"Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, there is feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, that one thinks about. What one thinks about, that one mentally proliferates."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"[...] form is not yours, feeling is not yours, perception is not yours, volitional formations are not yours, consciousness is not yours: abandon them. When you have abandoned them, that will lead to your welfare and happiness."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Self, in other words, is a projection of ownership onto all experience (this is my body, these are my feelings, perceptions, formations, and this is my consciousness). The five aggregates really do occur - that is not in question. They just don't belong to anybody. Experience occurs, but the person who owns it is an additional construction.

If the self is so simply created, it is just as simply abandoned. [...] Buddha says that there is a practical way leading to the cessation of the view of self as a really existing entity: regard the aggregates as 'this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self'. "

Untangling self

"The body is not self. If it were, it would not get sick. You could tell your body: be like this or don't be like that. But because the body is not self, it does get sick. You can't tell it: be like this or don't be like that. He points out that the same is true for feelings, perceptions, inclinations and consciousness. You cannot determine in advance how you will feel, what you will perceive, how you will be inclined to act, or what you will be conscious of. You do not choose to feel happy rather than sad, to perceive a world that delights rather than disturbs you, to always incline to a calm rather than an agitated response, to be unconscious rather than conscious of something distressing. In others words, you are not in charge of what is going on within your own experience.

The liberating insight he [Buddha] proposes is not the realization that there is no self but the realization that I am not the same as or reducible to any or all of the five bundles (aggregates) that constitute me.

Gotama understood awakening as the result of directly knowing how experience comes about.

The key to freeing oneself from the repetitive cycles of reactivity and beholding nirvana is attention. When attention becomes embodied through contemplation of the transient, tragic, impersonal and empty nature of the bundles, our relationship to experience begins to shift in disconcerting ways. The practice of embodied attention challenges our habitual perceptions of self and world as permanent, satisfatory and intrinsically ours. By stabilizing attention through mindfulness and concentration, we begin to see for ourselves how pleasurable and painful feelings trigger habitual patterns of reactivity and craving. These two insights not only undermine our inclinations to hold on to what we like and to push away what we fear but open up the possibility of thinking, speaking and acting otherwise.

'Seeing things this way', says Gotama at the conclusion of his discourse on not-self, 'the attentive noble disciple disengages from form, disengages from feelings, disengages from perceptions, disengages from inclinations, disengages from consciousness. By disengaging, reactivity fades; non-reactive, he is freed; the knowledge arises: 'I am freed.'' This is the experience of nirvana as immediate and clearly visible; it is at this crucial point that one sees for oneself how one is free not to react to life but to respond to it from a perspective that is no longer conditioned by such inclinations." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"Gotama declares: 'I will show you the burden and the carrier of the burden, the burden's addition and the burden's relief.' He explains that the burden is the five bundles (aggregates), the carrier of the burden is the person of such a name and clan. What is added to the burden is reactivity/craving and the burden relief is the fading away and ceasing of that reactivity, that is, nirvana." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

Dependent origination and the five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

The five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

"We do face the more challenging problem of how first to uncover the socially constructed prejudices we all harbor and then to transform them, not at this level of intellectual argument but at the deeper level of changing emotional and behavioral responses. It is not about changing views (the aggregate of perception), but of reconstructing patterns of habitual reaction (the aggregate of formations). Fortunately, the Buddha bequeathed to us a powerful tool for doing this: mindfulness.

Psychology has demonstrated clearly that some of what we do is conscious and some is unconscious. That is to say, we are consciously aware of a narrow band of our experience as it unfolds, but most of what happens is formulated out of view and emerges apparently on its own from the mysterious depths of the psyche to surge into behavior unhindered by awareness. Our views and reactions are formed as they appear, based on patterns laid down in the past, and consciousness is more a matter of observing what is already unfolding than of deciding what will take place.

Mindfulness practice involves training the ability to observe what is happening within us in the present moment with an attitude of patience, kindness, and equanimity. As different bodily sensations or feeling tones or thoughts arise into conscious awareness, we “watch along with” (anupassati) them, or “gaze evenly upon” (upekkhati) them, or are simply “aware of” (pajanati) and “fully experience” (patisamvedati) them. If we get angry at what we see, or if any sort of response rooted in attraction or aversion occurs, then we are thrust out of mindful awareness and get carried away ..."

Shining a light - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2015

"These six main objects (sounds, colors, smells, tastes, touches, and mental objects) are all that we can know. No matter how wildly adventurous our lives are, we still can't experience anything other than these half-dozen forms. Since mind and object are the only building blocks from which a moment of life can be fashioned, there is nothing else that could possibly take place in the now. "

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"Self, in other words, is a projection of ownership onto all experience (this is my body, these are my feelings, perceptions, formations, and this is my consciousness). The five aggregates really do occur—that is not in question. They just don’t belong to me. Experience occurs, but the person who owns it is a fictitious construction.

If the self is so simply created, it is just as simply abandoned. In the same text, the Buddha says that there is a practical way leading to the cessation of the view of self as a really existing entity: regard the aggregates as “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”

The self attitude causes suffering, the nonself attitude does not. It is as straightforward as that."

I think I am - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2010

"O eu é o mesmo que memórias, pensamentos, conceitos, emoções e atitudes. Reunindo todos esses fatores, obtém-se um eu. E se retirarmos tudo isso - no Budismo, o fazemos como exercício - se nos dissociarmos completamente de nosso corpo, de nossas memórias, pensamentos, emoções, atitudes, antecedentes e experiências, o que permanece? Nada. Somos algo ou alguém precisamente porque temos essas coisas. Elas formam um agregado. Sem elas, não somos nada. Isso é o vazio."

A essência do budismo - p. 215

"A filosofia budista não nega a existência de um ser, ou de um indivíduo, que é um fluxo ininterrupto ou fenômeno de continuidade mental e física condicionado pelo carma. Não há substância invariável; não há nada por trás da corrente que possa ser considerado um ser permanente, uma individualidade; nada que possa ser realmente chamado EU. Porém, quando os cinco agregados (matéria, sensações, percepções, formações mentais e consciência), que são interdependentes, trabalham associados psicofisicamente, formamos a idéia de um EU. É uma noção falsa, uma formação mental; é uma ilusão."

Budismo: psicologia do autoconhecimento - p. 156

"Os cinco agregados (matéria, sensações, percepções, formações mentais e consciência), que chamamos um SER, um indivíduo ou EU, são apenas um rótulo que damos a esta combinação que é impermanente e em constante mudança. O EU é um composto instável em contínuo movimento e que a todo momento se modifica; o EU dura o tempo exato de uma combinação de elementos do plano psicofísico, pois, no instante seguinte, outra é a combinação existente. Por mais que analisemos o EU, sob qualquer aspecto que possamos considerá-lo, sempre vamos encontrar a impermanência, e em nenhuma parte um lugar para qualquer coisa permanente.

O que chamamos indivíduo, eu ou coisa, em suma, nada mais é que certo aspecto da corrente de causa  e efeito que com nossos sentidos percebemos, em dado momento do tempo."

Budismo: psicologia do autoconhecimento - p. 52