5 Ways To Get Over Yourself | Pascal Auclair
This episode features Pascal Auclair, a guiding teacher at True North Insight, discussing Buddhism's Five Aggregates. He explains how deconstructing our experience into these "rivers" (materiality, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) helps us see through the illusion of a solid self, reducing suffering and fostering equanimity.
Deep Dive Analysis
11 Topic Outline
Introduction: The Illusion of Self and Suffering
Introducing the Five Aggregates (Skandhas)
Pascal Auclair's Personal Journey with the Aggregates and Mortality
The First Aggregate: Materiality (Form/Body)
The Second Aggregate: Feeling Tone (Pleasure, Displeasure, Neutrality)
The Third Aggregate: Perception (Interpretation and Subjectivity)
The Fourth Aggregate: Mental Formations (Intentions, Emotions, Reactions)
The Fifth Aggregate: Consciousness (The Knowing Mind)
Practices for Investigating the Selflessness of Consciousness
Connecting Aggregate Understanding to Heart Qualities and Healing
Resources for Learning More from Pascal Auclair
7 Key Concepts
The Five Aggregates (Skandhas)
A foundational Buddhist framework that deconstructs immediate human experience into five 'rivers' or aspects: materiality, feeling tone, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Understanding these aggregates helps to identify how we get stuck in suffering by clinging to the illusion of a solid, permanent self.
Materiality (Rupa)
The first aggregate, referring to the physical body and the material world. It is compared to foam, constantly changing and insubstantial, challenging the perception of a solid, permanent physical self that can be owned or is 'mine'.
Feeling Tone (Vedana)
The second aggregate, describing how we are affected by experiences as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This aggregate is unreliable and constantly fluctuates, and clinging to pleasant feelings or having aversion to unpleasant ones is a source of suffering.
Perception (Sanna)
The third aggregate, which is how we perceive, interpret, and make sense of things. It is likened to a mirage, highlighting that what we believe to be objective reality is often a subjective interpretation influenced by past experiences and conditioning.
Mental Formations (Sankhara)
The fourth aggregate, encompassing our intentions, emotions, and reactions to events. It is compared to a banana tree trunk, which appears substantial but has no solid core, illustrating that these mental constructs are ephemeral and not a permanent 'self'.
Consciousness (Vinnana)
The fifth and most subtle aggregate, referring to the knowing quality of mind (e.g., hearing, seeing, thinking). It is compared to a magic show, where a series of appearing and disappearing moments of knowing create the illusion of a solid, permanent 'I' or observer.
Selflessness (Anatta)
A core Buddhist teaching that asserts there is no permanent, unchanging, independent self or soul. The practice of deconstructing experience through the five aggregates helps reveal that all aspects of our being are constantly changing, conditional, and not inherently 'mine'.
7 Questions Answered
Deconstructing reality with the Five Aggregates helps us understand the sources of stress, confusion, and suffering, as each aggregate reveals how we get stuck by clinging to a solid, permanent self.
We often assume things are more reliable and permanent than they are, leading to suffering when we discover that everything is conditional, changing, and impermanent, including our body, health, and even our own perceptions.
Through his practice, Pascal feels he is gradually getting used to the process of dying by observing moments disappearing (thoughts, breaths, ideas), which helps cultivate equanimity, joy, and appreciation for the ephemeral nature of life.
We tend to view the body as 'mine,' 'I am the body,' or 'it's in me,' often holding these views rigidly, which can cause suffering when the body inevitably changes, ages, or experiences illness.
Instead of reacting with irritation or closing off, one can pay close attention to unpleasant experiences and explore how they might foster qualities like calm, integrity, patience, care, honesty, healing, stability, compassion, or humor.
Meditation trains us to notice the specific characteristics of experiences (e.g., a taste, a thought, a sensation) and, over time, to recognize the universal characteristics that all phenomena share, such as appearing, disappearing, being conditional, and not being personal.
This subtle investigation typically requires a quiet and stable mind, often explored later in meditation practice. Techniques include asking 'Who's hearing? Who's thinking? Who's sitting?' or removing the 'I' from language, such as saying 'Hearing is happening' instead of 'I am hearing'.
18 Actionable Insights
1. See Through Illusion of Self
Recognize that the self is an illusion and the source of much suffering, and engage in practices like the Five Aggregates to see through this illusion and reduce suffering.
2. Utilize Five Aggregates Framework
Employ the Five Aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) as a foundational Buddhist framework to understand how suffering arises in each aspect of experience and to work with any difficult situation in your life.
