Now that, of course, comes from a well-fed, middle-class American. I wouldn’t apply it to a Palestinian refugee in Hebron. We can, however, see that if one has the basic requisites of life and one lives in a civil society, then one has the opportunity to contemplate Dhamma. In that case suffering, stress and various forms of discontent can be instructive and hence sources of growth and maturity. Our cynical side might joke, "One more growth experience and I’ll be dead." Our more sincere side, however, is inspired by the aspiration to free our selves from delusion: to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided.

We may be confronted by some species of fear that we have historically avoided but, at long last, for various reasons, we are willing to observe and inquire, in order to understand it. Insight is given a chance to surface and deeper truths are realized. These truer, more profound realities constitute Right Understanding, the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path.

I would like to contemplate a part of our morning chanting in order to deepen this Right Understanding. Specifically let us consider the five khandhas.

This is not simply a matter of accumulating knowledge or acquiring information. The knowledge has to enter our hearts so that we have the right faith, right conviction and right intelligence to develop our lives in a skilful and liberating manner. To do this we need to understand the teachings concerning the five khandhas.

If we turn to our chanting books we find these teachings explained in detail:
…birth is dukkha, ageing is dukkha, and death is dukkha, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha, association with the disliked is dukkha, separation from the liked is dukkha, not attaining one’s wishes is dukkha. In brief the five focuses of attachment are dukkha.

Dukkha is translated as: stress, suffering, pain, distress, discontent. The five focuses of attachment are the five khandhas. The khandhas are the physical and mental compo-nents of the personality and of sensory experience in general. According to Buddhism, then, the problem of human suffering arises because of attachment to the five khandhas.

The khandhas are categories of the mind-body experience defined by the following five groups:
• Rupa means body; physical phenomenon.
• Vedana is feeling, pleasure (ease), pain (stress), or neither pleasure nor pain.
• Sañña is perception, that is based on memory. For example, if I speak about Ajahn Chah, most of you probably know who he is; some of you don’t. If you know him you have a particular perception but your perception is different from mine because our experiences of Ajahn Chah are different. Our memories are different so our perceptions are different.
• Sankhara has a very broad meaning: formation, compound, fashioning, fabrication. In the context of the five khandhas it is defined as mental formations, all the mental constructs that make up the processes of thinking and pondering, planning and worrying and so forth.
• Finally, viññana is consciousness, cognizance, the act of taking note of sense data and ideas as they occur in the mind. Thus we have eye consciousness, nose conscious-ness, ear consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness.

When one first comes upon these definitions they can be a bit daunting or confusing. But we need to go into Right Understanding so that our perspective of observing sense consciousness is in line with the teachings.

The problem is attachment to the five khandhas. We attach to sense experience. We attach to the body. We attach to feeling. We attach to perceptions. We attach to concepts and ideas. We attach to sense consciousness. Conversely, non-attachment is one way of describing liberation, the freedom from suffering.

Continuing with the chanting, we have:
• rupupadanakkhandho (attachment to form), vedanupadanakkhandho (attachment to feeling),
saññupadanakkhando (attachment to perception), sankharupadanakkhando (attachment to mental formations), viññanupadanakkhando (attachment to sense consciousness).
• Upadana translates as attachment. So we have:
• rupa + upadana + khandha = rupupadanakkhandha.
This is attachment to the bodily group, to form – with the same structure applying to the other four groups. These five then: rupa (form), vedana (feeling), sañña (perception), sankhara (mental formations), and viññana (sense consciousness) are the focuses of attachment.

Thus to have Right View or Right Understanding we must understand this crucial element of the Buddhist project. To seek the deepest spiritual fulfillment in the khandhas or in sense experience is a mistake. It’s like searching in the fridge for a hot meal. And if you don’t really understand that, if you don’t have a good grasp of that intellectually, then you can spend all of your time trying to get it right but looking for it in the wrong place. It’s like that delightful story of Nasrudin, the Sufi mystic.

Nasrudin is sitting outside an Arabian spice shop. He’s sitting beside a huge basket of red hot "dynamite chillies." Nasrudin’s eyes are filled with tears as he takes chillies from the basket and bites into one after another. His friend comes along and sees Nasrudin sweating and crying. "Nasrudin, what are you doing. You’re crying and sweating. Why are you chewing on those chillies?" Nasrudin answers, "I’m trying to find a sweet one."

