Suffering

The Five Aggregates: Why Clinging Causes Suffering
Question: In life, there are eight sufferings: birth, aging, sickness, death, not getting what we desire, encountering what we dislike, separation from loved ones, and clinging to the five aggregates (form, feelings, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness). How can one truly understand the last suffering, clinging to the five aggregates? The previous seven sufferings can be felt, but it is challenging to recognize the final suffering of clinging to the five aggregates, yet it is said to be the root of all suffering. What does that mean?
Answer: The last suffering is often translated as the "clinging of the five aggregates." So, what are these five aggregates? In simple terms, they are the body, feelings, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness. These five phenomena constitute the five aggregates. But what are the five aggregates of clinging?
For an individual, the five aggregates of clinging are what one identifies as "me" or "mine." These include everything that people identify as themselves or as belonging to themselves. This encompasses the previous seven sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, death, not getting what we desire, encountering what we dislike, and separation from loved ones.
You might wonder why these five aggregates, the body, feelings, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness, are considered suffering. After all, there are moments of happiness and even times when we don't experience unhappiness at all. For example, when you're with someone you love, all aspects of the body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness are pleasant. Enjoying good food, beautiful scenery, fragrances, massages, music, movies, and more can bring happiness. Furthermore, many times, people find themselves in states of neither happiness nor unhappiness, right?
That's true. The five aggregates of clinging can bring happiness or unhappiness and even suffering, and there are times when they neither bring happiness nor unhappiness. However, if you think about it more deeply, you'll realize that all worldly happiness is impermanent.

There are three aspects to this impermanence:
First, all phenomena or things are not lasting. Nothing can exist forever. Regardless of how much you love something, it will eventually depart from you, or you'll depart from it. There is no eternal togetherness; there is no forever. The stronger the attachment when something exists, the greater the distress when it's lost.
Second, the five aggregates of clinging themselves are impermanent. They can't last forever. The body requires constant nourishment to stay in existence, and even with that, it will eventually disintegrate in a few decades. This is what people fear: death. Feelings, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness are even more fleeting; they disappear in an instant. We need continuous contact with objects to maintain feelings and consciousness. It takes abundant energy to keep our imaginations and thoughts active. All of this effort is stress or suffering, and it ultimately amounts to nothing.
Third, and most importantly, even when phenomena or things continue to exist, the five aggregates of clinging still exist, and no one can remain in any form of happiness forever. Not for a lifetime, a year, a day, an hour, or even a minute. This is because, regardless of how happy you are, over time, you'll become accustomed to it and start to crave new sensory stimuli. This cycle of boredom and craving results in stress, and unhappiness.
Why is that? It's because all worldly happiness lacks the nature of true happiness. If a phenomenon or thing had the essence of happiness, it would make you happy at any time, anywhere, and under any circumstances. The moment that phenomenon arises, or you come into contact with it, you will be happy. However, in reality, the happiness derived from the five aggregates of clinging is not truly happiness. It only exists based on satisfying conditional desires. When those desires change, all you experience from these phenomena or things is stress and discomfort.
However, for a realized one who has achieved the cessation of the five aggregates of clinging, it's a different story. The happiness that arises after the cessation of the five aggregates of clinging is absolute, eternal, unchanging, and doesn't depend on any conditions. This is the nature it possesses.
It's like a person who has frostbite in the winter. When the frostbite is unbearably itchy, soaking it in hot water or warming it by the fire can bring immense pleasure. However, the person doesn't wish to keep the frostbite around to experience this pleasure continually because they know that the pleasure is actually the result of the suffering from the frostbite itself. Being free from the ailment, being unafflicted, is true happiness.
Similarly, the five aggregates of clinging also bring some happiness. But for someone who has realized the cessation of the five aggregates of clinging, these aggregates are like the ailment, like frostbite, and the root of unhappiness and suffering. Their nature is suffering. So, to truly understand this eighth suffering, one needs to realize the cessation of this eighth suffering, which is what the enlightened ones refer to as Nibbana.
SN22.56: In the Upādānaparipavatta Sutta the Tathagata explains that he did not claim enlightenment until he fully understood the Five Aggregates in their four aspects: understanding each aggregate, its arising, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation. True understanding and practice leads to disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation of clinging, resulting in complete liberation and the end of the cycle of rebirth.
Suffering: What Does It Really Mean?
From a modern viewpoint, suffering is often equated with intense physical pain or emotional anguish. But in the time of the Tathagata (Buddha), the word "dukkha" carried a much broader meaning. It included unease, distress, discomfort, fear, unhappiness, even a subtle discontent, a sense that something is missing or that life lacks inherent meaning, even when things seem to be going well on the surface.
This is why the Tathagata called it "The Noble Truth of Suffering." Not because suffering is noble, but because recognizing how we create our own suffering is the first noble step toward liberation. The truth is, most of us don’t fully see the level of stress and dissatisfaction that is part of our ordinary human experience. And even fewer of us take the time to examine it deeply.
We often miss this truth because we're always looking "out there", blaming other people, situations, or the world at large for our dissatisfaction. Or we deny it altogether, thinking, “Once I get this or achieve that, things will finally be okay.” We distract ourselves with work, entertainment, and pleasures of the senses, hoping that if we just stay busy or entertained, we won’t have to look too closely.
But suffering is created "in here", in our desires, in our clinging, in the unrest we feel when things don’t go the way we wanted. It’s the tension between what is and what we crave. This is why so much suffering goes unnoticed: we chase after the delightful images and ideas created by desire, never questioning whether they’re worth chasing.
At the root of all this is ignorance, not understanding how our minds create suffering through craving and aversion. We’re enchanted by the surface appearance of things, blind to the fact that the endless pursuit of what is attractive is what fuels the stress we are trying to escape.
This is why the Tathagata taught not just to observe the world, but to observe our experience of it, our desires, our intentions, our reactions, our clinging. Only by turning attention inward, seeing through the lens of the Dhamma, can we begin to see the true nature of suffering and find the way that leads beyond it.
The Tathagata describes three types of suffering:
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Ordinary Suffering (Dukkha-dukkha), this refers to the physical and emotional pain we experience as humans, such as birth, aging, illness, and death. These natural processes are inherently unsatisfactory due to their inevitable physical and mental discomfort.
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Suffering of Change (Viparinama-dukkha), even pleasurable experiences are unsatisfactory because they are impermanent and bound to change. For example, being apart from loved ones or forced into unpleasant situations causes emotional suffering.
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Suffering of Conditioned Existence (Sankhara-dukkha), is inherent suffering, stress, or dissatisfaction that arises from conditioned phenomena simply because they are impermanent, subject to arising and ceasing.

All conditioned things are impermanent... All conditioned things are unsatisfactory... All things are not-self, when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
DHP277
When one truly sees that all conditioned things are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self, the mind begins to release its endless grasping and resistance.
When there is nothing permanent to hold onto and no self to protect, attachment and aversion lose their power. The mind is no longer swayed by gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. This clear seeing leads naturally to letting go, to the cessation of suffering.

The Five Aggregates: Introduction
The Tathāgata explains that the root of all suffering lies in craving for sense pleasures and clinging to the Five Aggregates as “me” or “mine.” But what exactly are these Five Aggregates?
Put simply, the Five Aggregates are how we experience the world: through our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental formations, which are our thoughts, intentions, and emotions, and through consciousness.
He calls it clinging to the Five Aggregates because we mistakenly take them to be “me” or “mine.” We assume there is a “self” experiencing all of this, a permanent “I” at the center. The Tathāgata teaches that suffering arises because we fail to see that there is no inherent self behind experience. It is not that an “I” is doing the perceiving; rather, it is the act of perceiving itself that creates the sense of “I.”
Instead of a continuous consciousness observing everything from the background, the Tathāgata teaches that consciousness is a moment-to-moment process arising based on causes and conditions. Each contact, whether with a sight, a sound, a thought, or a memory, gives rise to a fresh moment of feeling, perception, intention, and consciousness. These are not the actions of a self, but conditions arising dependent on other conditions.
In other words, experience is not being generated by an “I” interacting with the world; it unfolds through a web of past causes, intentions, desires, habits, and memories. These collected influences form what we call the Five Aggregates. They are not “me.” They are not “mine.” They are not fixed or permanent. They are conditioned processes, mistaken for a solid “me” experiencing the world.
Now, let us look more closely at each of these Five Aggregates in turn.

