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The Buddha tells us that existence is dependent on grasping. The so-called "being" asserts his existence on the basis of his five groups of Grasping - form, feeling, perception, preparations and consciousness. The very tenacity of his grasping on each of these five groups gives him a notion of something compact, which he thinks justifies his assertion. So he identifies himself with one or the other of these five groups in four ways, whenever the question of his self identity arises. He might say for instance, "form is" my self or my self has form, or form is in my self, or my self is in form. Altogether there are twenty such possible assertions. The Buddha declares that all possible theories of self in the world are traceable to one or the other of these 20 modes of assertion.
The tragedy however, is that everyone of these 5 groups is disintegrating. There is nothing permanent or substantial in them, to be prided on as self. They betray the trust one puts on them as ’I and Mine’. In the face of change and disintegration the very existence of the self is threatened. This is the dreadful predicament of the self-oriented being. The Buddha’s solution to this chronic feeling of insecurity, is the development of the perception of impermanence. Taking a more realistic view of the five groups as impermanent, made-up, dependently arisen, and of a nature to waste away, pass away, fade away, and cease, one has to go on attending to their rise-and-fall with mindfulness and full-awareness. The perception of the compact will gradually give way to the perception of the heap. In one’s contemplation of the rise and fall, one will discern not only the breakers of the ocean of impermanence but also the waves, the ripples and the vibrations. This leads to disenchantment. One turns away from one’s deeply ingrained samsaric habit of grasping, holding and clinging on to the five fleeting groups which promise no security. Giving-up the attachment to the five groups one sees as the only security, the clinging free deliverance of the mind - the sublime peace of Nibbana. |