Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 459: 5 Ways To Get Over Yourself | Pascal Auclair

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

The phrase, “Get over yourself” is often used in a flippant way, but it’s actually speaking to a deep human need to get out of our heads and off our own backs. At a fundamental level, this is what Buddhism is all about— seeing through the illusion of the self, which can be the source of so much of our suffering. In this episode guest Pascal Auclair talks about how we can unlock this suffering through the use of a foundational Buddhist list called the five aggregates. Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, where he is now enjoying teaching retreats. Pascal teaches in North America and in Europe. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and one of their guiding teachers.In this episode we talk about: How the five aggregates got Auclair hooked on Buddhist practice and philosophyThe five aggregates as a way to work with difficultyLiving with the non-negotiable prospect of dyingPaying attention to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling toneMeditation training as a way to understand that experiences are conditionalFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/pascal-auclair-459See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello. The phrase get over yourself is often used in a flippant way, but I think it's actually speaking to a deep human need to get out of our heads, to get off our own backs, to get out of our own way, to be blown away. The Greek word for ecstasy translates to standing outside of oneself. At a fundamental level, this is what Buddhism is all about, seeing through the illusion

of the self. 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. So many Buddhist practices are designed to help unlock this source of suffering. And today we're going to talk about a foundational Buddhist list that can help you do just that. It's called the five aggregates.

I won't go into great detail or any detail right now about the five aggregates because our guest, a true Dharma nerd is going to hold forth with some great eloquence. Pascal O'Clair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and studies since 1997. He's done retreats in Asia and America. He's been mentored by people who will be familiar to many listeners, including Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield. He now teaches retreats all over the place, including at Spear Rock Meditation Center in

California. And he's the co-founder of True North Insight and one of TNI's guiding teachers. I'd never met Pascal before this, but I found him to be utterly delightful. We talked about how the five aggregates actually got him hooked on Buddhism and philosophy in the first place The five aggregates as a way to work with anything difficult in your life and speaking of difficulty We're gonna spend no small amount of time on living with the non-negotiable prospect of dying He'll talk about paying attention to pleasant unpleasant and neutral feeling tones attention to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones. Some of you Buddhist, or Buddhist curious folks may have heard of this notion, I will

again not say much now and let Pascal unpack it for you. And finally, we talk about meditation training as a way to understand that everything is conditional. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral?

Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Pascal, oh Claire, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much. Thank you. People at home can't see it, but you're wearing a fetching sweater that has a scarf knit right into it. This is high technology. I put my best look for you, Dan.

Well, I'm really excited to have you here. I know we're going to talk about this Buddhist list, the five aggregates, which I I'm fascinated with. It's a great way to deconstruct reality. So let me start with a sort of foundational question, which is, why would we want to deconstruct reality in this way? What's in it for us? Yes, yes. Great question. Yes. And there's many way we could deconstruct reality just by the way, we could divide it into say, what's inside of me and the physical realm. We could divide it in three past present future. So there's many ways to deconstruct reality we could say, but this particular way I find very useful because in each of these five

aspects, there is a way that we get in trouble, that we get the particular way we get stuck. So it's a good way to study stress confusion, suffering, and the end of it. stress confusion, suffering, and the end of it. So each aggregate is, and that's a technical term. I believe the poly term, the ancient term from the Indian subcontinent is Skanda or Pyle. The Buddha liked to talk in agrarian terms, which may not be so resonant now, but they were super resonant then, because people did a lot of farming back then. And so you could think of these aggregates

or parts of our experience as like a pile of hay or manure or whatever, probably manure would be more useful here. And these are piles of conceptual hangups that hook us in a way that prevents us from seeing things accurately. Am I in the right direction here with this word salad? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pile. It works for me, the pile, but you know the way I think about it, and it might come from

Jack Confield. I'm not actually sure, but I definitely think of them as not the five aggregates, but the five rivers. The five rivers of things happening. So a way to think about this is just even as right now, as you're listening to me or anybody at home is listening to this podcast, there's five types of things happening at once. And so if you want, let's look at it just now, inexperienced as it's happening. So for example, there is the first aggregate or river running through, we could say, is the river of materiality. So as you're there, there's sensations in your, maybe your butt on the chair, there's sensations in your hand. So there's a river of physicality, materiality running through, right?

It's happening right now. We could put part of it like the sounds, the sounds waves that are coming to your ears. So there's a river of sounds. And so this is one river that is running through right now. The other river that is happening is the river of pleasure and displeasure. If I say something that is pleasurable to your ear, you're going to experience pleasure right in the moment. If I say something that is either confusing or disagreeable, so there's always fluctuation. That's why I call them river because it's always changing. The breath is happening right now, breath coming in, coming out. So what we call the body is a river of different sensation. It's a river also of pleasure and displeasure that is happening. And another thing that is happening on top of it at the same time

here is that there's a river of making sense of what's happening. So there's not only, let's say, the sound waves happening. There's also it makes sense. You understand something of what I'm saying. So, you know, if there was not this river of making sense of the world, it wouldn't make sense. But there's a way that the mind is always organizing, organizing what is seen, what is felt, what is heard. And so that's the third river. And then there's another river of intention. I find this so

fad as sitting then I have to calm myself down as I'm talking to you. And so as you're listening to me right now and anybody else is listening to this, there's not only a river of making sense, you know a series of sense that it makes. There's also the intention, the intention may be to listen. I think I can see it in the way you're listening to me. There's something happening in the mind, there's the intention to listen, and maybe somebody else at home has the intention now to cut a carrot or banana. So what is it to be human being? It's these rivers of intention. There's one left that I didn't name. Should I name it now? Yes, please. Yes. So the fifth one, and maybe we'll be able to come back on all these. We have time.