Let’s look again at the chanting book and consider the teachings regarding non-attachment to the khandhas, as outlined in the traditional Pali:
• Rupam aniccam (form is impermanent),
• vedana anicca (feeling is impermanent),
• sañña anicca (perception is impermanent),
• sankhara anicca (mental formations are impermanent),
• viññanam aniccam (sense consciousness is impermanent).
And then:
• rupam anatta (form is not self),
• vedana anatta (feeling is not self),
• sañña anatta (perception is not self),
• sankhara anatta (mental formations are not self),
• viññanam anatta (sense consciousness is not self).

The teachings on impermanence and "not self" are, without doubt, primary to an understanding of Buddha-Dhamma. Anicca (impermanence and uncertainty) seems to be self-evident. We can all see change, can’t we? Or at least we think we see what the Buddha was pointing to. We may not have a profound grasp of that idea but we have some inkling of what it might mean.

And we certainly see lots of stress and suffering, so dukkha also seems self-evident. Again perhaps our vision is not as profound as the Buddha’s but we can relate to that aspect of the teaching. But anatta, that’s difficult. One of the mistakes that is commonly held about the teachings on anatta is that there is no self, thus implying there is nothing. But obviously I am conscious. If you kick me in the leg, I feel pain, not you. There is a story of a monk who tells his teacher that if there is no self then nothing matters. The teacher then smacks the fellow in the head and he cries out in pain, "Hey, that hurts." The teacher answers, "You said nothing matters, so what’s the problem?"

The teachings on anatta do not state there is nothing. Not nothing… but no-self. Form is not self, feeling is not self, perception is not self, mental formations are not self, consciousness is not self. There is no abiding essence or person in that. In the khandhas there is no self. We ask ourselves, "So who feels the pain? If I break my leg, it’s my pain not yours. I don’t understand." Exactly. We don’t understand. If it was easy to understand we wouldn’t need a Buddha to offer his insights to help us. The Buddha’s realisation was deep and profound so it’s not surprising if we come across some part of the teaching and say, "I don’t get it." This is where we need to investigate, to contemplate the teachings, to study the texts and our own minds and bodies until we see in line with the Buddha’s seeing. To understand anatta is to understand attachment and non-attachment. It’s the heartwood of the bodhi tree.

To reach a deeper understanding of anatta we simplify our perspective on life’s events by observing our experiences as bodily sensations, feelings, perceptions, mental constructs, sensory phenomena. In other words we observe the changing nature of the khandhas. If this objective perspective is missing we easily get caught up with the narrative or story line that each life situation generates. For instance, not only is there a feeling of annoyance because of some disturbance in our lives, but there are also all the thoughts, stories, justifications, past resentments and guilt trips that proliferate from that energy of annoyance. All of this will have a strong smell of self and other. This is full-blown attachment.

If we are practising non-attachment we observe the physical sensations that are conditional upon annoyance. We observe the thoughts that are conditional upon annoyance. Most importantly we observe the craving that is conditional upon annoyance. This might be the craving that manifests as a desire to hurt someone else through cruel speech or the feelings of guilt and harsh self-judgments.

By indulging in these story lines, the annoyance would become a personal problem. However, when emotions such as annoyance are observed as objects of mind rather than ultimately true realities, then we are inclining to right under-standing and non-attachment.

The khandhas are the changing conditions that come and go, are born and die. This is not the whole story, however: there is the uncreated, the unoriginated, the unformed, Nibbana, the deathless. The realisation of the deathless or nibbana is the goal of Buddhism. The way to realize that goal is through non-attachment to the five khandhas. Non-attachment thus has depths of meaning that become apparent as we develop the path. A novice’s understanding of letting go changes and becomes both more subtle and more accurate over the years.

