by Chade-Meng Tan | Oct 31, 2023 | Buddhism for All
“Arrr – draw a line on the water, savvy?” Regarding the five aggregates, allow me to confess a dirty little secret: with the possible exception of form, there is no consensus among Buddhist teachers on the precise definition of each aggregate. ...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Oct 30, 2023 | Buddhism for All
The Buddha ended his statement of the First Noble Truth with the sentence, “In brief, the five aggregates subject to grasping are suffering (dukkha).”[1] Simply put, the five aggregates are the five physical and mental factors that, in combination, are experienced as...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Oct 29, 2023 | Buddhism for All
“Master, this car is dukkha.” The lesson from the story of Emperor Qianlong and countless others with lucky human births is clear, that no matter how lucky our birth is, we are all still subject to the same suffering: aging, illness, death, separation, not...
by Chade-Meng Tan | Oct 28, 2023 | Buddhism for All
Emperor Qianlong on horseback in imperial armor. (Image from the Palace Museum website.) Imagine being born into an extremely lucky circumstance. Would you still have any suffering? Hongli had one of the luckiest births in the history of the world. He was born...
