Lesson video

Hello and welcome back to another lesson in Buddhism.

today we are going to be doing some psychology.

Yes, you weren't expecting that.

You were thinking actually I clicked on to do an RE lesson, but RE and psychology have always kind of gone hand in hand really, the earliest kind of introspection of the mind started thousands of years ago.

A lot of evidence in India of that.

So what we're going to be looking at today is the Skandhas, which is it's a bit like, it's psychology really Skandhas, which is it's a bit like, it's psychology really because what the Buddha did was he kind of deconstructed the way that we think about things, the way that we perceive things, and that's what we're going to be doing today.

So let's get started, okay? So let's get ready for the lesson today.

Today, you're going to need a pen, some paper and we definitely want to be thinking today, definitely need our curious minds.

Hopefully you might even be doing a little bit of introspection yourself.

So pause the video in a moment So pause the video in a moment so that you can go and collect these items. And also I'm going to suggest that you I'm going to ask can you just make sure that everything that is slightly distracting is just kind of turned off, so the TV's on, turn it off, if there's any music, turn it off or move yourself away if you can, to a space where it's nice and quiet, no siblings are going to bother you or anything like that, so that you can get home with the lesson.

So you can pause now.

Right okay.

I normally like to start my lessons with a philosophical question, just to kind of get you thinking.

So my again, and I've kind of said this before that often the questions that we ask in philosophy and RE they seem kind of strange or kind of obvious, but there's normally a kind of philosophical lesson in there for us to kind of think about.

So the one that I'm going to ask you today is think of a stick, how many different uses can you think of a stick? How many different ways might you use a stick? So again, go ahead and pause and maybe write down a list if you can.

And we can have a few moments to do that.

Okay, so I've just kind of put a few ideas together.

I'm sure that you've got many more than me, but what you can do is you can tick them off as you go along.

So these are the ones that I can think of like a fetch stick, if you're walking the dog or playing with the dog, you might want to just, you know, you can throw it and play catch, fetch with your dog.

Sometimes a pen to draw in the ground particularly if it's been muddy.

Sometimes it's a quite fun thing if your out for a walk or if you're in the park.

If you go camping, you might collect, collect sticks for fire to make a fire.

You might even use sticks to maybe kind of build, build some kind of tent or some kind of structure that's going to cover you.

You might even use it to hold a flag.

I remember when I used to play capture the flag as a child, we always used to just find a stick and tie something around it and then you know, off you'd go.

To make a fort maybe if you're pretending, you know, to fight, you might be, you know, pretending Jews or pretend pirates, that kind of thing.

And for some people they might even use it as a makeshift walking stick.

So why am I talking about sticks So why am I talking about sticks in a lesson to do with Buddhism? And let's have a think about this.

What I want to think about is how we experience objects in the world.

And this is what the Buddha was trying to understand.

So when he had his kind of moment of enlightenment, he'd been meditating for a very, very long time, really trying to kind of deconstruct how we experience things, to get to the truth, to find out what's? Why? What is this world about? What is existence about? And like I said, this is, this has been part of a very long tradition in India.

The early Aryans and early Holy men within Hinduism, the Vedic religions, they used to do this.

It was part of a way of trying to connect to nature effectively and to try and understand really what were the building blocks of nature reality and where did we fit in? So he was doing this and he would observe objects like a stick and try and work out, how is he perceiving it? So let's break this down for a second.

You take an object and what happens is the first thing you do is your eye connects with that object, but that's it.

Okay, so before we get to anything else, let's just think the very first stage is that you, your eye connects with an object, something physical, like the organ of the eye connects with something else, physical, a stick on the ground.

And it's just an object.

It's just that kind of recognition.

What we do as human beings is we start to attach all sorts of other information to something like a stick.

Which makes us very clever actually, quite unique.

I mean, there's obviously studies to work out if there are other animals who think like us, and there are some promising studies, but nothing quite where we are.

So if you think about it, So if you think about it, you might take a stick and we might think, okay, I'm going to use that as, just throw sticks at my dog, so I can play fetch with my dog.