The fifth one is a river of consciousness. So all these things are recorded. They receive the sensations, the pleasure, the meaning, the intentions can be known. And so this is what we're doing just now. We're actually deconstructing where our immediate experience into parts. And yeah, it can be fun to do. And so maybe one other way just to explore this just for a minute, if you allow me, I would suggest we look around the room. If we just move our eyes around the room, we see many things of the material realm. I see a window, lamp, drawer, books. So there's these forms that I see. And maybe I see flowers, for example,

and they're pleasant to me. The flowers that my partner gave me. So there's a feeling that comes with it. It's not just like colors and form. It affects me in a way. So this is happening right now as I'm moving my eyes. And I recognize things. It would be really bad if I didn't recognize window, lamp, things like this. I need to organize the world. So this is happening at this time. And what else is happening? Well, the intention to move the eyes around is happening for me. And all this is being known. Yeah. And so in a way, it looks really, the word comes

in French here. I'm not saying, like, not so important. Yeah, it's life, you know. Yes, yes. Yeah. So not so important. But as I was saying earlier, in every aspect of what is happening of these five aspects, there's something that can happen, that can lead to my confusion, afflictive emotions, disappointment, getting trapped in my conceptual world. All kinds of things can happen, and that happens not only when I look around the room, but it happens in my relationships, in what happens in my own mind. And so that's the kind of play or practice around this, is to deconstruct, to find out how I get in trouble with each one of these things. I heard this

teaching maybe of more than 20 years ago, and it was kind of intellectually interesting to hear. But also it ignited something in me. Like I want to actually go closer to get intimate with these different things and to see how I was getting in trouble and experiencing Dukha, this word, this Pali word of suffering and feeling of separation. And there was a time in my life, I was not aware of this, I was not aware of how I was perceiving

and conceiving reality. It was like, yeah, unconscious. And it was revealed to me one time when I was in the doctor's office. So I was 25 years old, back in the 90s. And I'm in the doctor's office and the doctor tells me, hey Pascal, there's something going on. It's not good. You're actually going to die. You don't have an immune system anymore and you know your HIV positive. Not only are you HIV positive, at this point you have AIDS. There's no more immune system that works in your body.

So I was sitting there and what happened you could say when interpretation of this is that there was a spiritual experience. Everything I thought was solid, crumbled, like youth, health, life that I thought was permanent and solid. Suddenly my spiritual teacher of the time, life that I thought was permanent and solid. Suddenly, my spiritual teacher of the time, at that moment, the doctor was telling me everything you thought was solid and reliable and stable, actually is not. And so, that's how for me I was sent on a quest and a big quest because these things were revealed to me that

what I thought was solid and permanent was not. And the Buddha, when he talks about this first aggregate, formed the body, the material world, he compares it to foam. He says, foam by the sight of the ocean or along the Ganges River or any river, foam changes shape with every wave, with every wave that crashes on the shore, the foam there changes. There's nothing to it. It's insubstantial. It's changing. It's ephemeral.

There's nothing inside of it. Well, the body is the same. There's nothing solid in the body. And so when I heard this teaching, I recognize, oh my God, that's exactly what the doctor told me there in the, in his office. He told me what you thought was solid and permanent, like the body is not, there's going to be death, health is not solid either, there's going to be this ease, it's coming, it's there. And so I think to me that's how when I heard the teachings of the Buddha, particularly

these teachings, how it was, how would you say in English striking? And so I recognized there was something true in the body as foam. And then he talks about, let's say just take another one of these aggregates or rivers, perception, how we perceive things. He talks about mirage. Then I thought this was so incredibly right on. So right on. However, you perceive or conceive or interpret things to be, they're a little different. So that matched my experience of, you know, health, body, youth, or, you know, the stability of life. Suddenly, he was saying to be, that's how I took it very personal. He was saying to me, hey, what you perceived as solid in a way is a mirage, it appeared like you own health, for example, but life revealed to you that you don't own health.

Health is conditional when the conditions supporting health are there, there is health. And then when something comes in and then, you know, different condition and health suddenly shows that it's not that solid or for that matter, democracy or peace. And so when I heard this, especially this image of the Mirage, to talk about how we perceive things, I think I got hooked to Buddhist practice and Buddhist philosophy. You answered a question I was going to ask practice and Buddhist philosophy. You answered a question I was gonna ask you, which is you talked a lot about how we can get in trouble if we're not seeing the aggregates for what they are.

And the answer is we assume things are more reliable and permanent, and then we set ourselves up for suffering when we find out that yeah, you're gonna die. Everybody who knows gonna die, or yeah, you think you're receiving things accurately, but maybe you're going to die. Everybody who knows going to die. Or yeah, you think you're receiving things accurately, but maybe you're not. It can be hard news to hear. But if we're walking through life, understanding that everything is an aggregation, there is no core nugget of you that is permanent. It's hard to see, but it's better to see it than to be surprised by it.

It's hard to say, but it's better to see it than to be surprised by it. Yeah, because the downside of making all these things so I and mine, because that's what we're talking about, deconstructing this notion of a solid permanent self, the bad side of really buying into this solid, rigid eye is a sense and impression and experience of maybe separation. No? Yeah. Like you feel, you might feel that you're in one side of reality, you know, inside little consciousness inside this body and there is the outside environment as a separation And there is the outside environment as a separation. And this separation is very stressful because it's viable. You know, there's me on one side and the world on the other side. It's viable, but it's going to require a lot of work. I'm going to have to be maybe aggressive or defensive or strategize a lot.

So with the sense of eye that is very solid that we might have, this we have conceiving things, it comes with lowliness, feeling of separation. And because we make it solid, this kind of sense of I, it might come also with fear, fear of death, fear of what's gonna happen when I die. First it looks to me, I don't know how you feel about it, but to me, from that view of a solid, permanent self, death seems totally weird.

It seems like a nonsense, an insult, even. It doesn't match, it doesn't fit with my conception of reality, in the way that I feel that I so exist. And it's also the experience I have when somebody that I know dies. It's so strange that they existed. They so existed. They were so in existence. And now you're telling me that they don't exist anymore. This is so strange.