Depending on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises; the meeting of the three is contact; with contact as a condition, there is feeling; what one feels, one perceives; what one perceives, one thinks about; what one thinks about, one proliferates. From that as a source, perceptions and notions born of proliferation beset a man regarding past, future, and present forms cognizable through the eye.
MN18
The Five Aggregates: Form
The Form Aggregate refers to the physical or material aspects of existence. This includes not only the body and our senses, but also all external objects, everything we can touch, see, hear, or interact with in the material world.
Each of the six senses perceives its own kind of form:
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The eye perceives light waves.
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The ear perceives sound waves.
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The nose perceives odor molecules.
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The tongue perceives taste molecules.
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The body perceives sensations: touch, temperature, pressure, texture.
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And the mind perceives mental phenomena: thoughts, emotions, memories, concepts, and ideas.
It’s important to understand that Form does not refer to physical objects as they exist independently in the external world. Rather, it refers to the material aspect of experience: the body, the sense organs, and the physical qualities, such as visible forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and touches, as they are known through the senses.
Light waves or sound vibrations by themselves have no meaning until they are received and processed through the corresponding sense faculty and consciousness. We do not see color without the eye and mind working together; we do not feel touch without contact, feeling, and consciousness. In other words, form cannot be experienced in isolation, it is always known in dependence on the other aggregates: feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness.
And here we find our first real clue to why suffering arises.
The Body, a Bundle of Constantly Changing Conditions
Take the body, for example. We often think of it as a single, solid thing, as "my body." But what we call the body is a process, a continually changing collection of physical phenomena. It’s made up of about 30 trillion human cells, along with countless bacteria, fungi, and microorganisms. It includes organs, muscles, blood, hair, nails, bones, and innumerable parts we rarely even consider. Then there is genetic inheritance, evolutionary processes, and the results of countless past intentions.
So what, then, is the body really? It is not a fixed or lasting entity. It is a temporary coming together of conditions, constantly changing, subject to decay and death. The body itself is not the problem. The problem is that we cling to perceptions and memories about the body. We identify with it, we call it “mine,” and we take it to define who we are. This grasping, this clinging to the Form Aggregate, is what gives rise to suffering.
Because of clinging to the Form Aggregate, our feelings and perceptions about the body, about others bodies, and about the objects of the world are subject to constant change, which causes suffering. A body that once felt strong becomes weak; a face that once seemed beautiful appears aged; a situation that once delighted us now brings anxiety. Because of clinging, our feelings shift from pleasure to pain, from satisfaction to disappointment, and our perceptions change just as quickly. When we cling to these fleeting experiences, wanting the pleasant to last and the unpleasant to disappear, there is dissatisfaction.
Thus, the Tathagata taught that it is not the forms, feelings, or perceptions themselves that bind us, but our attachment to them, our mental habit of grasping at what is inherently unstable and trying to make it “mine.”
The Hidden Weight of the Body
We live so continuously within the body that we seldom notice the subtle but constant effort it demands. The body must be maintained, balanced, and protected; muscles hold habitual tension; posture and movement require endless small corrections; the senses react to contact with the world; and the mind repeatedly reconstructs the sense of “this body”, its boundaries, weight, and place in space. All of this is work.
Because our attention is habitually directed outward, to sights, sounds, people, and tasks, we rarely perceive this inner stress. The background strain becomes normal, invisible, simply “how it is.” And since most people have never experienced even a moment without a body, they cannot recognize the stress that comes with it.
Having a body sets in motion an entire web of conditions: perception, feeling, craving, identification, expectation, fear, and striving. The body is the root condition for a vast chain of mental and emotional activity. When the sense of “having a body” ceases even temporarily in practice, that whole structure relaxes, not just muscle tension, but the psychological architecture built around embodiment.

This body, householder, is afflicted, trapped within a shell, bound by aging and death. Anyone who, while maintaining this body, would claim even for a moment that it is free from affliction, what else could that be but foolishness?
SN36.6
To have a body is to abide within a chain of conditions. From the body comes contact; from contact, feeling; from feeling, craving; from craving, grasping and becoming. This is how the whole mass of stress and expectation arises.
Because most of us have never known experience apart from being in a physical body, we take this chain for granted. We think the pressure of the world, the pull of desire, the constant managing of experience are just “life.” Yet when the sense of the body is released, even for a moment, the entire structure collapses, and in letting go of identification with it, the conditions for much of suffering naturally fall away.
The body is the anchor around which craving and expectation gather. To carry it is to carry a constant readiness, to protect, to maintain, to satisfy. When this readiness stops, there is a profound ease, as if an unseen mechanism has been switched off.
This is why the Tathagata called the body a shell of endless affliction.
The Five Aggregates: Feelings

And what, disciples, is the aggregate of feeling? It is these six classes of feeling: feeling born of eye-contact, feeling born of ear-contact, feeling born of nose-contact, feeling born of tongue-contact, feeling born of body-contact, feeling born of mind-contact. This is called the aggregate of feeling.
SN22.48
Now, let us turn to the second of the Five Aggregates: the Feeling Aggregate.
What do we mean by “feeling” in this context? In the Tathagata’s teaching, "feeling" does not refer to emotions like sadness, anger, or joy, as we often use the word today. Instead, it refers to the immediate tone of every experience: whether it feels pleasant, painful, or neither-pleasant-nor-painful. This happens every moment we make contact with the world through any of the six senses, including the mind.
Every sight we see, every sound we hear, every thought we think, comes tinged with a feeling tone. Sometimes it’s a subtle pleasure, sometimes discomfort, and sometimes just a neutral hum in the background.
But why is this called an "aggregate"?
It’s called the Feeling Aggregate because our present feelings are shaped by past accumulated experiences. Through lifetimes of craving, aversion, and choices rooted in ignorance, we have built up what might be called a "volitional memory", our "karma". This memory influences how we interpret the same sights, sounds, or thoughts differently from others.
For example, someone else may hear a song and feel joy, while you hear the same song and feel sadness. The difference lies not in the sound itself, but in the stored karmic imprints that condition our feeling response.
So, the Feeling Aggregate is not just about present experience, it’s also a reflection of the intentions, habits, and tendencies that have been conditioned over time. Our feelings are not random. They arise because certain conditions, internal and external, meet in a particular moment. And crucially, they condition what comes next: whether we crave more, resist what is, or fall into delusion.
This is why feelings are so central in the arising of suffering.
The Tathagata explains that feelings arise through contact with the six sense bases, namely:
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Depending on the eye (sight), feelings arise from visual forms.
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Depending on the ear (hearing), feelings arise from sounds.
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Depending on the nose (smelling), feelings arise from odors.
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Depending on the tongue (taste), feelings arise from flavors.
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Depending on the body (touch), feelings arise from tactile sensations.
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Depending on the mind (thoughts), feelings arise from mental objects.

When a pleasant feeling arises in an untrained person, they delight in it, welcome it, and remain holding to it. Thus, craving arises.
When an unpleasant feeling arises, they sorrow, grieve, and lament, beating their breast and becoming distraught.
When a neutral feeling arises, they do not discern it as it really is, the arising, subsiding, and gratification of that feeling.
MN10
Feelings, the Stress of Reactivity
Just as the body, the Form Aggregate carries its own built-in strain through the work of maintaining embodiment, the Feeling Aggregate carries the stress of reactivity, the ceaseless rising and fading of pleasure, pain, and neutrality that keeps the wheel of craving turning.

