A TALL ORDER?

“Monks, what is not yours, you give up. Giving it up will be for your weal and happiness. And what, monks, is not yours?

Form, monks, is not yours. Give it up. Giving it up will be for your weal and happiness. Feeling ..... Perception ....... Preparations ...... Consciousness, monks, is not yours. Give it up. Giving it up will be for your weal and happiness.

- S.N. III 34

This exhortation sounds like a ‘tall-order.' The five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, preparations and consciousness are all what we HAVE and all what we ARE. How can we afford to give them up? Here the Buddha is assuring us that if we let-go of them we will be well and happy. Isn't it like telling a man who is clinging on to a creeper for fear of falling down a precipice, to let go of his hold?

Well, the truth of the matter is that what precipitates a fall is the weight of the one who is clinging on. The more burdened he is, the heavier the thud in landing and greater the pain and peril. But if the five aggregates are all what we HAVE and all what we ARE , letting go of them, will we be falling at all?

The above order, then, is not so ‘tall' as it sounds, for in ‘giving-up' we are only giving up our attachment to the five groups. It was the very tenacity of our grasp that made these a heavy burden. Letting go - is getting lighter. That way, we are rising above them, soaring high into the sky, well over the imaginary precipice and the chronic fear of a possible fall.

‘Those who do not accumulate,
Who know fully well the food they take,
Whose pasture is that VOID and SIGNLESS
Theirs is the track that's hard to trace
Like that of birds on the wing in the sky.

- Dhp. v. 92