It doesn't add up. So death is strange. And then after death, if there's a solid eye and it disappears, it's totally stressful. If it continues, it's also stressful because I don't know in what form it's going to continue. And so here the Buddha seems like very gradually, very metadickly, some words like this. Metatically. Yeah, thanks for helping me here. So in a very metathetic way, the Buddha is saying, hey, let's start to question this a little bit. I'll give you a few different forms to do this.

So let's remove the lenses, the glasses of eye, what I want, what I don't want, what is mine, what is not mine. And let's put on, let's say, the lens of the five aggregates. And let's look at experience in this way. And what we might find is that there is constant death in a way, constant appearance and disappearance of things. The body sitting feels away. And now or later, the body walking

feels a completely different way. In my mind it's the same body, but in experience it's a completely other body. The body without COVID, the body with COVID might feel very different. The mind, the mind that is happy, the mind that is sad, the mind that is confused or shameful or arrogant, I think it's my mind, but when I look at it more closely, I find such different event, phenomena, textures, you know, and so that's how I understand this invitation of the five aggregates or five rivers or five aspects of piles, you know, the Buddha saying, come a little closer to this. Look at it in actuality while it's happening. And let's see how it behaves. And we'll find a lot of comings

and goings. And this might release the heart or mind from identification, fusion, appropriation, wrongful appropriation. I'm laughing at wrongful appropriation because one of the quotes I love, I heard it through Joseph, but he has this quote from some monk who says something to the effective when you think of anger as your anger, that's a misappropriation of public property. Yes, it's of the public domain. Yeah, I've heard him also say this. And you know, when we talk about this, it seems a little intellectual, conceptual, maybe fun, fun to think of, but it's not clear that we can

grasp the relevance of this, you know, the importance. I want to say the seriousness without being too serious about it, but you know, that the tendency that we have to appropriate to define to, yeah, identify with all the events that happens in a body-mind, this can lead to stress. And we know when we look in the mirror and suddenly youth is dripping, dropping, disappearing, crumbling, you know. And if you define yourself by youth or intelligence and then you have one night without sleep, you know, but I'm supposed to be at least a little intelligent and now I'm not at all. And what I find fascinating and liberating is to watch all these different aspects of our lives, how they're changing, how they're conditional. My opinions, for example, is just another thing that I can appropriate my opinion.

And it's something I heard you say maybe on your podcast or one of your guests, you know, it suddenly becomes my opinions, my opinion, until I hear somebody else say something more clever. And then I just hook up on that one. And then I'll fight for it. My opinion is, you know, and two weeks later, it's probably going to be a little different. And there's this constant appropriation. I imagine sometimes then like a monkey jumping from rope to rope or whatever the word is for that thing they jump on. You know, this constant appropriation. Now I'm my back pain.

Now I'm my opinion. Now I'm my body. Now I'm, you know, I just keep identifying like this and I don't notice. If I don't look, I just think there's a permanent compact, solid, ongoing eye. Yeah, it's a series of moments of appropriation or identification. There was a film, I can't remember which one, it's a, there's a little character, it's maybe a Disney movie or the Lion King or something like this, there's a little character. And when they run away from some danger, you know, and the little animal in the jungle is running and he's, he keeps saying,

everything he sees, you know, this is mine, this is mine. Oh, this is my branch, this is my fruit, this is my river, this is my mountain. It's like a linderatic. Exactly like us. We keep identifying, identifying to what, to things that are constantly changing, appearing, disappearing, appearing, I don't know how many lives I had since this morning that I know I'm going to talk to you, you know, proud of it, suddenly doubtful that I have anything to share, suddenly something else. All these emotions, they're not mine. They're of the public domain, you know, if I take them so personal and make them me, it's going to be painful.

But if I recognize as Deer Joseph says, you know, oh, here's fear, here's pride, here's doubt, here's peace, here's joy. There's something so beautiful to, it's not so much me who gets liberated, it seems, it's things that get liberated. Fear is liberated, but does it's fear thing? Speaking of fear, let me ask about you. You told that harrowing story of being back in the 1990s and getting the diagnosis. You appear to me to be thriving from what I can see through this little video screen on my computer monitor, but I'd be curious to check in to get the answer

from your perspective, how are you doing and how do you currently relate to the non-negotiable prospect of dying? Yeah, I think, I mean, who knows, huh? Because if I went to the doctor and suddenly there was a diagnosis or a situation like more will be revealed. But through this practice, you know, I'm answering you the most honestly I think I can. Like, I mean,

I'm answering you about what I'm seeing in myself is I see it seems like I'm getting really close in a way to death, to a certain kind of death. You know, when I'm actually aware, mindful, generously attentive, or a little bit more attentive, and that I see moments disappearing. I see a mind state disappearing, a thought disappearing, a breath disappearing, an idea disappearing. I see all these things appear and disappear. It seems like very slowly I'm getting used to the process of dying of losing things. And I think it's really wise of the Buddha because he's inviting us to do this right now

when it's not that important, when I'm just moving around doing things around the apartment. It's like, notice how things disappear all the time, Pascal, because one day something important will disappear. That's what I hear him say. Like I want you to practice noticing that things are very unreliable in this way, unstable, intermittent, or, no, what's the word that you use for the flame of a candle? Flickering. Flickering. That's such a kind of Buddhist word to use, not flickering. The flickering, isn't that true? Like sometimes I think somebody is as something against me, you know, or as bad intention, later it's revealed that no, they just didn't understand what I said. And suddenly,

boom, my point of view changes in one second, one new data, one new information. And I'm in another world. I'm not in front of an enemy anymore. I'm in front of a friend. And bang, it just vanished like this. And so to me, there's something about this, about the dying process of things. 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, they're precious, because they're gonna vanish, and it talks also about compassion. So I relate all this a lot to qualities of the heart, the compassion to see that my opinions changes, opinions of the world, the others change. There was no COVID. Suddenly there was a COVID. Suddenly it might be finishing. It might be coming. It's very unstable. Things change like this all the time.

things change like this all the time. There's something tenderizing in that for me. And I think it applies to the aging process, to not knowing what's going to happen with just to talk about the disease I have, a virus I have, it's dormant right now. Medication is working. I'm in the West. I have access to medication. I live in Canada, maybe a good

country to have access to healthcare. And so it's a little bit hidden for me right now. So that, you know, it seems like doctors and others are saying that I have as much chance to die at 85, then maybe you have or anybody else. So the prospect seems good, but we don't know what can happen at any moment. So that death is a little hidden from you right now. Before the medication came in, the cocktail therapy, it was not hidden. It was friends were dying, as you know, you know, in the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, for a staff of the 90s. It was right in my face all the time when it was on my body that was dysfunctioning, getting

dysfunctional in all kinds of ways, but now it's a little hidden. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. Coming up Pascal's favorite aggregate. That's right after this. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time,

pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life Is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others.