When touched by a feeling of pleasure, one delights in it; when touched by a feeling of pain, one sorrows. When touched by a neutral feeling, one is confused. But when a disciple sees the rise and fall of feelings, he is freed, for he knows: ‘Whatever is felt, this too is suffering.’
SN36.6
Every moment of sense contact, a sound, a taste, a thought, gives rise to a tone of pleasure, pain, or neither. The untrained mind cannot rest with this; it immediately leans toward pleasure, resists pain, or drifts into dull indifference. This very leaning is suffering itself.
We usually don’t notice the strain that feeling brings because it happens so quickly. The reflex of liking and disliking feels natural, and we instinctively attribute the feeling to the object or event itself, thinking the thing is pleasant or unpleasant, without realizing that the feeling has been created by the mind.
But when the mind grows still and mindfulness deepens, we begin to see that every feeling, even pleasant ones, carries a thread of tension. Pleasant feelings bring the stress of wanting to keep them, painful feelings bring resistance, and neutral feelings bring subtle restlessness or boredom. The mind is always being pulled somewhere.
When feeling quiets, when we observe it without chasing or rejecting, an unexpected ease appears, the habitual pulling stops. Then we understand what the Tathāgata meant when he said, “Whatever is felt is included within suffering.”
By clinging to feelings, we keep the wheel of suffering in motion. But when feelings are fully known, clearly seen and released, craving no longer follows, and the whole process of becoming begins to unravel.
The Five Aggregates: Perceptions

And what, disciples, is the aggregate of perception? It is these six classes of perception: perception of forms, perception of sounds, perception of odors, perception of tastes, perception of tactile objects, and perception of mental phenomena. This is called the aggregate of perception.
Perception is more subtle than feeling. It’s the act of recognition and labeling, the way the mind interprets raw experience: “this is pleasant,” “this is danger,” “this is me,” “that is other.”
The Perception Aggregate refers to the accumulation of past perceptions. These accumulated impressions play a critical role in shaping how we interpret and react to the world in the present.
Perceptions and feelings arise together based on contact with the six sense bases:
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Depending on the eye (seeing), perceptions of visual forms arise.
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Depending on the ear (hearing), perceptions of sounds arise.
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Depending on the nose (smelling), perceptions of odors arise.
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Depending on the tongue (tasting), perceptions of flavors arise.
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Depending on the body (touching), perceptions of tactile sensations arise.
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Depending on the mind (thinking), perceptions of mental objects, such as ideas, memories, and concepts, arise.
The Tathagata often said perception is like a mirage, alluring, but deceptive, because it creates the world we then suffer inside of.

Perception, disciples, is like a mirage. What a man with good eyesight sees in the heat shimmer, that a fool might take for water. So too, what is called ‘perception’ is empty, void, without lasting substance.
SN22.95
Perception is the mind’s act of shaping the world, recognizing, naming, and forming images out of the stream of experience. This seems innocent, even necessary, yet it carries a quiet tension: every perception builds and reinforces a world of distinctions, pleasant and unpleasant, self and other, mine and not mine. Through this continual labeling, the mind freezes fluid reality into fixed forms and then must live inside those forms.
Because this process happens instantly and automatically, we rarely notice its strain. The mind is constantly measuring, comparing, affirming, and defending its pictures of reality. We see a face and immediately recall a story; we hear a sound and name it; we meet a feeling and judge it. This endless mental shaping is exhausting, yet we mistake it for simply “seeing the world.”
When perception quiets, when recognition stops reaching for names, there’s a remarkable peace, an openness unconfined by mental images. The mind stops building and starts simply knowing. In that silence, one sees that the act of “making things into things” was itself a subtle bondage. The Tathagata called perception “like a mirage” because it seduces us into chasing appearances, into believing the mind’s creations are solid.
To see perception for what it is, a mirage arising dependent on contact and memory, is to understand why it is unsatisfactory. As long as we take perception to reveal fixed truth, we must defend our versions of reality. When we see it as conditioned, we relax our grip, and that relaxation is freedom.
The Five Aggregates: Mental Formations

And what, disciples, are mental formations? There are these six classes of volition: volition regarding forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile objects, and mental phenomena. These are called mental formations.
SN22.79
Now we turn to the Mental Formations Aggregate, perhaps the most intricate and influential of all the aggregates.
While form, feeling, and perception describe what we experience, Mental Formations describe how we build experience, the constant undercurrent of intentions, reactions, habits, volitions, and subtle tendencies that shape the mind moment by moment.
The Tathagata called this the engine of becoming, the silent craftsman that fashions the sense of self and world.
Mental Formations interact closely with the other aggregates:
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Form: Intentions influence and are influenced by physical actions.
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Feelings: Feelings condition responses to experiences.
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Perceptions: Perceptions guide the intentions formed by mental formations.
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Consciousness: Mental formations shape the continuity of consciousness and are shaped by it in return.

Whatever one intends, whatever one plans, whatever one has a tendency toward: this becomes a basis for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is a basis, there is the support for the establishing of consciousness. When consciousness is established and has come to growth, there is the production of renewed existence in the future.
SN12.38
Mental Formations are the countless micro-movements of intention that ripple beneath awareness, the tightening of wanting, the resistance to pain, the constant drive to arrange experience into something more bearable or more pleasing. They are the fabricators of the lived world.
Because Mental formations operate so continuously, we mistake them for the experience of being alive. They are the effort behind every becoming: the impulse to control, to plan, to judge, to maintain an image, to escape what we dislike. This never-ending construction is stressful because it is compulsive, built on craving, ignorance, and the assumption of “I am.”
To understand Mental Formations more clearly, it’s important to recognize that they are deeply shaped by the accumulated momentum of past desires and intentions.
These past volitions leave behind karmic imprints, latent tendencies that predispose the mind toward certain reactions and behaviors. These tendencies don’t just sit passively in the background. They influence how we perceive the present moment, and how we respond to it.
For example, someone with a strong habitual tendency toward anger might encounter a frustrating situation. The perception of that situation feels unpleasant. That feeling then gives rise to irritation. Irritation quickly conditions a new angry intention. And that intention not only leads to immediate words or actions, it also strengthens the underlying habit of anger.
This is how, over time, repeated intentions solidify into habitual mental patterns. These patterns, in turn, influence how we respond to new experiences, continuing and reinforcing the cycle of suffering.
When ignorance is present, we fabricate endlessly, constructing identities, emotions, and stories. When ignorance fades, the mind stops fabricating the unnecessary. The sense of strain, of “holding the world together,” lessens, and the mind becomes at ease.
The Five Aggregates: Consciousness
The Consciousness Aggregate refers to the mental process of awareness, of knowing. It plays a central role in generating the perception of a separate self, one that experiences, interacts with, and stands apart from the external world.
But it’s important to understand: consciousness is not a continuous, ever-present stream. It doesn’t run in the background like a single unbroken light.
Instead, consciousness arises moment by moment, like flashes of lightning, each time there is contact between a sense base and a sense object. When the eye meets a visible form, eye-consciousness arises. When the ear meets a sound, ear-consciousness arises. And so on, through all six sense doors, including the mind.
These flashes happen with incredible speed, so fast that they give the appearance of continuity. But in truth, each moment of consciousness arises, ceases, and gives way to the next, conditioned by what came before.
And yet, because we do not see this clearly, we build a sense of identity around it. We think: “I see.” “I hear.” “I think.” But there is no fixed “I” behind these processes, just fleeting consciousness tied to contact, shaped by karma, and empty of any inherent self.

And what, disciples, is consciousness? These six classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, and mind-consciousness. This is called consciousness.
SN22.79
Consciousness is categorized into six types, each corresponding to the six sense bases:
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Eye-consciousness: the awareness of visible forms.
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Ear-consciousness: the awareness of sounds.
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Nose-consciousness: the awareness of smells.
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Tongue-consciousness: the awareness of tastes.
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Body-consciousness: the awareness of tactile sensations.
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Mind-consciousness: the awareness of mental objects, thoughts, and emotions.
Each type of consciousness arises dependently upon the corresponding sense organ and object, for example, eye and form for visual consciousness, or ear and sound for auditory consciousness.
It’s also important to note that no two types of consciousness can arise at the same time. For example, eye-consciousness arises only when there is contact between the eye and a visible form. Ear-consciousness, on the other hand, arises when the ear contacts sound. These are distinct events. They do not overlap or happen simultaneously.
Rather, they arise and cease in rapid succession, one after another, like individual sparks lighting up and fading out. The mind quickly shifts attention from one sense door to another, creating the illusion of a continuous stream of awareness.
But in reality, each type of consciousness is conditioned, dependent, and momentary, arising only when the right contact occurs, and ceasing just as quickly when that contact ends.
Understanding this reveals something profound: that our sense of a continuous, stable “self” is constructed from these ever-changing flashes of consciousness. There is no observer behind the process, just the process itself, arising and passing away.

