“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. ...
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...
“Master, this car is dukkha.” Listen to this article here (7 minutes 41 seconds).You can buy the audiobook here. 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...
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...