We've now reached suttas 13 and 14 in the Majjhima Nikaya. These are the greater and lesser dukkha skandha suttas.
Dukkha, first of the noble truths.
Skandhas, well the skandhas appear in connection with the four noble truths since dukkha is traditionally divided into the eight afflictions, birth, disease, old age and death, separation, confinement, failure and the skandhas. The skandhas appear as the eighth affliction. It's the skandhas that carry the dukkha into the depths of the mind.
But in these sutras, the main thing that we learn is that the pleasure of the spiritual life is greater than
1/ the pleasures to be derived from sensual indulgence, which can be taken here as vijnana. It's an orientation, an intention. So it's a function of vijnana.
2/ from attachment to objects, that's rupa, and
3/ from feelings, vedana.
The Buddha tells us that unless you can see the attraction of the spiritual life, you'll never give up the pleasures of the skandhas and he even says that at an early stage in his own spiritual career, he realized the dangers inherent in the skandhas, but he continued to fall into the trap until he realized the true pleasure of the spiritual life. Then he was enabled to have greater peace and ease than a king, he says.
In other words, seeing the danger and disadvantage is important, but one has to actualize an alternative. Most people see nothing better than the pleasures of the skandhas. In these two sutras, he encounters on the one hand a householder, and on the other, ascetic practitioners, followers of Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion.
The householder practices the mundane pleasures of the household life and the ascetics are given to penitential self-punishment. They're paying off their past karma, they believe.
The Buddha rejects both these approaches. His own way is a middle way between the two. In fact, he had previously tried both of these other paths, but he found them unsatisfactory.
The dangers of the skandhas are described at length in the sutras. For instance, if a person goes in pursuit of possessions, he either fails to obtain them, in which case he's miserable, or he does obtain them and then he has all the trouble of maintaining and protecting them, which is also irksome. If a person lusts after a beauty of the other sex, later that beautiful body decays in ways that are nowhere near as attractive. If a person seeks power and prestige, he soon finds himself embroiled in conflicts and rivalries from which he will never emerge unscathed and may well meet a rather painful end. So, desire and lust lead to all manner of trouble. One goes round and round the skandha wheel, proceeding from one dukkha to another.
Toward the end of the second sutra, the four jhanas, the stages of meditation, appear. But they don't come as a direct way to attain nirvana, rather they are a way to experience the peace of detachment and this makes it possible for you to relinquish desire and lust because you have an alternative.
This is the balance that the Buddha is looking for, something that will act as a counterweight. It's interesting that in this sutra there are only three skandhas shown. Samjna and Samskara don't appear.
They're more unconscious. These sutras deal with the more, in a sense, superficial or more evident, the things we experience consciously. This is probably because he's talking to a householder and to people from another school who are not involved in investigation of Dharma.
So, this is dukkha-skandha, the skandhas as dukkha, the dukkha coming from skandha, and how to move away from it.
Thank you very much. Namo Amida Bu.
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