It is impossible for one to know and see two objects at the same time.
MN43
Consciousness arises and passes away in each moment. The Tathagata emphasized this impermanence:

Just as a monkey, faring through the forest, grabs hold of one branch, letting that go, it grabs another; so too, that which is called consciousness arises as one thing and ceases as another.
SN12.61
Clinging to Consciousness Causes Suffering
Consciousness is often mistaken as the ultimate self, the “knower” behind experience. But the Tathagata revealed that this, too, is woven out of conditions. Consciousness arises dependent on contact with an object: eye-consciousness with form, ear-consciousness with sound, mind-consciousness with thought. When the object fades, the consciousness associated with it fades too.
Because consciousness flickers so rapidly, we experience it as a continuous stream. This illusion of continuity gives rise to the deep belief, “I am the one who knows.” Yet this “knower” is itself a fabrication, a mirroring of the contact between sense base and sense object, continuously renewed.
The suffering lies in the grasping at continuity. The mind silently works to sustain the sense of being a continuous observer, a subtle, ongoing act of fabrication. It is a quiet but constant strain, like keeping a spinning wheel in motion. Even refined states of Jhana, luminous and blissful, still depend on the maintenance of consciousness.
When this process is seen clearly, the mind naturally releases it, not by destroying consciousness, but by ceasing to identify with it.

Where consciousness is not established, and name-and-form do not gain a footing, there is no growth of birth, aging, and death.
SN12.64
This is the stilling of the most fundamental movement, the turning of awareness upon itself as “I.” When consciousness is understood as dependently arisen, the illusion of an abiding self dissolves. What remains is the peace the Tathagata described as Nibbāna, not annihilation, but the unbinding of the mind from conditions.
When the mind sees the arising and passing of these five aggregates without clinging, the whole structure of “I” and “mine” loses support.
The stress that came from defending, maintaining, and defining the aggregates dissolves. What remains is Nibbāna, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishment of all clinging, the fading away of craving, the cessation of suffering.
Thus, the liberation taught by the Tathagata is not about improving or purifying the aggregates, but in seeing them clearly, and relinquishing them.
The Five Aggregates: Should Not Be Mistaken as "Self"
Clinging to the Five Aggregates is the taking for granted, the assumption that there is a "self", a core identity, that experiences what is happening.
But clinging to the Five Aggregates is just that: a mistaken view. It’s the assumption that the body, feelings, perceptions, intentions, and thoughts, these aggregates, make up who we are. That they form a self, or an essence, and that this self is the one interacting with the world.
People mistake the experiences felt and perceived through the Five Aggregates as themselves interacting with something external. Suffering arises because, although there is a physical world, all experiences of that world, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and judgments, are created in the mind and exist only in the mind.
Because this isn’t clearly seen, people pursue happiness, believing it exists in external objects or experiences. They don’t realize that happiness and unhappiness, along with all judgments, arise within the mind. These are shaped by causes and conditions, not by an underlying self, nor by the objects or experiences themselves.
When we begin to contemplate the nature of the Five Aggregates, it becomes clear: what we’ve assumed to be part of the outside world are actually creations of our own minds. They are the result of past volitional memories, desires, intentions, and present cognition. In short, they are the Five Aggregates themselves, which we’ve mistaken for a "me" experiencing reality.
Through deep contemplation, we begin to see that this sense of self, a separate person interacting with the world is an illusion, caused by clinging to these ingrained mental formations and memories, clinging to the aggregates.
With deeper understanding, it becomes clear that everything created in the mind arises from karmic energy, driven by the desire for satisfaction and the craving for existence. This mental energy, which is not bound by physical laws, is capable of manifesting in countless ways, is constantly subject to change, insubstantial, and undependable. When we cling to our desires, it inevitably leads to suffering.
Stress and dissatisfaction arise when we cling to our feelings, perceptions, desires, intentions, and thoughts, believing them to be substantial and dependable. We suffer when we mistake what arises in the mind for external reality or physical truth.
Nāma-Rūpa and the Roots of Suffering
In the Tathagata’s teaching, existence is experienced through the coming together of mind and form (Nāma-Rūpa). Our experience of the physical world: forms, sounds, tastes, touches, and smells, arises dependent on the body and its sense organs. The mind does not know the physical directly; it only knows contact, the meeting of sense object, sense faculty, and consciousness. From this contact arise feeling, perception, and thought, the building blocks of mental experience. This is how the mind is constantly recreating the world internally; it constructs a representation of the physical through the lens of its own conditioning.
But this fabrication can never accurately represent physical reality. The mind only knows what arises within its own domain, a mental image, not the object itself. When we cling to mind created perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, we cling not to the ever-changing world as it truly is, but to snapshots the mind has created.
Suffering arises because the mind’s fabrication of reality, colored by desire, aversion, and delusion, can never match the dynamic, changing nature of things. When we cling to these mental fabrications as “real” or as “mine,” we bind ourselves to a distorted world of concepts and memories, which causes suffering.
Liberation from suffering, therefore, comes from seeing directly, from knowing feelings as feelings, perceptions as perceptions, and thoughts as thoughts, without mistaking them for reality itself.
The Five Aggregates: Fabrication of Reality
To understand that experience is fabricated, consider that phenomena like time and space, and our sense of self as a separate being apart from the objects of the world, are not inherent in light waves entering our eyes or sound waves reaching our ears. This three-dimensional world, where we perceive ourselves as distinct from everything else, is constructed in consciousness.
It is a reconstruction, shaped to serve survival: to help us interact with the environment and to make potential objects of desire stand out from everything else around us.
Over time, all beings have adapted to fulfill the desire to survive, shaping how they feed, how they reproduce, what they like, what they dislike, and how they behave. This survival-driven adaptation requires the mind to ignore most of the vast sensory information available in the environment, and to enhance only what is most important, especially for feeding and reproduction.
For this purpose, the mind makes certain forms appear attractive and certain feelings pleasant, for instance, sexual pleasure to ensure reproduction, pleasant tastes for nourishing foods, and aversion toward things that signal danger. These feelings and perceptions help highlight what is important for survival, making certain objects stand out against the background of the world.
So, even at its most basic level, mere existence as a being gives rise to ordinary suffering, the physical and emotional pain experienced through birth, hunger, fear, aging, illness, and death. This suffering is intensified by the natural competition for resources among beings: the struggle for food, territory, control, and sexual partners. These natural processes are inherently unsatisfactory, for they unavoidably involve both physical and mental discomfort.
The Human Realm
In the human realm, the pressure from parents, friends, society, culture, institutions, advertising, and social media has magnified greed to levels unimaginable in earlier times. We have come to hold an unquestioned belief that happiness lies in indulging in food, sex, wealth, power, popularity, beauty, or any number of endless pursuits that feed sensual and mental cravings. Yet all these mind-created indulgences only add to our stress and place more obstacles in the way of happiness and liberation.
Yet although feelings and perceptions may seem completely natural and a necessary part of life, we rarely recognize how much inherent suffering they contain. What we find pleasant today may become unpleasant tomorrow; what once brought joy can later bring disappointment or loss. The sweetness of taste can turn to craving and overindulgence; affection can turn to attachment and fear of separation; aversion can harden into resentment or hatred. Because feelings and perceptions are constantly changing, and because we cling to them as real or dependable, they give rise to anxiety, tension, and restlessness.
The Five Aggregates: Language and the Mind Created World
Language, the tool that allows humans to communicate and interact using words, is an abstract representation of a mind-created reality. While language has made humans highly successful and efficient at exploiting their environment, it has also created a layer of abstraction in which people interact within a mind-made world, making humans even more detached from physical reality and natural forces.
Language reinforces the subject–object relationship. It strengthens the illusion that there are objects to be desired and a self who desires them, that there is a doer and things to be done, a thinker and thoughts to be thought.
Instead of seeing that all things are the result of natural causes and conditions, ever-changing and without permanence, people take things personally. They cling to words, static representations of what is fluid, and because of this clinging, words have the power to completely shape a person’s moods, thoughts, and actions, even though they are not based on any underlying reality.
We live in a mind-created world, driven by desire and detached from natural reality without realizing it. We believe that what we think and the words we speak can represent true reality, unaware that words are merely fabrications of the mind. Language gives structure to experience, but not truth to it. Words arise after perception; they point toward things, but never touch them. The moment we name a thing, we have already stepped away from the living reality of it.
Relying on words as if they hold essence, we mistake labels for life, signs for substance. We become attached to opinions, stories, and identities built on linguistic constructs, thinking that they mirror the world as it is. In doing so, we dwell not in the freshness of the present, but in echoes, concepts shaped by memory and imagination. This is proliferation of thoughts and meanings, the tangle of conceptual proliferation that fuels craving, aversion, and views.

