Sankhara
To cure an illness, the first thing we need to do is to identify it, know what it is and its nature. You cannot cure an illness if you don’t know what it is in the first place, complaining about it will not help you either, in fact if any, and it just causes more misery and magnifies the pain.
One of the things that I would like to address over here is Habit. What is habit? What is it’s nature? How is it formed?
Habit is a mental volition, a mental conditioning which has become part of the subconscious, it has been formed in our subconscious, and came to be because we repeated the same actions over and over again, and in due time it became a habit.
Buddhism refers to this as sankhara, which if viewed from a psychological lense refers to as the habitual mind pattern that is formed in the unconscious mind. Sankhara is what gives everyone a unique character, objectively speaking, I will not add “good” or “bad” here.
Spiritually speaking, it is what sows the seeds for the next rebirth, when we die, it is actually our body that dies, our mind or consciousness does not die, and the sankhara that it has gained from its previous life is then carried with this mind and is being used to form the basis of the character of the next life that this mind will be living. As long as the mind has sankhara we will still be under the cycle of rebirth.
We normal mundane human beings has sankharas that has been accumulated even from many of our previous lives and god knows how many lives we have led, and to be free of the cycle of birth and death, to be enlightened, we have to rid ourselves of all these sankharas or all these mental volitions and habit pattern.
The question now arises, how do we rid ourselves of these Sankharas?
We should not do anything, which is actually much harder than it sounds, because when we do nothing, these Sankharas arises within us and we are gripped with this urge to act on this urge, and thereby we are just strengthening the sankhara in the process because we are allowing ourselves to be a slave to our sankharas, to be a slave to our mind.
The key lies in being aware, when we become still and become aware, these sankharas are bound to surface within us (now do you understand the adage “a still mind is a devil’s workshop”?), it may even come in the form of physical pain sometimes, the key is to observe this pain, to observe where it is coming from, to be aware that it is there now.
Sankhara refers to any form compound, it is the “stuff” that life is made of, a tree, a cloud, whatever, it is made out of sankhara, it’s character is sankhara, it is the blueprint of every ‘stuff’. The sankhara is not permanent, it is temporary; everything is temporary. Therefore it is bound to disappear even when you don’t do anything about it, just know that it will disappear and that it is temporary, and when you don’t react to it, what happens is that the sankhara will gradually weaken its grip towards you and its power will diminish, and eventually that particular sankhara will be destroyed.
To give an illustration, picture one of those toys that has a key behind it which needs to be winded, and after winding you leave the key and the toy starts dancing and does its thing, now, if you want to stop this dancing and noise, you have to do nothing, they key will automatically go back to its original state and the toy will stop dancing. The Buddha compared with a rope, which after twisting it many times, you leave it; it will unwind by itself and get back to its original unwinded shape.
Now based on this theory, we have a long way to go; I don’t mean to discourage you. Based on the fact that we have sankharas within our minds that has come from so many lives that we have lived, so we have a lot of sankharas to be rid of. The way to do it is to be aware, be aware of what you are doing observe yourself.
Anger, for example, creates a strong sankhara within you, now if you react to anything by getting angry, which is a mental volition, it will just strengthen it. If you are angry what you should do is observe yourself, observe the racing heart beat, the hard breathing, the rise in your body temperature, and so on. To be enlightened is to be free of all these sankharas, from all these mental volitions and mental conditioning and become unconditioned.
Tradition relates that after Gautama the Buddha’s complete enlightenment he uttered these beautiful words that are written in the Dhammapada:
The ‘housebuilder’ that Buddha talks about is this very mental faculty of sankhara whose products, the mental volition, are conditioned by and created due to mental ignorance
One of the things that I would like to address over here is Habit. What is habit? What is it’s nature? How is it formed?
Habit is a mental volition, a mental conditioning which has become part of the subconscious, it has been formed in our subconscious, and came to be because we repeated the same actions over and over again, and in due time it became a habit.
Buddhism refers to this as sankhara, which if viewed from a psychological lense refers to as the habitual mind pattern that is formed in the unconscious mind. Sankhara is what gives everyone a unique character, objectively speaking, I will not add “good” or “bad” here.
Spiritually speaking, it is what sows the seeds for the next rebirth, when we die, it is actually our body that dies, our mind or consciousness does not die, and the sankhara that it has gained from its previous life is then carried with this mind and is being used to form the basis of the character of the next life that this mind will be living. As long as the mind has sankhara we will still be under the cycle of rebirth.
We normal mundane human beings has sankharas that has been accumulated even from many of our previous lives and god knows how many lives we have led, and to be free of the cycle of birth and death, to be enlightened, we have to rid ourselves of all these sankharas or all these mental volitions and habit pattern.
The question now arises, how do we rid ourselves of these Sankharas?
We should not do anything, which is actually much harder than it sounds, because when we do nothing, these Sankharas arises within us and we are gripped with this urge to act on this urge, and thereby we are just strengthening the sankhara in the process because we are allowing ourselves to be a slave to our sankharas, to be a slave to our mind.
The key lies in being aware, when we become still and become aware, these sankharas are bound to surface within us (now do you understand the adage “a still mind is a devil’s workshop”?), it may even come in the form of physical pain sometimes, the key is to observe this pain, to observe where it is coming from, to be aware that it is there now.
Sankhara refers to any form compound, it is the “stuff” that life is made of, a tree, a cloud, whatever, it is made out of sankhara, it’s character is sankhara, it is the blueprint of every ‘stuff’. The sankhara is not permanent, it is temporary; everything is temporary. Therefore it is bound to disappear even when you don’t do anything about it, just know that it will disappear and that it is temporary, and when you don’t react to it, what happens is that the sankhara will gradually weaken its grip towards you and its power will diminish, and eventually that particular sankhara will be destroyed.
To give an illustration, picture one of those toys that has a key behind it which needs to be winded, and after winding you leave the key and the toy starts dancing and does its thing, now, if you want to stop this dancing and noise, you have to do nothing, they key will automatically go back to its original state and the toy will stop dancing. The Buddha compared with a rope, which after twisting it many times, you leave it; it will unwind by itself and get back to its original unwinded shape.
Now based on this theory, we have a long way to go; I don’t mean to discourage you. Based on the fact that we have sankharas within our minds that has come from so many lives that we have lived, so we have a lot of sankharas to be rid of. The way to do it is to be aware, be aware of what you are doing observe yourself.
Anger, for example, creates a strong sankhara within you, now if you react to anything by getting angry, which is a mental volition, it will just strengthen it. If you are angry what you should do is observe yourself, observe the racing heart beat, the hard breathing, the rise in your body temperature, and so on. To be enlightened is to be free of all these sankharas, from all these mental volitions and mental conditioning and become unconditioned.
Tradition relates that after Gautama the Buddha’s complete enlightenment he uttered these beautiful words that are written in the Dhammapada:
'Seeking but not finding the housebuilder,
I have traveled through the round of countless births.
How painful is birth over and over again.
Oh housebuilder! You have now been caught!
You shall not build a house again.
Your rafters have been broken. Your ridgepole demolished.
The unconditioned consciousness has been attained.
And every kind of craving has been destroyed.'
-(Dhammapada, verses 153,154)
The ‘housebuilder’ that Buddha talks about is this very mental faculty of sankhara whose products, the mental volition, are conditioned by and created due to mental ignorance
posted by suraj at 3:12 AM
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