And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is Short, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. I think what might make sense to do is to walk through the individual aggregates to really sort of approach it with a little bit of the methodical nature that the Buddha himself tended to muster.

So, why don't we start at the first aggregate and then go from there? How does that sound? Yeah, so the first one of these rivers, running through through is the river of physicality, of form, or we could think of our body. And with this, it's right there, my body. Like, check with you, is that the way you feel about it, the way you sense it? It would be very natural if there was a kind of appropriation

or defining of self. And the Buddha, being very methodical, very natural if there was a kind of appropriation or defining of self. And the Buddha, being very methodical, talks about four ways that we identify with things. And so let's take the body. How do you feel Dan? Do you feel that the body, and it might be the four views, might happen at the same times. But do you feel that the body is yours? Is your body? It depends, you know, if I'm in meditation, I can start to see that it disaggregates. I

can see it's just a flow of sensations. However, if somebody stands too close to me while I'm walking through the streets of New York City, it really does feel like a personal violation. That's great. That's great what you're saying because you're showing the conditional nature of our perceptions, how we hold it is different depending on the mind state, the situation, the environment. And so I like this because in there, this fluidity, what I'm hearing you say is this fluidity in my sense of how I hold the body. And so it can be that it's my body or the views that the Buddha talked about is like, it's either mine or it's I, I am the body or it's mine or another view is it's in me. So it's very simple. It's either you think something is yours, it's you, it's inside

of you or you're inside it. And you're saying to me, well, it can change. I noticed that sometimes it's just maybe a field of sensations when I'm in meditation, you know, expansions and contractions of the belly, maybe, or tingling, or... And I love this in meditation. When you sit the first time before you've ever meditated, you're like, this is my body. I mean it, it's mine, it's me. Then you sit, and if you stay there a little bit at some point, it would be not so much

my hand maybe, but tingling is happening. Suddenly the perception changes. It's very informative for me when I see that my perception can change. Even if I'm still sitting there in the body, I can view it in a different way. And so what happens with the body or material form, so it could be things physical outside, is that we tend to either think there are, or not ours, and we can do this with the partner. It's my partner and we can have ownership to claim something.

It's good if we do it with nuance. Like, oh, for the time being, it's my partner. But sometimes we make things absolute. Like it's absolutely mine. And then when the day the person says, I'm leaving you, suddenly we're like, no, your mine. You're my partner. Well, you're gonna have to adapt your perceptions here

because it's not true anymore. And maybe it wasn't even true two weeks ago, but I was just getting ready to tell you. So that something is mine, my child, my car, my, oh, it's tricky, no? It's very tricky. This is very sensitive what I'm talking about. When I think my child, my partner, and is that absolutely mine?

And the wisdom seems to want me to acknowledge it some ways that things are changing, their condition, or they could change. They will change. And how can I hold this? Should I hold this with rigidity or with some kind of fluidity, like your sense of the fluid sense of I, it's mind and it's not mine, it's my legs, my mobility, and maybe whoops, it's not mine anymore. So the senses we have that are functioning now, they're functioning only for a while. Side, taste, people report this in some of the version of COVID when people would say, oh, last taste or smell. And so when people lose sometimes sight or hearing, of course, it happens.

And so we want in a way to reflect on this prior to the event happening, so that we can go through change more smoothly. That's why I find this very rich to think of how I appropriate material form. I remember in one retreat that there was one person who at the Q&A was asking one of the monastics who were leading the retreat. The person said, I own a restaurant. So that's the first aggregate form. I own a physical restaurant. It's my restaurant. And somebody comes every week and they do graffiti on the window of my restaurant. So what about this? That was the question to the monastic. The monastic said, well, you know, that's where wisdom,

I'm pretty good in my words now, but the monastic said, that's where wisdom becomes really important here. It's your restaurant? Yes. On a conventional level level it is. Absolutely. But it's also not your restaurant because you cannot own something physical. Absolutely. You can own it as long as everybody else agrees. You went to the lawyers, sign papers, whatever you do, you own everybody agrees it's a contract, you own the restaurant. But if war starts like it does in some countries

we know, and suddenly you can find out that it's not your restaurant. Absolutely. I find this very intriguing and worth reflecting on. Things are mine yet. They're not absolutely mine. How can I hold that gracefully, carefully, caringly? And so the monastic was saying, if you really think it's absolutely yours, you're going to suffer. But if you understand that it's yours and not yours, maybe there's going to be less grasping,

less clinging to it. And it doesn't resolve it everything because the person with the paint might come back next week. But the understanding can be partly liberating. Oh yeah, it's not exactly, absolutely mine. To me, it removes the kind of possibility of the tantrum. So that's a little words for the form, this first aspect of experience that we're invited to come closer

to be intrigued by, investigate, become attentive to our relationship to it and how it behaves. There's something also that comes to mind that I've found remarkable. I've heard this a couple of decades ago. It's the Buddha reportedly saying, there's a different, talking about this aggregate of form is saying the, oh, the earth element, the earth element, wise beings, they recognize it when they see it to experience the earth, the hardness, solidity, they recognize it and they stop there. The unwise beings, they add a little bit and that creates suffering for them. When they experience the earth element, they recognize it like the wise beings,