What one feels, one perceives. What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one mentally proliferates. With what one has mentally proliferated as the source, perceptions and notions born of mental proliferation beset a person with respect to past, future, and present forms.
MN18
In this way, speech and thought propagate suffering. Words, if clung to, become barriers between mind and reality, imprisoning awareness in abstraction. We fight over words, defend views, and mistake linguistic distinctions for ultimate truths. Thus, the more we rely on language to define reality, the further we drift from seeing things as they are.
The wise, therefore, use speech not to build delusion, but to dismantle it, to guide the mind toward direct knowing. Words should be like fingers pointing to the moon: useful only insofar as they direct vision to what lies beyond them. When speech is used to reveal rather than conceal, to still the mind rather than agitate it, it becomes part of the path rather than a source of bondage.

Desires: Their Unsubstantial Nature

Now this is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: It is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for non-existance.
SN56.11
What the Tathāgata calls craving, delight, and lust, or greed, arises because we have not seen the true nature of desires. We fail to recognize that desires are ultimately unsatisfying, unsubstantial, ever-changing, unreliable, and that craving can only result in stress and dissatisfaction.
Instead, we place our trust in what we experience through the Five Aggregates, believing our experiences to be substantial, real, and dependable, something we can grasp and cling to for happiness. We have not seen that the pleasurable things of the world are created in the mind and have no independent existence in physical reality.
We mistakenly believe there must be a way to get what we desire, to obtain happiness from the world by securing and controlling things. We have not realized that what we desire, what we consider happiness, the very things we try to bring under control, and even the sense of self itself, are all creations of the mind. They do not exist outside the mind.
When we cling to the body, our feelings, perceptions, intentions, and thoughts, this creates the illusion of continuity and the belief in a “self” as an enduring entity with a unique essence. As a result, we unquestioningly believe our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts are real, that they belong to us, and that they can be relied upon to see the truth and bring happiness. Because of this, we become entangled, lost in the pursuit of desires, all the while ignoring the stress, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction this very clinging creates.
Craving Blinds Us From Reality
For example, a person blinded by the thought that money will bring happiness may chase after wealth, not to put it to practical use, but simply to amass as much as possible. In their mind, money becomes synonymous with happiness. In the process, they become blind to the stress and suffering they create for themselves, blaming problems on external circumstances or other people. Never satisfied, they continue chasing the delusion created by clinging to mind-made perceptions, feelings, intentions, and thoughts, in short, clinging to the Five Aggregates, while ignoring the unhappiness that desire inevitably brings.
In the same way, we no longer seek food simply to nourish the body; we chase after tastes themselves. Blinded by greed, we seek the idea of sex for its own sake. Greed clouds our vision so that we do not see people as they truly are, but only as they appear: “rich,” “poor,” “powerful,” “successful,” “beautiful,” “ugly.” We chase these mind-made attributes, none of which exist in nature, and as a result, we suffer. This too is clinging to the Five Aggregates.
A liberated person, by contrast, understands that nothing in this world is intrinsically beautiful or ugly, tasty or distasteful, and that all such judgments are products of ingrained memories, volitional formations, and desires created by the Five Aggregates. Taken by themselves, they are empty of substance.
Such a person may still enjoy food, fragrances, and other experiences, but sees through the distortions and enhancements of perception and thought as fabrications. Their mind does not grasp at or react to other people’s words, actions, or any part of existence based on these illusions. Instead, they see the underlying reality: the Five Aggregates are unreliable, fabricated, and not-self, and perceptions and thoughts are harmless when understood in this light.
Clinging To The Undesirable
Just as we cling to what we find desirable, we also cling to what we find unpleasant. Instead of seeing the underlying reality of experiences, we fixate on their perceived unpleasant features. We might, for example, reject healthy food simply because it lacks the taste we desire, ignoring the long-term harm caused by unhealthy eating.
When unpleasant sensations arise, we cling to their unpleasantness rather than seeing the truth of impermanence and not-self. This clinging only increases our stress, discomfort, and suffering.
The desire for things to be one way or another fuels unhappiness. Whenever we encounter unpleasant experiences, we try to escape by seeking out pleasant ones: food, entertainment, alcohol, drugs, sex, daydreams, and more.
But due to ignorance, we believe these pleasant experiences contain some inherent desirable quality. In truth, that desirability is a product of the mind. Such pleasures feel pleasant only because they temporarily relieve the underlying stress created by trying to satisfy desire.
And so the cycle continues: endlessly chasing desires, grasping for moments of pleasure, yet ending in dissatisfaction. This is clinging to the Five Aggregates.
Delusion persists because, even though life constantly shows us that our likes and dislikes, our views, thoughts, and actions cannot fully satisfy us or align with the truth of the physical world, we ignore this truth. Instead, we strengthen the sense of self, blindly pursuing satisfaction while overlooking the stress, unhappiness, and suffering created by that very pursuit.
Craving: Attachment to Desires
It is important to understand that the objects of the world are not the problem. Pleasure does not inherently exist in what we see, hear, or touch, it lies in how the mind reacts to these experiences.
Suffering comes from the intention behind our desires: the craving to have more, to repeat a good experience, or the urge to claim something as “mine.”
When we become attached to experiences, they begin to control us. Enjoyment shifts from something we experience freely to something we cling to. This is why the desire for sensory pleasure is not about the objects themselves, but about the way we latch onto them.
The Tathāgata did not reject pleasure but cautioned against becoming entangled in it. If we misunderstand this, we might assume self-denial is the solution, but that is not the answer. The true challenge is the mind’s tendency to become obsessed, attached, and lost in craving.
We can still enjoy life wisely, appreciating good moments as long as they remain free from intoxication, identification, and craving. Of course, this is easier said than done, which is why we must examine our experiences closely to see whether craving is present.
Craving for sensual pleasure is not about sensory contact itself; it is about our mental reaction: lust, craving, attachment, delight, and obsession, toward experiences that please the senses. It manifests as:
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The desire to repeat or prolong an experience
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Identification with pleasure (“this is my enjoyment”)
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Mental delight
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Addiction-like attachment
Craving is not merely liking something; it is being drawn in by it, compelled toward it, and clinging to it. Likewise, aversion is not simply disliking something; it is being pushed away by it, resisting or clinging to its absence. Both craving and aversion bind the mind to suffering.

Contemplating Sensual Pleasures
Sensual pleasures have been described by me as having little delight, much suffering, much despair, and the danger in them is even greater.
Sensual pleasures have been compared by me to a skeleton... Sensual pleasures have been compared by me to a piece of meat... Sensual pleasures have been compared by me to a torch of grass... Sensual pleasures have been compared by me to a pit of burning coals... Sensual pleasures have been compared by me to a dream...
I have described desires as like a borrowed well... I have described desires as like tree fruits... I have described desires as like a sword's edge... I have described desires as like a spear's point... I have described desires as like a snake's head, full of suffering and trouble, with more danger therein. - MN22
Sensual Pleasures

Karma: Is Past Craving and Intentions

Ānanda, karma is the field, consciousness the seed, and craving the moisture
AN3.76
It’s important to understand that stress and dissatisfaction, although felt in the present, are the fruits of past causes, past desires, intentions and actions, that have ripened into our current experience. The circumstances of this life, and even of countless past lives, have shaped the tendencies of mind we now carry: our likes and dislikes, our views, our moods, and the very ways we interpret the world. All these together shape what we experience in each moment.
These past conditions continue to influence us because they carry karmic momentum, the residual energy of our former intentions. Each unfulfilled desire, each grasping intention, becomes a seed seeking expression. This ongoing stream of will and becoming is what the Tathagata called saṃsāra, a river of craving and striving, flowing onward from one life to the next.
Suffering arises when we fail to understand this conditioning, when we try to control our actions, emotions, and outcomes as if they were entirely within our power, unaware that our very impulses are shaped by past karma. Because of this blindness, we struggle against our own conditions, resisting what is already inevitable, or forcing what is not yet possible. In doing so, we create new intentions rooted in delusion, and the wheel of dissatisfaction keeps on turning.
This gives rise to an underlying feeling of helplessness, a tension to find lasting satisfaction and to control our experience. This is saṃsāra itself: at times we feel submerged and overwhelmed, at times content and peaceful, but most often, we’re grasping for something, trying to resist the constant change. We cling, we grasp, and we live in fear of being pulled under or swept away into suffering.
Karma and saṃsāra can be understood like seeds or intentions rooted in desire. When the right conditions appear, those seeds sprout. They ripen into stress and suffering when craving and clinging are present. For example, if we’ve formed a liking for certain foods, or a dislike for particular behaviors, encountering them, through the senses or even through memory, triggers habitual reactions.
These reactions may manifest as unwholesome thoughts, speech, or actions. For more experienced practitioners, they may appear as more subtle forms of clinging, aversion, or delusion, a faint tightening, a subtle wanting, a subtle resistance to what is.
Even though past karma might spark these unwholesome tendencies, our response in the present determines whether that karma strengthens or weakens. It is not the arising of old karma that binds us, but how we react to it.
In other words, when we first begin to practice, we can’t prevent past karma from affecting us, contact through the six senses will inevitably bring pleasure and pain. But we can stop creating new karma by changing how we respond to that contact.
For example, instead of clinging to the Five Aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, we allow any feelings, perceptions, or intentions that arise from old patterns to simply pass away. We do this by not attaching to them, not reacting to them, not feeding them with new fuel. In this way, the chain of craving is weakened, and we cease to plant new karmic seeds.
When we begin to see this clearly, that present experience is both shaped by the past and shaping the future, wisdom arises. We stop fighting what cannot be controlled, and instead act with awareness, compassion, and wisdom. In this way, we stop creating new karma.

Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions, they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. Actions distinguish beings as inferior and superior.
MN135
Karma can also be understood at a simple level as the conditions that shape our identity, including unfulfilled past likes, dislikes, intentions, habits, dreams, memories, etc. This creates restlessness or agitation of the mind, a burning energy, generating volition or intentions to find satisfaction and happiness. The consequence is that we are continually seeking something to alleviate this agitation, and the mind struggles to remain calm.

Karma should be understood, the source and origin of karma should be understood, the diversity of karma should be understood, the result of karma should be understood, the cessation of karma should be understood, the way of practice leading to the cessation of karma should be understood.
AN6.63
SN12.25: Sāriputta is asked by Venerable Bhūmija as to the origin of pleasure and pain. He replies that the Tathagata teaches that pleasure and pain originate by conditions. Moreover, all those who offer opinions on this question are themselves part of the web of conditions, as they cannot state their views without contact.
AN10.216: This Tathagata teaches that beings are the owners and heirs of their actions, determining their rebirth and future conditions based on their deeds. Actions, whether good or evil, lead to corresponding rebirths in realms of suffering or bliss. Misconduct by body, speech, and mind leads to rebirth in realms of intense suffering or as lower creatures like snakes and scorpions. Conversely, abstaining from harmful actions and cultivating compassion and righteousness leads to rebirth in blissful heavens or among noble families. Thus, one's destiny is shaped by one's actions.
To truly understand stress and suffering, and to fully embrace the Eightfold Path, it’s essential to see how desire gives rise to intention. These intentions are karma; they are the volitional energies that drive us.
Intentions shape our views, our thoughts, and our habits. And over time, they lead directly to the stress and dissatisfaction we experience in the present.
By understanding this process clearly, we begin to see why the Eightfold Path is the only way forward. It offers the means to cultivate new causes and conditions, ones that lead not to further stress, but to its cessation.
Desire: Why It Causes Stress and Dissatisfaction
To better understand volition, stress, and suffering, consider the following diagram:

Due to restlessness from unfulfilled past desires, the mind is always seeking something to grasp, something to relieve this agitation. Based on karma, which is volition or mental energy rooted in past desires, something in our environment or memories will trigger an existing or new desire.
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This desire causes tension or craving in the person experiencing it.
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Since the tension is felt as unpleasant, the person is compelled to alleviate it by trying to satisfy the craving.
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Obtaining the desired object and gratifying the craving relaxes the tension in the mind.
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The relaxation of tension leads to a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, accompanied by some degree of comfort. This creates the false belief that the desired object is the source of happiness.
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As long as a person is not liberated, desires and cravings of all kinds will continue to arise, agitating the mind almost every moment.
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Therefore, the relaxation of tension and resulting pleasure from chasing desires can never be anything more than temporary and incomplete.
For example, most people spend their whole lives chasing after things like money, material goods, beauty, status, delicious foods, winning competitions, affection, sex, or travel experiences. The expectations created, and the effort involved in trying to obtain these, cause tension and stress.
If we look carefully at this process, every time someone earns money, obtains a new possession, eats delicious food, wins a competition, obtains affection, sex or goes on vacation, the stress from desires, cravings, expectations, and effort is temporarily relieved. This temporary relief is then mistaken as happiness obtained from that experience.
Because people believe happiness comes from making money, chasing beauty and status, receiving affection, winning competitions, or going on vacation, they repeat the cycle again and again, never achieving lasting satisfaction or happiness.
In reality, rather than recognizing that the letting go of desire and expectation, and the relaxation of pressure from craving, brought them satisfaction, people mistakenly believe the objects of desire themselves brought them happiness. In truth, desire is the cause of stress and dissatisfaction.
Since happiness does not come from craving or desire, which in fact causes pain, but from its ceasing, one should understand that the renunciation of craving and sense desires, far from causing misery, opens the only path to true and lasting happiness.
SN36.6: Both unlearned ordinary people and learned noble disciples experience pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. The key difference lies in their reactions to these feelings. An ordinary person reacts to painful feelings with emotional distress and seeks relief in sensual pleasures, thus remaining attached to suffering due to ignorance of true escape. In contrast, a learned noble disciple does not react emotionally to pain, does not seek sensual pleasure, and understands the true nature of feelings, including their origin, danger, and escape, remaining detached from suffering. This understanding and detachment mark the profound difference between ordinary individuals and noble disciples in handling life experiences.

The Five Aggregates: Undependable, Unsatisfying, Not-self and Suffering

By & large, Kaccāna, this world is in bondage to attachments, clingings, & biases. But one such as this does not get involved with or cling to these attachments, clingings, fixations of awareness, biases, or obsessions; nor is he resolved on 'my self'.
He has no uncertainty or doubt that mere stress, when arising, is arising; stress, when passing away, is passing away. In this, his knowledge is independent of others. It’s to this extent, Kaccāna, that there is right view.
SN 12:15
The root of stress and dissatisfaction lies in the fundamental assumption that what we perceive through the Five Aggregates is reliable, substantial, controllable, and represents true reality or the physical world. We mistakenly equate the Five Aggregates as reality itself.
Instead of recognizing the insubstantial, ever-changing, and not-self nature of experience, we overlook that all perceptions arising in the mind, including the dualities of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, fast and slow, are judgments shaped by our conditioning, biases, and obsessions rather than by any inherent essence in objects or experiences. This clinging strengthens the illusion of a ‘me’ that possesses fixed likes and dislikes, a "me" that feels compelled to control shifting dualities, mistaking them for external realities instead of seeing them as products of the mind.
For example, once one attaches to and personally identifies with the perception of something as "good," it is inevitable that, given changing causes and conditions, this "good" attribute will eventually shift to "bad," often oscillating back and forth depending on circumstances. This constant change causes stress and suffering.
The truth, therefore, lies not in believing or disbelieving these labels of good or bad, but in not being attached or clinging to either.

'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn’t exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma via the middle.
SN 12.15
SN12.15: The venerable Kaccānagotta asked the Blessed One about the nature of right view. The Tathagata explained that the world largely operates on the duality of existence and nonexistence. He taught that true wisdom sees beyond these concepts, recognizing neither nonexistence nor existence of the world. The world is often trapped in attachment and identity, but right view involves understanding the impermanence of suffering without clinging to notions of self. The Tathagata emphasized avoiding the extremes of "everything exists" and "nothing exists," instead teaching the Middle Way, which links ignorance to the arising and cessation of suffering through dependent origination.
For example, although most perceptions, feelings, and thoughts naturally arise, pass away, and cease without causing stress or discomfort, the mind clings to them, wanting them to exist or not exist. This clinging is rooted in greed or aversion. As a result, a sense of self is fabricated around that very desire.
Stress arises because we cling to the arising of sensations and thoughts while ignoring their passing away, cessation, and emptiness. This attachment gives rise to unwholesome and delusional states of mind, rather than allowing these experiences to naturally fade and cease on their own.
In simple terms, when one stops clinging to the judgments and details created by the Five Aggregates, and lets these mental formations fade away on their own, stress and unhappiness come to an end.