Why do we get so wrapped up in the five khandhas – in our thoughts, emotions, passions, relationships, bodies and all the rest of it? When we seek to maximize pleasant experiences and minimize unpleasant experiences we become enmeshed in our desires. And our desires are focused on the khandhas. This is the magnetic attraction that conditions attachment. If we refer to the Four Noble Truths then in the Second Truth we have the cause of suffering as attachment to craving. The Third Noble Truth is that the end of suffering is the abandonment of craving. Craving is concerned with trying to get these khandhas happy or pleasant or nice or comfortable or good – or whatever. Craving is this energy that is always going out from the heart, out from the mind, trying to reorganize something or get rid of something or figure something out or own something.

Craving can be future-oriented – trying to become successful, powerful, thin, or beautiful; dreaming about being with the perfect partner; worrying about losing your job and so on. It can be fixed on the past, replaying a painful incident over and over again, stirring up old hurts with resentment and revenge, or dwelling on nostalgic replays of the good old days. It can be violent or it can be petty. It takes many shapes and forms but its hallmark is a lack of peace. If our attention is taken up with this energy of dissatisfaction we are not available for spiritual inquiry. This is the struggle with craving that focuses on the khandhas; this is preoccupation with the khandhas.

When our attention is preoccupied with bodily things, with feelings, with perceptions, preoccupied with things mental, preoccupied with sense consciousness, that preoccupation is a symptom of attachment. As long as we are preoccupied we are distracted by experiences that come and go, preoccupied with changing experiences, preoccu-pied with being born and dying. This precludes any possibility of noticing deeper realities.

To understand the Buddhist project we must under-stand what is meant by non-attachment. Buddhists will sometimes take a position that they shouldn’t be attached but are not clear about what that implies. From a wrong under-standing they then feel guilty about negative emotions, rather than simply observing negativities coming and going as a natural part of the conditioned mind. The meditation practices that we develop help us train in this simple witnessing to things as they arise and pass. For instance, watching the breath can be an exercise of patiently observing change and discovering or remembering the still centre of witnessing. In this practice, awareness (witnessing or observing) is more important than the object that is being observed. Awareness takes precedence over the object of awareness, the object of awareness being some aspect of the khandhas. We stress the knowing rather than the object.

Compare this to worldly endeavours that are mesmerized and addicted to the quality of the experience. Here the object of attention becomes all important and that importance is governed by craving. The worldly person tries to acquire pleasant experiences, to get rid of some aspect of experience, is obsessing about some idea and gets lost in dreams about this and that.

Craving is always pulling us into objects, be it mental objects, emotional objects or material objects. This is conditioned by memories of past pains and pleasures, pulling our attention here and there with the energy of fear and desire. This creates a tension in the mind: attraction and repulsion, liking and disliking. In the practice of awareness and clear understanding we try to observe that push and pull of the world and not buy into it.

Let’s consider another concrete example. I’m told that my company will be reducing its work force by ten percent and I may lose my job. Naturally enough this triggers anxiety. I feel it both physically and in my brain, my thoughts being conditioned by anxiety. How will I pay for my mortgage? Should I work more overtime? And so on. On a social level I need to make contingency plans and think through the problem. Having done all that, I still feel anxiety.

But if I can observe this emotion as one of the khandhas, as bodily tensions that move and change in consciousness – if I can witness to anxiety rather than be obsessed with anxious thoughts – then already I have some space and freedom. This is the first step in non-attachment. I notice anxiety as an object, rather than being the subject of anxiety. There is a difference between being an anxious person and knowing anxiety as an object of mind.

Anxiety arises and with the anxiety comes the craving not to feel anxious. This is natural enough. But in the practice of non-attachment this craving is also observed as yet another manifestation of the khandhas. We witness to this craving, the craving for security and a happy future. If we pay attention to the craving rather than seeking a distraction or compensation to replace the anxiety, then we are practising non-attachment. Knowing anxiety as a sankhara; knowing it as anicca, dukkha, anatta, knowing it as a condition that has arisen, that stays for a while, that is not a personal problem and is not worth grasping. This is the art of letting go.

It’s not something that you have to believe, it’s something that you have to understand and then implement in your daily life. It’s not a belief system. This practice has a goal that is known as liberation from the khandhas. So it’s a project; it’s a wonderful hobby. If you are going to spend your time on a hobby you might as well take liberation. There is work to be done; there is a point to this.