3. Connect ‘No Self’ to Heart
Integrate the conceptual understanding of ’no self’ with heart-centered practices, as this liberation can make joy, tenderness, compassion, equanimity, and healing more accessible and vibrant.
4. Clear Away Grasping Energy
Actively practice clearing away grasping energy and identification with phenomena, which creates space for positive qualities like joy, compassion, and equanimity to naturally arise.
5. Observe Experience Impersonally
Practice viewing all experiences—sensations, emotions, thoughts, intentions, and consciousness—through the lens of the Five Aggregates, rather than through a personal ‘I,’ to release the mind from identification, fusion, and appropriation.
6. Renounce Mental Proliferation
In meditation and daily life, practice returning to immediate experience (e.g., body, sitting, breathing) by renouncing the tendency to embellish and build elaborate mental stories that trap you in conceptual worlds.
7. Investigate Impermanence Constantly
Consistently notice the unreliable, unstable, intermittent, and flickering nature of all phenomena, including your body, mind states, and possessions, to gradually get used to the process of losing things and to cultivate equanimity.
8. Shift Body Perception
In meditation, observe the body as a fluid field of impersonal sensations (e.g., tingling, pressure, expansions, contractions) rather than rigidly identifying it as ‘my body’ or ‘I am the body,’ to understand its conditional nature.
9. Hold Ownership Fluidly
Approach ownership of material things and relationships with nuance, recognizing that they are conditionally ‘yours’ but not absolutely, to reduce grasping and clinging and navigate change more smoothly.
10. Observe Feeling Tones
Pay close attention to the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones that accompany every experience (e.g., sights, sounds, thoughts), noticing how they constantly arise and vanish, revealing their unstable nature.
11. Transform Unpleasant Experiences
When unpleasant experiences arise, pay close attention and investigate how they can be an opportunity to cultivate positive qualities like calm, integrity, patience, care, honesty, healing, stability, compassion, or humor, rather than reacting with irritation or aversion.
12. Recognize Perception’s Subjectivity
Understand that your perceptions and interpretations of reality (e.g., people, future, past) are subjective ‘mirages’ colored by past experiences and conditioning, not objective facts, to avoid unnecessary reactions and suffering.
13. Uncouple Thoughts from Reality
Realize that your thoughts about something (e.g., your mother, a situation, the future) are not the thing itself, which is a fundamental step towards liberation from suffering caused by mental projections.
14. Foster Understanding for Others
When encountering people with different views (e.g., on COVID, vaccines, masks), remember that their perceptions are shaped by their unique experiences and exposures, promoting empathy and reducing conflict.
15. Identify Mental Constructions
Recognize that elaborate mental stories, plans, and even intentions are ‘constructions of the mind’ (mental formations) that arise from conditions, rather than originating from a solid, personal ‘I’ or being factual reality.
16. View Emotions Impersonally
See emotions (e.g., anger, fear, pride, joy) as impersonal phenomena ‘of the public domain’ that arise and pass, rather than ‘your’ personal property, allowing them to be liberated without personal attachment.
17. Question the Observer
Develop a quiet and stable mind, then investigate the subtle sense of ‘I’ by asking ‘Who is hearing? Who is thinking? Who is sitting?’ and observing the impersonal nature of knowing without trying to get rid of it.
18. Experiment with Impersonal Language
Practice removing the pronoun ‘I’ from your internal language (e.g., saying ‘hearing is happening,’ ‘fear is known,’ ‘chopping carrots is happening’) to observe how this shifts your experience and perception of a solid self.
7 Key Quotes
Self is the source of so much of our suffering. We spend so much time building it up and defending it when in the end there's nothing there, or at least not as much as we might think there is.
Dan Harris
However you perceive or conceive or interpret things to be, they're a little different.
Pascal Auclair
When you think of anger as your anger, that's a misappropriation of public property.
Joseph Goldstein (attributed by Pascal Auclair)
Things are dying all the time, and we can notice through the small things, and maybe in this way, either develop some equanimity, some balance of mind, or some, to me, talks also about joy, about appreciating things because they're ephemeral, they're just passing through.
Pascal Auclair
The thoughts about your mother are not your mother.
Munindraji (attributed by Pascal Auclair)
The illusion of a solid, permanent, intrinsic, permanent I.
Pascal Auclair
The rough translation for the Tibetan phrase for enlightenment is a clearing away and a bringing forth.
Dan Harris