The Fires of Nibbana

For him, infatuated, attached, confused, not remaining focused on their drawbacks, the five clinging-aggregates head toward future accumulation.
The craving that makes for further becoming, accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there, grows within him.
His bodily disturbances & mental disturbances grow. His bodily torments & mental torments grow. His bodily distresses & mental distresses grow. He is sensitive both to bodily stress & mental stress.
MN149
Another critical aspect of suffering is the cumulative nature of our desires and intentions. The Five Aggregates are like burning fires: the more desire and craving we feed into them, the stronger they blaze. As the Tathagata describes:
"His bodily disturbances and mental disturbances grow. His bodily torments and mental torments grow. His bodily distresses and mental distresses grow. He is sensitive both to bodily stress and mental stress."
Each instance of desire and clinging is like adding fuel to a fire. Over time, these accumulated fires lead to heightened stress and various bodily and mental symptoms, which can manifest as physical tension, ailments, or other issues with no apparent cause.
In simple terms, every time desire, greed, aversion, and clinging arise, our overall stress level increases. When these “fires” become too intense or overwhelming, we “blow up,” releasing stress through anger, depression, indulgence in unwholesome foods or actions, or by storing it as tension in the body, often in some combination of these.
As a result, people develop unwholesome behaviors and bad habits as coping mechanisms to manage and release underlying stress and discomfort.
It is well recognized that stress is a primary cause of a wide range of mental and physical health problems. Therefore, clinging to the body, feelings, perceptions, intentions, and thoughts, the Five Aggregates, has profound and far-reaching consequences for long-term mental and physical well-being.

Close your eyes and experience the burning
Disciples, everything is burning. And what is everything that is burning? The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, and whatever feeling arises with eye-contact as condition: whether pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant: that too is burning.
Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of delusion. Burning with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with distresses, with despairs, I say.
Suffering: In Future Lifetimes
So far, we have only addressed stress and suffering within this present lifetime. However, the cycle of rebirth is inherently unpredictable and often leads to existences in unfavorable realms. If one could truly witness the suffering endured by beings in this and countless past lifetimes, it would become clear that even human rebirth is not exempt from profound suffering.
To fully understand the nature of suffering, we must also take into account the suffering that lies ahead in countless future lives. Only by broadening our perspective in this way can we begin to grasp the full scope of the Tathagata’s teachings.

What do you think, disciples? Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time, crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing, or the water in the four great oceans?
As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the tears we have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time, crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing, not the water in the four great oceans.
SN15.3)

Disciples, this cycle of rebirths is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on, hindered by not knowing and fettered by craving. Disciples, whatever is seen of a destitute, miserable state, it should be understood: We too have experienced such a state in this long journey.
SN15.11
SN13.1: The Tathagata used a speck of dust on his fingernail to illustrate a point to the disciples. He compared the tiny amount of dust to the vastness of the earth, highlighting that the earth was immensely greater. Similarly, he explained that for a noble disciple who has attained right view and made a breakthrough in understanding the Dhamma, the suffering that remains is negligible compared to the vast amount of suffering that has been overcome. This demonstrates the profound benefit of realizing the Dhamma.
The Four Noble Truths
Having read or listened to the content so far, one should now possess a solid intellectual understanding of the First and Second Noble Truths:
First Noble Truth: And what is the noble truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the disliked is suffering, separation from the loved is suffering; not getting what one wants is suffering. In brief, the Five Aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
Second Noble Truth: And what is the noble truth of the origin of suffering? It is this craving which leads to rebirth, accompanied by delight and lust, finding delight here and there; namely, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence.
It is important to understand that merely having an intellectual grasp of Suffering and its origin is not enough. We must deeply contemplate this understanding and observe how it manifests in our own lives until we gain direct, penetrative insight into the First and Second Noble Truths. Only then do we develop a partial Right View and Right Intention inclined toward renunciation, and truly comprehend why the cessation of suffering can be realized only through following the Noble Eightfold Path.
Third Noble Truth: And what is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, and non-reliance on it.
Fourth Noble Truth: And what is the noble truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering? It is this Noble Eightfold Path, namely: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
The Four Noble Truths held by the Noble Ones are not static doctrines; they are practical truths that guide the ongoing cultivation of the Eightfold Path. In practice, this means continually discerning more and more subtle forms of stress and suffering, identifying their causes, and realizing their cessation through the Eight-Fold Path.
MN13: Challenged to show the difference between his teaching and that of other ascetics, the Tathagata points out that they speak of letting go, but do not really understand why. He then explains in great detail the suffering that arises from attachment to sensual stimulation.

Contemplation: Clinging to the Five Aggregates

A noble disciple understands clinging, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation. But what is clinging? What is its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation?
There are these four kinds of clinging. Clinging at sensual pleasures, views, precepts and observances, and theories of a self. Clinging originates from craving. Clinging ceases when craving ceases. The practice that leads to the cessation of clinging is simply this noble eightfold path.
MN9
The Tathagata teaches that there are four ways people cling to the Five Aggregates, believing them to be the self.
First, there is clinging to the feelings and perceptions about the objects of the world, creating an identity around what is liked and what is disliked.
Second, as a result of this clinging, views arise about what is good and what is bad in the world. These views become entrenched, reinforcing the belief in a self, shaping ideas about how the world should and should not be, and how one ought to live.
Third, based on these views, habitual thoughts and routines take shape. They lead to further clinging, strengthening the sense of a self that is constantly seeking happiness and avoiding unhappiness in this world.
Fourth, the more likes and dislikes become ingrained as views, and the more these views are reinforced through habitual thoughts and actions, the deeper the clinging to the Five Aggregates becomes. One ignorantly believes that the body, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and views are entirely real, substantial, the self, and that they can be relied upon to avoid distress and secure happiness.
In other words, we identify with, take personally, and cling to what is experienced through the Five Aggregates, suffering because we ignore the truth: that what is experienced here is not absolute reality, but is conditioned by past causes, present conditions, and the distortions and imperfections of the world.
Contemplation: Clinging to Sensual Pleasures
All of us develop desires and preferences, our own ways of finding pleasure and happiness in the world. We believe this makes us individuals, separate from others. But when enjoying a favorite pleasure, pause and contemplate:
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Is the enjoyment truly coming from the object or action itself? Or is it arising from the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions we hold about it?
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When eating a delicious meal, is the deliciousness in the food itself, or in our perceptions, feelings, expectations, and the stimulation of the taste buds?
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Are the qualities we call beautiful, ugly, pleasurable, or distasteful really inherent in the object or action? Does everyone agree on what is beautiful or pleasurable?
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Throughout the day, try recollecting your feelings and perceptions. Notice your likes and dislikes. Notice how perceptions are enhanced, diminished, or altered. Are they substantial? Reliable? Unchanging? Or do they shift and transform?
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Look closely: are your feelings, perceptions, and thoughts touched by greed or aversion? This is why it is called clinging.
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Ask yourself: are you clinging to the object itself, or to the image and perception you have created about it in your own mind?
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When you crave sensual pleasures, notice how you create in your imagination a little world: one where you are enjoying the pleasure, feeling happy or satisfied. Once this craving is made personal, expectations appear: “I like this. I want this.” This is craving.
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See how craving carries the seeds of stress and dissatisfaction—whether from not being able to obtain the pleasure, from it not matching what was imagined, or from it disappearing altogether.
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Also, notice how when desire captures the mind, anything irrelevant to it fades from awareness until the desire is fulfilled. The Tathagata calls this “birth”, taking on an identity in an imagined world.
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Contemplate what it feels like to live in that imagined world, chasing desires. Is the mind clear, or is it clouded with passion and longing? This is delusion.
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Reflect on how greed or aversion toward sensual objects develops. Why do you like or dislike something? Is there truly something inherently bad or good in it? Or is that perception the result of clinging—and of building an identity filled with expectations?
Contemplation: Clinging to the Views We Hold About the World
As we develop likes and dislikes toward things in the world, these preferences often link together to form views about life. Over time, these views strengthen our attachment to the perception of a self.
It is common to hold strong opinions, about how to live, about politics, about almost every subject related to existence. We often believe these views define us, make us unique, and even determine our success in life. But consider this:
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Is it truly possible to have “our own views”? Or were these views shaped by conditions and circumstances: by family, society, religion, language, peer influence, institutions, social media, advertising, and the events of our life?
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What strong views do you hold about yourself? How did they come about? Are they really “you”? Did you accept them automatically, without deeply examining all possibilities and alternatives?
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Many of us accept certain views without much thought. Some become so entrenched that we no longer see them as views at all, we take them as “truth.” These may be the hardest to question.
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Reflect: what are views? How do they arise? And how does clinging to them create stress or suffering?
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When faced with a problem in life, notice whether you have built a self-identity and a set of views around it. How does this cause stress or suffering when reality refuses to match your expectations?
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Think about how a wrong view formed in youth can give rise to repeated unhappiness, stress, or suffering over the years.
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When examining your views, ask yourself which will lead to long-term well-being, and which will lead to long-term stress and unhappiness.
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Are you blaming others when something goes wrong, instead of turning the lens inward to examine your own perspective? If you attribute blame to others or the world, are you actually causing harm to yourself—perhaps through anger or resentment?
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Do you really need to hold on to a certain view? If you do, what is the benefit? Or will it limit your freedom and cause unhappiness?
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Finally, consider that when you form views about entire categories—about people, politics, foods, behaviors—you are no longer seeing reality directly. You are only seeing the fabricated traits your mind has assigned.
Contemplation: Clinging to Habits and Routines
As strong views develop, they often take shape in our thoughts, habits, and routines, things we do automatically, often without much attention. We believe these patterns make us unique, defining how we think and act in our search for happiness. Eating, working, socializing, exercising, and pursuing hobbies all become part of this identity. Yet these habits and routines can further strengthen our clinging to the perception of a self.
Consider your thoughts, habits, and routines. Try to become aware of the motivations behind them.
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What am I expecting from repeatedly thinking about something or performing the same routine over and over? Are my thoughts and actions simply mindless repetitions, causing stress without bringing any lasting satisfaction?
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Reflect on your sense of self, the “me” who needs to get what I want, who must overcome obstacles. Notice how this sense of self shapes your actions and strengthens clinging.
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Throughout the day, try to catch yourself in blind thought or automatic action. Ask: why am I thinking this, or why am I doing this?
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Consider whether some of your thoughts, habits, or routines are merely ways of avoiding unpleasant circumstances or feelings.
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Finally, ask yourself: when things go wrong, do I blame others instead of examining my own thoughts and actions? Could this be a sign of delusion?
Contemplation: Clinging to the Aggregates Themselves