but they go a little further, then they say it's mine, it's mine. And then they're in trouble. How they're in trouble, they recognize while they're sitting that there's a pressure on the butt, and instead of stopping right there, pressure on the butt, they make it mine. And from there is born the fear of death. What is going to happen to me, my body, my earth? I'm that. I'm inside of this. What's going to happen to me? And in the practice of careful attention, loving awareness, sati and pali mindfulness, we stay close and then maybe we can clarify a little bit things. So it's not mine. It's just public domain, pressure, pressure, gravity, name something that is more of the public domain and

gravity. And we make it personal. And then we build, we conceive. There's something very fascinating for me that happens in our experience is that what we experience, like pressure on the butt or tingling or a sound or a taste, what we experience, very natural that it would happen, what we experience, we perceive, we explain in some way or recognize. So what we experience, very natural that it would happen. What we experience, we perceive, we explain in some way or recognize. So what we experience, we perceive, and what we perceive, we proliferate on. And so that what happens, here's the wise being, they sit on their cushion or their chair, and they notice just there's gravity. And for us, we go a little further. What we experience, we perceive, and then we proliferate.

We add on, we embellish, we build on. And so this is my, not just like, oh, there's gravity. This is me sitting here. What am I going to do later? I have to go over there later. And then we build a whole story story and we're entrenched under occupation by that story. We live in that story.

And meditation is to come back to something very, very immediate body sitting, breathing. It's a renunciation. We renounce into the, you know, embellishment that we get kind of trapped in. What if this happened to me later? What will happen to me later? Will I experience this later? Then we feel fear and a lot of things happen from that construction. And in the practice of meditation, it could be on the cusher, on the chair,

but it can be also in life to keep things very simple. Oh, here we are. Here I am standing. Oh, here we are. Here I am standing. Oh, here I am stressed. What if it continues? What if this person says that to me, what am I gonna do? All this embellishment is making us further

and further away from reality and further and further caught into a salving, engaged. So that's aggregate slash river number one. Number two is often referred to as feeling tone. Tell us about that. Yes, so this is also something that it's constantly happening. It's happening now as we speak, and sometimes it's more obvious than others, but that's something that is part of our experience all the time. So with anything that we experience, it could be something seen, something heard, something

tasted, it could be a thought, it could be an emotion. With anything that we experience, it comes with it, some kind of pleasure about it or displeasure or the absence, the neutrality of it. If it wasn't there, I think we wouldn't even recognize life. So some taste we find pleasurable, some taste displeasurable, some things we hear, we like hearing them, some things they are unpleasurable to think of. And many things are, they don't stand out in this way, they're neutral, and there's many of these moments. An in-breath, for example, for many people, breath. What's not like, oh my god, it's so pleasurable to breathe, sometimes it might be, sometimes displeasurable, but very often, maybe for many people, breath is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It's neutral in this way. So this, the Buddha, oh my God,

it makes so important central in this teaching and it makes it one of the aggregates. It puts it in almost all the lists, inviting us saying, hey, Dan, hey Pascal, tune in here. Because there's a lot of trouble possible around this. If we tune in to these experience of pleasure, we'll notice how they arise and vanish, arise and vanish. So they're not stable, they're unstable, unreliable.

You go back to the same restaurant, you meet the same person, and you're not assured that it will be as pleasant as the last time or unpleasant. Like it's very hard to control. You go to see a movie from your favorite director and there you are, bored to death. You know, I didn't work this time or you've seen enough of his style or her style. And so there's something in it very liberating when we become really conscious that, oh my god, this is so unreliable or even here in this meeting with this person this evening,

like it keeps changing, it's really, really pleasant and then suddenly, whoops, something happened with the waiter or with the taste and it vanishes or in a relationship over the course of a few years. And so the Buddha seems to invite us to pay real attention to see the variation and how, as you know, we tend to cling to things that are pleasant and we tend to fear or really have aversion to what is displeasureable and also to not notice what is neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable. So there's a whole field of our lives that we miss. The mind doesn't even notice it because it doesn't feel pleasant or unpleasant. And in meditation, with the meditative attitude that we can bring to daily life, or with that aspect of maybe we could call investigation, when something pleasurable happens, we notice, how look at this?

Pleasurable. Let me stay in relationship to it, instead of maybe wanting to keep, clinging to it, you know, let me experience pleasure and notice how it appears and disappears. And when something unpleasant happened, let me see how could this pleasure lead to calm or integrity or patience or care or honesty instead of irritation, closing down, exploding, how can an experience that is unpleasurable lead to healing or stability or compassion or humor, maybe? That's really intriguing to me. That's something that would naturally lead to more trouble,

could lead away from trouble. It will require of me a lot of attention in life. The capacity to recognize opportunity, oh, Evola, here's something happening. It's not what I wanted. It's what I did not want. How can I develop courage here? Are patients or, yeah, again, integrity, how can I have my value of respect or consideration? Be at the foreground here when it's being challenged, not easy.

And so there's a whole field here that we can explore. And the Buddha used the image of the bubble to talk about this. I'm not saying like, hey, honey, don't put all your eggs in the same basket. If you try to make things comfortable and safe and fun, pleasure ball, and as you like it, it's going to be a really stressful ride because you're not going to get it. There's going to be pleasure and displeasure and a lot of neutrality maybe. And how can you be free in the midst of that? So here's a whole field. Here's a pile worth checking, you know? And that's for aggregate number two. Aggregate number three.

Oh my god, my favorite. I love this one. So rich. And it's perception. I just want to point. We are listening audience members to a true Dharma nerd. I'd say that would love. I'm an aspiring Dharma nerd. So I respect it. Yeah. Well, you know, this, I think this enthusiasm, it develops also in practice. We talk about the joy for inside the curious joy, the joy of curiosity.

I'm so thankful to my teachers because they showed me this that instead of having a version or not noticing things that I can actually come close, experience things and find things out about these phenomena that I'm experiencing every day. And with this curious contact, the curiosity becomes very slowly, it becomes a joyful curiosity. And so now I'm like, oh, can't wait for something displeasurable to happen. To see how I can do with this. It's like the next episode of a Netflix series that you're enjoying. It's like, what's going to happen next here? Yeah.

