, even though it changes moment to moment, we have this idea that it will last forever… and that we ourselves, our identity will also last forever. The Buddha said that “we” are a moment to moment process. We are completely impermanent and the identity that we hold so dear is not the self. That, indeed, there is no enduring separate self that exists in the world. Rather, the collective parts of form, feeling, perception, concept or mental formations, and consciousness. come together and instantly rearrange themselves like the shifting sands of a vast desert.

Ajahn Punnadhammo clarified this teach somewhat when he wrote, “The most important use of the five skandhas as a teaching device is to illustrate the doctrine of anatta (not-self). The idea is that when one looks within, only the five skandhas are seen, and no self-essence is found among them. In the Samanupassana Sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya collection of suttas, the Buddha enumerates twenty ways in which beings imagine a self by misapprehending the skandhas: “He assumes body to be the self, or the self as possessing body, or the body in the self, or the self in the body,” and so on, for each of the other skandhas.“

Ajahn Chah said, “In our practice, we think that noises, cars, voices, sights, are distractions that come and bother us when we want to be quiet. But who is bothering whom? Actually, we are the ones who go and bother them.

We go out and bother them? I think he’s saying that we bother ourselves over these distractions with an expectation that everything will be quiet to accommodate us. Or that the environment will adjust itself to our expectations. Even if we were sitting in a cave rather than a corner or our living room, there would be some kind of noise around us. Nature is pretty busy! So much of our suffering is caused by our expectations. The wonderful thing about mindfulness practice is that we can see how our expectations create stress and and try letting go of how life “should” be or feel or what “should” be happening… maybe just saying, “expectation, expectation, expectation” and then noticing how expectation feels in the body. Or how it feels to try to let our expectations go and just sit accepting what is rather than being disappointed with what isn’t?

Then he says “see the world as a mirror” … yes, we already “know” this, but do we really know that the world is showing us things about ourselves all the time? Our struggles, our likes and dislikes, our neuroses are so in our faces as we live in the world. Maybe we have the same kind difficulty in relationships, with money, in our work life. Meditation offers us the opportunity to look at these difficulties, realize the similarities and what we might be missing and make a change. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing the way we think about what’s happening. This is the only way that real change can happen–through understanding, through seeing life as it is.

The Buddha taught that everything is interdependent and in process–-subject to Karma and conditioning. He called this conditioned existence “ saṃsāra ,” a Sanskrit word that means “perpetual wandering” or the “wheel of suffering.” 

Saṃsāra is the beginningless and endless cycle of repeated birth, existence and dying again.  Saṃsāra is considered to be dukkha, unsatisfactory and painful, perpetuated by desire and ignorance, and the resulting karma. Thanissaro Bhikkhu gives us this explanation of saṃsāra:  

” Saṃsāra is a process: the tendency to keep creating worlds and then moving into them. And note that this creating and moving in doesn’t just happen once, at birth. We’re doing it all the time.”

We create our reality and we create ourselves. The Buddha taught that what we think of as our permanent self, our ego, our identity, is just an illusion. Moment to moment, we create ourselves anew. What appears to be permanent is truly only temporary. Everything changes continually… especially our body, our mind our identity. Our attachment to a permanent self and a permanent reality thus create our suffering and our perpetual wandering.

The Venerable Thubten Chodron wrote, “Karma means action, and refers to intentional physical, verbal, or mental actions. These actions leave imprints or seeds upon our mindstreams, and the imprints ripen into our experiences when the appropriate conditions come together. For example, with a kind heart we help someone. This action leaves an imprint on our mindstream, and when conditions are suitable, this imprint will ripen into our receiving help when we need it. The seeds of our actions continue with us from one lifetime to the next and do not get lost. However, if we don’t create the cause or karma for something, then we won’t experience that result: if a farmer doesn’t plant seeds, nothing will grow. If an action brings about pain and misery in the long term, it is called negative, destructive, or nonvirtuous. If it brings about happiness, it is called positive, constructive, or virtuous. Actions aren’t inherently good or bad, but are only designated so according to the results they bring.”

This is a very clear explanation of the workings of cause and effect: every thought, word and action has a result.  Fundamentally, this reminder tells us that it’s important how we live our everyday lives, and that karma is the action of choice-making.  Every moment of every day we are faced with choices.  The result of those choices is karma. 

Karma is also created by intention. An intention will create a flow of energy that will result in a karmic pattern. Our lives flow in patterns created by intention … and intention can change it.  When we change the intention, the pattern can change. Our thoughts–especially our habitual thoughts–determine our behavior. A teacher I heard some years ago used to quote Lou Tice all the time. He’d say, “We move toward and become like that which we think about. We act on what we believe and believe what we experience.” This is the pattern of karma and, again, we can change it. All that is required is careful attention. Mindfulness.

As we pay attention to our thoughts we can choose which ones we will follow. We can decide if it’s skillful or unskillful–wise or unwise–to act on or speak the thought. When I think of karma I think of a big empty field. Each action I take in life plants a seed. The seeds grow and bear fruit according to the action. So my field is filled with roses and orange trees and tulips and every beautiful flower and plant. It’s also filled with brambles and nettles and noxious weeds of every sort. When I decide to stop doing those unskillful things, the noxious weed connected with them begin to die off. Not all at once of course, but little by slowly.