Dear DC, and Bryan.
Thank you Bryan for all the info.
DC, I very well understand your dilemma, it is like my husband's and
of many others. I try to answer.
Op 21-dec-2009, om 14:43 heeft DC Wijeratna het volgende geschreven:
> What is your authority for saying: what we take for a person is
> only: citta, cetasika and ruupa, dhammas that arise and then fall
> away immediately. I would be grateful to have the Sutta references;
> the Buddha's own words.
--------
N: The words citta.m and ruupa.m also occur in the suttas. Cetasikaa
I think only in the Abhidhamma. In the suttas there are many texts
on the five khandhas. Conditioned mental phenomena and physical
phenomena can be classified as five khandhas. Thus we can say: what
we take for a person is citta, cetasika and ruupa, or: what we take
for a person is five khandhas.
Most important is not to see the five khandhas as an abstract theory,
only in the book. They refer to this moment, they arise and fall away
and do not belong to anyone.
Vi~n~naa.nakkhandha is the same as citta (I can give you a sutta text
but do not wish to make my mails too long).
Citta (or vi~n~naa.na) knows an object. Seeing is a citta and it
knows visible object. Hearing knows sound. Thinking knows an object
through the mind-door. Visible object is ruupa or ruupakkhandha, it
does not know anything. Eyesense is ruupa. These ruupas are
conditions for seeingconsciousness.
Each citta is accompanied by mental factors or cetasikas: feeling (or
feeling khandha), sa~n~naa or remembrance, and sa"nkhaarakkhandha,
including akusala, sobhana and other cetasikas, apart from feeling
and sa~n~naa.
When you think with aversion, aversion is sa"nkhaarakkhandha. At that
moment the feeling is unhappy feeling.
It is useful to read Sa.myutta Nikaaya, Khandhavagga, but we have to
remember that each sutta refers to our life just now.
It does not matter how we name dhammas, we can come to understand the
realities they represent.
-------
> DC quotes N: What we
> take for a person is only: citta, cetasika and ruupa, dhammas that
> arise and then fall away immediately.
> ----------------------------------------------
> DC: What you say above is contrary to our experience. If there is
> no 'Nina', with whom am I carrying on this discussion? I did not
> respond to 'citta, cetasika, and ruupa'.
> I responded to a 'human being'.
------
N: Yes, but this being never is the same for one moment. One may
believe that one sees a person, but in fact the ruupas of the body
arise because of different conditioning factors and do not last.
Ruupas are replaced by new ruupas and then it seems that a solid body
or a solid table is present all the time. We see shape and form and
the image of a 'whole', but in reality naama and ruupa arise and fall
away all the time.
Mental phenomena change all the time. There can be only one citta at
a time: then seeing, then experiencing hardness, then being annoyed
or generous, all different moments. In the sutta the Buddha says that
there is nothing that changes more quickly as citta.
----------
> DC: To carry on a conversation, using a language, we need words and
> the meaning of words need to agreed (vohaara or sammuti).
> ------
N: Bryan explained very welll that in society we need conventional
language of 'I', 'You" etc. But through the Dhamma we learn the truth
about our life. It is hard to accept, we need the three rounds as
explained in the Dhammacakkappavattana sutta.
Listening and considering the Dhamma can condition kicca ~naa.na,
the development of satipa.t.thaana, the direct understanding of
realities. So much patience and courage are needed. And this is for
all of us.
-------
Nina.
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