And so this third aggregate, I'm really enthusiastic about it because, you know, it's perception how we perceive things. And so when we were talking about the feeling tone, it's more like how we're affected by things, how they're experienced as pleasurable or displeasurable. And now it seems like it's more about the object, the thing itself, you know how we perceive the things. And so imagine that's the classic example, you're walking in the woods and it's getting

dark and then you see across the path a snake and then you jump or freeze or want to fly, fly, and so you see the snake, and then you look a little closer, and suddenly your perception changes and you discover it's a branch. Do you see how the internal experience changes? The thing hasn't changed, fascinating to me. It's the same old thing that is on the ground there, but it's perceived differently. And therefore, the whole of the inner experience changes. When I felt like there was a threat, I needed to defend myself, I might die, poison, all the embellishment of my mind, you know, suddenly, it's a completely different thing. And so this image is an old classic image, but this is what we experience in life.

When we perceive things, we think that what we perceive is what the thing is. Yet, as we pay attention, we'll discover that there's a lot of projection in there because of past experience. When I met somebody looking like that person, it doesn't look good because a person who looked like that person in the past did something to me, or I learned through education or the dominant group that this kind of person are dangerous,

they are dangerous. It's not a perception to me. It's a fact, they're dangerous, I need to change the side of street, you know, go on the other sidewalk. And with this practice, we learn to pay attention and recognize things for what they are. Oh, such a Buddhist expression, recognizing things for what they are, seeing reality for what it is. And here the work is to recognize that what we think is objective is actually very, very subjective, that I see somebody and I will. It's not that they're desirable or dangerous. It might be, it might very well be. In many cases, I'll find out that I was actually infusing, suffusing the sight

with my own learned conditioning. And so, wow, that's remarkable. So when I think, for example, how the future looks bleak to me, the amount of freedom possible when I'm able to recognize that this is a momentary perception. It's a mirage. If I'm confused like we are often, we take our thoughts to be reality. So the week is going to suck, the year is going to suck, the rest of my life is going to suck. That's really painful. Unless I know it's a mirage. If I know it's a momentary perception, then maybe I can hold it more lightly. Oh, it looks bleak.

That's how it appears right now, appearances. And I can learn to relax in my projection. And we could think, oh, yes, it makes sense for the future, but it passed. No. And maybe with practice or closer look, I might find out that depending on my mood, I'm going to perceive even the past differently. I always sucked, I suck, I always sucked. Everything I always, everything I experience in my life sucked. Is that more about reality or it's more about a mood? And so here's perception, how I appeared to myself in any moment, how others appear,

people, then people, people when we're impatient, people, they suck, people suck. That's a fact. That's reality. You know, on a bad day in New York City, you know, you're trying to reach some destination and all these pedestrians, you know, they suck. And then you come out of retreat or meditation or something just happened to you, some beauty, some beautiful moment. And then you walk in the street and people, people are so touching, so moving, people are so much compassion for them trying to find their way, be safe, experience ease. So people how they perceive and pass in the future and myself, and some monindraji, you know that one?

He was one of Joseph's teachers, yes. Yes. And when he says the thoughts about your mother are not your mother, that's kind of basic liberation. It's huge, it's basic, but huge. To know that a mirage is a mirage can be so helpful in life. Oh, Pascal, you're discouraged. Of course, it looks like this. Instead of buying into a daring, into any perception,

to see, let's see what's going to happen. Maybe I'll finish this aggregate just with this, done because it's been so remarkable for me that this aggregate has been standing out or outstanding in the last couple of years, because COVID, vaccine, mask, talk about perception. Some of us think it doesn't exist. Some of us think it exists, the COVID.

Some of us think the vaccine is the really important thing that happens. Some of us think it's the worst thing that can happen to us. Mask, some of us think it's good to wear it. Some of us think it's good to wear it, some of us think it's the ridiculous thing to do. Like, it shows to us how we live in a world of mirage. And how can we hold this? I think it's good to know. It helps me for me when I meet people who have a different view on all these three, different view than mine, you know, to say, of course, they

can understand things differently because of their experience with their been exposed to and what I've been exposed to. And one thing can be seen so differently from two people. Coming up, Pascal talks about responding instead of reacting to stuff and practices for working with selflessness after this. Just to take this aggregate in a slightly different direction, I have not done much practice using the aggregates as the focus of my meditation practice, but I certainly heard of it discussed this Buddhist list many times on retreats or in podcast interviews or just by being Buddhist books or Dharma talks in my day-to-day life.

Somehow, the notion of perception has weaseled its way into my practice in the following way, which is every once in a while, I'll be sitting or doing walking meditation, and I will hear something like a fire engine or a cat puking on the rug or whatever. And I'll notice, okay, lightning quick, quicker than I could ever have seen play out in real time. The mind identified what that was. But it wasn't me. I was not there for that. It just fire engine came into my mind. And so that's a very quick and I think very easily accessible way to unhook from the self. Yes, exactly. So the mind does that. It recognizes things.

It labels things. It's perceived things. Yeah, so it does it on its own, so it's not that personal, right? Yeah. And by the way, that's one of the perceptions we want to correct. And meditation is a refinement of perception. You could say, or what is meditation? It's a training and perception. And so what do we do? Partly, see if you agree with me on this, we can compare notes. But when we practice, we start to come closer to experience as they're

happening. And we're invited to notice the specific characteristics of things. This is a taste, this is a thought, this is agreeable, this is disagreeable, this is felt in the toes, this is felt in the hands, you know, and we get really specific about the experience. And at some point in that perception training, what starts to stand out is the characteristics that are not specific, but universal to things. So some things are tasted, some things are heard, some things are thought, some things are blue, some things are red, they all have specific characteristics, things, some things are pleasant, other things are unpleasant. But what do they all have in common is what starts to be noticed in the meditative attitude or in meditation.

