Dharma

DHARMA
Suffering, impermanence, and no-self-----------It may be said that the Buddha based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering. Existence is painful. The conditions that make an individual are precisely those that also give rise to suffering. Individuality implies limitation; limitation gives rise to desire; and, inevitably, desire causes suffering, since what is desired is transitory, changing, and perishing. It is the impermanence of the object of craving that causes disappointment and sorrow. By following the "path" taught by the Buddha, the individual can dispel the "ignorance" that perpetuates this suffering. The Buddha's doctrine was not one of despair. Living amid the impermanence of everything and being themselves impermanent, human beings search for the way of deliverance, for that which shines beyond the transitoriness of human existence--in short, for enlightenment. According to the Buddha, reality, whether of external things or the psychophysical totality of human individuals, consists in a succession and concatenation of microseconds called dhammas (these "components" of reality are not to be confused with dhamma meaning "law" or "teaching"). The Buddha departed from the main lines of traditional Indian thought in not asserting an essential or ultimate reality in things. Moreover, contrary to the theories of the Upanishads, the Buddha did not want to assume the existence of the soul as a metaphysical substance, but he admitted the existence of the self as the subject of action in a practical and moral sense. Life is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. The concept of the individual ego is a popular delusion; the objects with which people identify themselves--fortune, social position, family, body, and even mind--are not their true selves. There is nothing permanent, and, if only the permanent deserved to be called the self, or atman, then nothing is self. There can be no individuality without a putting together of components. This is becoming different, and there can be no way of becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away.To make clear the concept of no-self (anatman), Buddhists set forth the theory of the five aggregates or constituents (khandhas) of human existence: (1) corporeality or physical forms (rupa), (2) feelings or sensations (vedana), (3) ideations (sañña), (4) mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and (5) consciousness (viññana). Human existence is only a composite of the five aggregates, none of which is the self or soul. A person is in a process of continuous change, with no fixed underlying entity.