An uninstructed, run-of-the-mill person , assumes form to be the self, or the self as possessing form, or form as in the self, or the self as in form.. He assumes feeling to be the self. He assumes perception to be the self. He assumes formations to be the self.. He assumes consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness.
SN 22.85
The Tathagata teaches that the true source of clinging is the Five Aggregates themselves. We are deeply attached to our bodies, our feelings and perceptions, our thoughts, views, and consciousness. We take them to be part of us, who we are, what we see as our self.
Discerning clinging to the Five Aggregates will be explored later in the gradual training.
The Details of Pain
The following is a condensed version of the original article
Our dreams and delusions make us forget that we live in the midst of a mass of pain and stress, the stress of defilements, the pain of birth. Birth, aging, illness, and death: All of these are painful and stressful, in the midst of instability and change. They’re things we have no control over, for they must circle around in line with the laws of kamma and the defilements we’ve been amassing all along. Life that floats along in the round of rebirth is thus nothing but stress and pain.
If we can find a way to develop our mindfulness and discernment, they’ll be able to cut the round of rebirth so that we won’t have to keep wandering on. They’ll help us know that birth is painful, aging is painful, illness is painful, death is painful, and that these are all things that defilement, attachment, and craving keep driving through the cycles of change.
So as long as we have the opportunity, we should study the truths appearing throughout our body and mind, and we’ll come to know that the elimination of stress and pain, the elimination of defilement, is a function of our practice of the Dhamma. If we don’t practice the Dhamma, we’ll keep floating along in the round of rebirth that is so drearily repetitious, repetitious in its birth, aging, illness, and death, driven on by defilement, attachment, and craving, causing us repeated stress, repeated pain. Living beings for the most part don’t know where these stresses and pains come from or what they come from, because they’ve never studied them, never contemplated them, so they stay stupid and deluded, wandering on and on without end.…
If we can stop and be still, the mind will have a chance to be free, to contemplate its sufferings and to let them go. This will give it a measure of peace, because it will no longer want anything out of the round of rebirth, for it sees that there’s nothing lasting to it, that it’s simply stress over and over again. Whatever you grab hold of is stress. This is why you need mindfulness and discernment to know and see things for yourself, so that you can supervise the mind and keep it calm, without letting it fall victim to temptation.
This practice is something of the highest importance. People who don’t study or practice the Dhamma have wasted their birth as human beings, because they’re born deluded and simply stay deluded. But if we study the Dhamma, we’ll become wise to suffering and know the path of practice for freeing ourselves from it.…
Once we follow the right path, the defilements won’t be able to drag us around, won’t be able to burn us, because we’re the ones burning them away. We’ll come to realize that the more we can burn them away, the more strength of mind we’ll gain. If we let the defilements burn us, the mind will be sapped of its strength, which is why this is something you have to be very careful about. Keep trying to burn away the defilements in your every activity, and you’ll be storing up strength for your mindfulness and discernment so that they’ll be brave in dealing with all sorts of suffering and pain.
You must come to see the world as nothing but stress. There’s no real ease to it at all. The awareness we gain from mindfulness and discernment will make us disenchanted with life in the world because it will see things for what they are in every way, both within us and without.
The entire world is nothing but an affair of delusion, an affair of suffering. People who don’t know the Dhamma, don’t practice the Dhamma, no matter what their status or position in life, lead deluded, oblivious lives. When they fall ill or are about to die, they’re bound to suffer enormously because they haven’t taken the time to understand the defilements that burn their hearts and minds in everyday life. Yet if we make a constant practice of studying and contemplating ourselves as our everyday activity, it will help free us from all sorts of suffering and distress. And when this is the case, how can we not want to practice?
Only intelligent people, though, will be able to stick with the practice. Foolish people won’t want to bother. They’d much rather follow the defilements than burn them away. To practice the Dhamma you need a certain basic level of intelligence, enough to have seen at least something of the stresses and sufferings that come from defilement. Only then can your practice progress. And no matter how difficult it gets, you’ll have to keep practicing on to the end.
This practice isn’t something you do from time to time, you know. You have to keep at it continuously throughout life. Even if it involves so much physical pain or mental anguish that tears are bathing your cheeks, you have to keep with the chaste life because you’re playing for real. If you don’t follow the chaste life, you’ll get mired in heaps of suffering and flame. So you have to learn your lessons from pain. Try to contemplate it until you can understand it and let it go, and you’ll gain one of life’s greatest rewards.
Don’t think that you were born to gain this or that level of comfort. You were born to study pain and the causes of pain, and to follow the practice that frees you from pain. This is the most important thing there is. Everything else is trivial and unimportant. What’s important all lies with the practice.
Sutta Study
SN15.5: A disciple asked the Blessed One about the length of an eon. The Tathagata explained that an eon is immensely long, difficult to quantify in years. He used an analogy of a massive, solid mountain being worn away by a fine cloth stroked once every hundred years, stating that the mountain would erode faster than an eon would pass. He emphasized the vastness of time by mentioning the countless eons that have already passed, underscoring the endless cycle of rebirths. This led to the conclusion that one should aim to become disenchanted and liberated from all worldly formations.
SN22.1: The householder Nakulapitā asks the Tathagata for help in coping with old age. The Tathagata says to reflect: “Even though I am afflicted in body, my mind will be unafflicted.” Later Sāriputta explains this in terms of the five aggregates.
SN22.48: From Sāvatthi, the Khandhasutta teaches about the five aggregates and the five clinging aggregates. The five aggregates include form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, encompassing all states whether past, present, or future, and varying in nature (internal/external, gross/subtle). The five clinging aggregates are similar but are characterized by being tainted and subject to clinging. This teaching highlights the nature of existence and attachment in philosophy.
SN22.95: The Blessed One, while at Ayujjhā on the Ganges riverbank, taught disciples about the nature of existence using various similes. He compared form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness to transient and insubstantial phenomena like foam, water bubbles, mirages, banana trees, and illusions. By observing and investigating these wisely, they appear empty and void of substance. This understanding leads a learned noble disciple to become disenchanted and dispassionate, ultimately achieving liberation. The Tathagata emphasized the importance of diligent investigation and mindfulness to see beyond the superficial and recognize the essenceless nature of all aggregates, urging disciples to seek liberation with the urgency of a head on fire.
SN56.48: In the Dutiyachiggaḷayuga Sutta, a metaphor is used where a blind turtle surfaces every hundred years, attempting to thread its neck through a yoke floating randomly on an ocean-covered earth. This illustrates the rarity of being born human, the arising of a Tathāgata (a Perfectly Enlightened One), and the presence of his Dhamma in the world. Given these rare opportunities, disciples are urged to diligently pursue understanding and cessation of suffering.