What we start to notice is that things appear and disappear. Some things are heard, some things are seen, but they both appear and disappear and experience. Some things are pleasant, others are unpleasant, but they both appear and disappear. They're all conditional, and none of them are that personal, which is the most intriguing and counterintuitive aspect. But like you're just describing, oh, through meditation, I'm able to recognize that perception is just, does it's thing? You know, there's a sound and right there, there's the image of a cat or a fire truck or it just labels things, it organizes, it's not that personal.

I totally agree. I totally agree. I do have my eye on the clock a little bit and I know if two more aggregates to sort out here. So if it's okay with you, I'll nudge us in the direction of mental formations. Yes. mental formations. That is the aspect of mind that is large enough to include many things.

So the feeling tone is how we're affected by things, pleasure, displeasure. The perception is how we perceive, interpret, or see the thing. The mental formation is how we engage, how we react, or respond to events. So it means the emotions, the thoughts, the intentions that arise in my mind or in our minds. And so right now, as any of these aggregates are always happening at this any time, they're always happening. Right now, for example, you have the intention to hear me. So what you hear might be agreeable or disagreeable.

You perceive the sense of what I'm saying. And it elicits or ignites something in you. Sometimes it's a desire to push away. Sometimes it's a desire to keep. Sometimes it's a desire to push away, sometimes it's a desire to keep, sometimes it's a desire to think of. So this is the response or reaction that arises. And the image for this, that the Buddha used, and that particular Suta where he uses this five image for each one of the aggregates, is the banana tree trunk.

And so the story goes, imagine somebody who wants to build something solid. So somebody wants to build something solid. So they go to the woods, they go to Central Park, looking for strong wood to build a refuge or something solid. They walk in the woods of Central Park and suddenly they see a banana tree

like there are many I bet in Central Park being south of Montreal. So they see a banana tree and right there they think, oh wow, look at that big leaves, big flower, big fruits, there must be solid wood in the heart of this banana tree. And so with their axe, they start axing the banana tree to find what? At the core of the banana tree, fiber, nothing solid, no hardwood. And so the Buddha used that image of the banana tree to talk about all these things that arise in us. And if you're meditating, I'm talking to the adiads here, the listeners, you know, if you've meditated just a little bit, you know how the mind will construct something.

You know, you're sitting, wanting to be with the breath, or just the sounds, or the silence. And the mind starts building up something. It creates a story, oh, next week this, I have to make sure that, and then 10, 20 minutes down the line, suddenly you wake up, oh, I'm just here, banana tree trunk. There was big flowers, big leaves, big fruits, but in the core of it, nothing. It was just a construction of mine, mental formation, a generation of mine. And the Buddha says, these construction, you have to recognize them for what

they are, because you take them to be solid, to be factual, to be reality, when they're constructions of the mind. They're just a femoral things that appear, and like the banana tree, will fall on the ground after having born, born, that's for roots. Born fruits, yes. Yes, yes. So, and these emotions, for example, that very naturally we take so personal and are so invested in the emotions that we experience and we take to be mine or inside of me or mine or I, you know, the Buddha says, there's no, there's nothing to it. It's empty in its nature.

It's something that has the nature to arise and pass. And in meditation, we will find this out. Suddenly a big wave of anger, rage, a big wave of doubt, shame, a big wave of arrogance, you know, I got it, I understand all this stuff. Only to be followed 20 minutes later by doubt, what am I doing? Am I doing it right? How should I go about this? And so the Buddha is inviting us to notice the ephemeral empty nature of these erasings. And if you're interested in core kind of counterintuitive, essential Buddhist thinking, we could think that the intention,

the intention to open the fridge, the intention to go to this place or that place, we could think, this is really I, this is I. Maybe I'm not the body, okay, maybe I'm not the emotions, okay, they come and go, maybe I'm not the pleasure that comes and go, but the intentions, the one that intent, this is me, this is I, this is inside me, or I'm inside this, or something like this. And Buddha says, well, I put it in my words, you know, but well, I looked into it and I found no eye in there. You know, intentions arise out of conditions, out of education, prior experiences.

You could think some of the people decide, I'm going to take up the weapon to go defend my country. It might look like a personal decision on a one level. You can say it's a very personal decision, but the intention to take up weapons or arms arise out of the conditions. If there was not the war in my country, maybe this wish wouldn't arise in me, it wouldn't, it just wouldn't. And so even this, that seems so at the core of human experience, the intention, I'm the one who decided to think, well, just sit a few minutes and you'll discover it

that it thinks a lot in there. And that's certainly not I want all this thinking as a meditator, I just want to be with the breath, but it keeps thinking. So the thinking is not so much a core eye that does it. It's just habit, compulsion, not so personal. And then the last aggregate consciousness. Is that like a Carl Sagan imitation? So I tried to make it a little to get the attention of the listener

because this has been going on for too long. Not at all. Grab the attention a bit here. And so consciousness, wow, the image, wow, so powerful, the Buddha compares consciousness to a magic show. And so a moment of hearing, a moment of thinking, a moment of experiencing an emotion, a moment of feeling something in the body, in the back, or the legs, or the feet, all these moments of consciousness, one behind the other creates the amazing magic show of I, the illusion of a solid, permanent, intrinsic, permanent I.

And so the Buddha wanted us knowing of the confusion that can come and how we can get caught inside of ourselves with this sense of solidarity, with all his compassion, seems to be saying, hey, honey, notice the knowing mind, notice the knowing quality of mind, how it appears and disappears. And you might find that there's not even an eye in the center of this, which you would think this is the last hideout. Pascal, you can take everything away from me, but the observer, this is eye, the one that experiences, this is I. And the Buddha says, you can go that far, has to question that assumption,

we're questioning all assumptions, all preconceived ideas in meditation. That's what investigation does. We sit there and we notice, there's a sense of I, there's a sense of I, and we start to deconstruct it. Oh, sensations are not I, they come and go. Oh, sensations are not eye, they come and go. Emotions are not eye, they come and go.