Craving is the magnet that draws us to the khandhas. Knowing the limitations of the khandhas and hence the limitations of craving puts life into a perspective in line with Right Understanding. Then craving is okay. There is nothing right or wrong about craving but knowing its limitations prevents us from being deluded by those magnetic pulls. We can drink our fruit juice and enjoy the warmth and light of a sunny day but we realize that liberation does not lie in the object, in the fruit juice or the beautiful weather. It doesn’t lie in an experience per se; it does not lie in the khandhas.

Not pursuing the dictates of craving is the meaning of renunciation, abandoning the belief that fulfillment can be found in an objective experience. When we renounce that movement towards the khandhas, what is left? If we’re not pursuing bodily experiences, and feelings of pleasure, pain or indifference; nor perceptions; nor thoughts, nor ideas, nor emotions; nor sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily sensations nor mental phenomena – what remains? Are we bankrupt? What is left? Is there anything left? Is it just nothing?

What remains is knowing the way things are – or simply being aware. This may not sound like much but if we give awareness a chance we find in it the resolution of our deepest yearnings. Awareness is the path to the Deathless.

When we follow our desires in attempting to maximize pleasure and minimize pain our attention is preoccupied with the khandhas. Attention is always out, away from the still centre of knowing. If, however, we are following a path of awareness, our attitude is receptive rather than controlling, domineering or manipulative.

The Buddhist project is one of waiting and letting go rather than becoming, getting or getting rid of. Renunciation is based upon this kind of understanding. This requires patience, courage, and a willingness to allow life to unfold. This in turn implies a kind of love and respect for life in all its manifestations.

Right View guides our efforts on the path and keeps our intellect in harmony with the Dhamma. Once we understand the project – that it’s about the letting go of the khandhas – then there’s still a lot of work to do. But at least it becomes much more clear how to do it, what to do. Focusing on the khandhas as a way out of suffering is doomed to failure. The liberation from stress can’t be realized by the pursuit of craving.

But what about my desire to be free from stress? Isn’t that craving? Let’s say there is wise wanting and stupid craving.

Wise wanting concerns our aspiration to freedom both for ourselves and others. We want to live in a society that is decent and fair. So wise wanting addresses the various issues we face in the world: our social life, our relationships, duties, the expressive side of our life, our cultural joys and interests. We want the environment to be protected so that we have good water to drink and clean air to breathe.

These are natural and wholesome desires. Good governance, artistic beauty, universal health care, moral and spiritual education – and so many other issues come to mind. These kinds of wishes and aspirations for ourselves, our families and our societies are healthy and fall into the societal teachings of the Buddha. These teachings include ethics, altruism, right relationships, right communication and a range of guidelines that help us with the various choices we must make throughout the days of our lives. We desire to be free from suffering and we wish the same for others. These suggestions from the teachings guide us in the way of smart desire.

Parallel to these social teachings, we also have the inner teachings – among which an understanding of attachment to and letting go of the khandhas is very important. We reflect on the contemplative teachings about our inner world and the workings of consciousness. As part of that we observe life as a stream of conscious events, or we might say a stream of khandha events. The task is to witness this stream of conscious-ness with the wisdom of non-attachment.

These two aspects of the Buddha’s words, the social and the inner, define the Buddhist Path. In a social sense we have to try and get it right. If there’s immorality we try to address that. If there is starvation we try to address that. We try to be altruistic and help the world as best we can according to our capabilities and resources. We gain encouragement and support from our spiritual friends and companions and we develop attitudes and skills that hopefully give joyous expression to our lives.

At the deepest level of realisation, however, we know that no external condition or relationship is ultimately stable or reliable. These are all the movements of the khandhas within which there is no utopian perfection.

Right View thus implies an understanding of skilful living as well as the wisdom of letting go. Not a letting go that is dismissive, repressive or alienating, but rather a letting go that is empathetic to life and yet not deluded by attachment to life’s changes.

This is what understanding attachment to the five khandhas implies. Call it the five khandhas, the psycho-physical process, the mind-body experience – or life. If it moves, don’t grasp it. Let go and respond to life from empathy and generosity rather than from craving, grasping and all the stress that entails. This path of letting go of the khandhas then becomes an art form, the art of skilful living.