Perception happened by themselves, they come and go. And consciousness, maybe also is of the public domain. Maybe it's just a knowing. Knowing is just knowing. Maybe there's nothing that I need to identify or appropriate here, and maybe through this I can lose fear of death. Because if I think I'm the little consciousness isolated inside this body and that I'm separate from the world, it's scary. It's stressful, but if I discover that, oh no, it's just something that happens.

Nope. That's the most subtle point, and all these aggregates, then they're going from the more gross to the most subtle. I don't know if you've noticed, but experiences of the body sensations, the tastes, very gross, and then pleasure, and then perception, oh already very subtle. And then what happens in the mind, heart, so tricky, you know, with thoughts and emotion, we can get caught. And then consciousness, which is transparent, it's not the sensation, it's what knows

the sensations. It's not the taste, it's what's experiencing taste. It's very transparent, it doesn't have much features, but there can be an identification or clinging to it as I, it's inside of me. What practices do you recommend to probe this selflessness of consciousness? Wow, that's a good question.

Well, to me it's such a subtle point that it comes much further in the practice. That's what I would say just here spontaneously, because I don't think it's easy to investigate. That's why in the practice we start with the breath. And then the walking, the posture, the sitting, and then the emotions and the thoughts. And like, it's very far. If you go sit a typical retreat, usually there's no talk about consciousness until day

eight or nine. It's at the very end of a week long or 10-day retreat that they'll start to talk about this, because one needs to have a mind that is very quiet and stable, I think, to start to be intrigued by this. So that's maybe a first response. But one way, we don't want it to become heady, that's the danger, if the mind doesn't have a lot of silence in it. But one way we'd be to ask, who? Who's hearing?

Who's thinking? Who's sitting? And then we can maybe feel. It's not that we shouldn't cling or identify what we want to do in practice is recognized as if it's happening. Oh yeah, the sense that this is I sitting here observing or feeling experiencing reality. There's a very clear, different sense that I am meditating. Good. Nothing to do, just notice this. I. And then suddenly, as you describe, suddenly,

perception happened by itself. It was not I perceiving, but perception was a function of the mind. It happened by itself. And so it's not like you have to get rid of anything, but just get curious. Where is the I, as I'm sitting here? If the mind has agitation to it, it will become discursive. Conceptual, I'll be thinking, but if there is some

quietness, then maybe I'll be able to sense how it appears to me, how it's perceived in this moment. Oh, eye is listening. And maybe sometimes something else happened. You know how we use the language and we can play with this also. Maybe that's going to be my last possible answer here, is you know how when we practice the wording that we use, we might remove the I as we practice. And instead of saying, I'm hearing silence or sounds in the street just to say, hearing is happening.

Hearing is happening. Oh, there's fear. Fear is known. Instead of I'm experiencing fear or I'm knowing fear or joy, joy is happening. So we remove the eye. Not to go towards dissociation, that's something else. We remove the eye from the language just to see how it lands in the experience. Oh, there is chopping carrots, you know, it's happening.

There's breathing. And suddenly we might experience it for a few moments that, oh yeah, there's no eye in there, and no one is disappearing. Nothing is disappearing. We just removed that way of perceiving, conceiving the world and things keep going. Two questions before I let you go. One is, is there something I should have asked but failed to ask during this romp through the five aggregates? No, there's nothing you should have asked or could have asked. Is there something I should have said or could have said?

Probably the it'll come later. But this is what happened here this time, I would say. An important thing to me, though, that I try to do when I teach and that seems very important is to make the connection with these things that can seem so conceptual and almost cold, you know, no self, not I. Make the link with the heart because I think to me, that's why I'm still practicing today. It's because all this that we're talking about, these things, they become practice and they can become practice. And if they become practice, they'll make the heart vibrant. To me, what I see in this, strangely enough, is that it's liberating.

It's liberating the heart. It's freeing the heart. What's at the end of it, I don't know what the very end, but what's happening, appearing, is that joy is more available, that tenderness or compassion arises more spontaneously, that there's more equilibrium, equanimity, balance inside the heart, mind, that there's more compassion in relationships and joy and appreciation that healing is possible. To me, it's really related to healing, to the heart. I don't know if I was able to convey it today, but that's definitely to me what it means of this. Is that joy becomes

available and care, maybe less self-absorbed, fascinated by self and things like this? The Tibetan phrase comes to mind all the time at moments like this. The rough translation for the Tibetan phrase for enlightenment is a clearing away and a bringing forth. And if you can clear away all of this grasping energy, then there's a lot of good stuff that can take its place. So beautifully said. Yeah. Yeah,aring and bringing forth.

And here's my last question, which is, can you, for the many people who will have listened to this and may want to learn more from you, what are the best resources out there to get more Pascal, even though Pascal's an illusion, of course. I thought you would ask about, like, read more about the aggregates. Yeah, but let's talk about more. Well, you know, I teach here and there. I'm part of the core faculty at the Inside Meditation Society and Massage Shew Set. So I go there, maybe two or three times a year.

And I tour a bit different places, cities and countries in Europe and North America. And there's a website with my name on it. And you know, on Dharma seeds, there's many teachings there that can be found. That's what comes to mind now. PascaloCClair.com. Yes. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Darmacyd, which Pascal referenced is a website that aggregates to use a loaded word.

Dharma talks, given at retreat centers all over the world. And if you go to that website, which we'll also put a link to and you search for Pascal's talks, you can find them there. Thank you so much for doing this. It was a delight and it was so great to meet you. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Thank you for everything you do. It's really good you're out there. And thank you for the listeners.

And I love practicing with people. So to me, there's nothing greater than sharing a hall together for a few days, you know, and discovering human nature, which is quite a thing. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Thanks again to Pascal. I love to meeting him. Thank you as well to everybody who works so hard on the show. Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justin Davie, Lauren Smith, Maria Wartell, Samuel Johns, and Jen Poient. And we get our audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus with Alexis Santos.

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