Or it might have different connotations so you might be able to relate it to something joyful like playing, but you know, if you grew up in a different culture or different society, different country where, or even hundreds of years ago, when a stick was used to, to hit you, if you'd been naughty.

You don't have to go that far back, I think probably about 50 years ago, where if you were at school and you had been naughty, the headmaster would probably get stick out and slap you on the hand so you might have a different association with a stick.

So we take the object, it's a stick, but as human beings, we attach different ideas to it.

Whether that it means it might be good things or bad ideas, which is quite interesting.

This is where the kind of Buddhist psychology comes into it.

So Indian philosophy, religion.

So Indian philosophy, religion.

So again, I'm talking about Hinduism here really the early beginnings of Hinduism and late, much later on Buddhism.

It's very much to do with the mind.

So much of these traditions are about how do we perceive things? Or how does reality appear to us? And what the Buddha did was he kind of analysed these thought processes.

He kind of slowed the right down and tried to deconstruct, how does it happen? How do I go from my eye meeting a stick to making all of these kinds of judgements? And these insights have been so interesting that they're actually used in kind of modern psychology.

And you can even study Buddhist Psychology And you can even study Buddhist Psychology to become a therapist in using Buddhist techniques.

It's a growing field.

So it just goes to show you that, yes, we are talking about religion, but it kind of started with looking at the mind.

And what we're going to be looking at today is exactly that, this deconstruction of thoughts.

And he called them The Five Skandhas or another way of looking at it in English language, because Skandha is a Pali word an ancient Indian language that was used by the Buddha.

You might find in textbooks is it's called The Five Aggregates, the five elements or parts of thinking.

So the Buddha, he was in deep introspection, he slowed down his perception and he was able to witness and observe how these different elements of thoughts kind of came into, kind of arose into his mind.

Very interesting and this happens again through things like deep meditation, people learn to just really watch the mind.

And like I said, this is a very careful deconstruction of experience and perception.

And he was trying to understand and he realised that experiences actually carried, carried along kind of two different formats through the mind and through the body.

And if you remember back, some of you saw the previous lesson on the Three Marks of Existence.

Anatta, it means no mind, you know, no self, the self doesn't exist.

That thing that you think is you and the thing that I think is me is not a thing itself.

It's not permanent.

It's a collection of ideas and thoughts arising, according to Buddhism, this is, this is the insight of the Buddha that he, he experienced that actually he wasn't a, he experienced that actually he wasn't a, he wasn't a self.

He wasn't a person that could be Siddhartha Gautama.

Actually, he was a collection of ideas is a bit similar to the idea of, let's say a forest.

A forest is a collection of its trees really, forest isn't a thing itself.

What it is, is a collection of lots and lots of different trees, it's a similar kind of idea.

In that format the mind is like a kind of collection of mental faculties and thinking thoughts, that kind of thing.

So, okay right.

I've kind of talked to you, I've given a lot of information so far.

Just trying to put into context what we mean when we talk about the Skandhas? What were they? We're going to look at them in more detail a bit latter on, but first let's just have a little pause and I want you to answer this question.

Why is Buddhist teachings used in psychology? So what did the Buddha do? and why do you think they, that has kind of entered into the world of psychology? So go ahead and pause, have a think about it, okay? This is where we need your curious mind and write down what you think, okay? So go ahead and pause.

Okay so, Hopefully you have something like this.

So again, what he did was he, he deconstructed how we perceive things.

So how we objects appear to us and then, you know So how we objects appear to us and then, you know` what we eventually end up thinking about those things.

And this kind of analysis is used in some forms of psychology today.

Okay, so let's talk about the Skandhas.

Let's find out what are we actually talking about here? Let's take a look but again, just to remind you a Skandhas or aggregate, It means it's an element, it's a part of something that's bigger.

So don't, don't get scared about the language.

Just keep referring back to what it means.

It takes a little bit of time, but eventually you'll get it.

So the first one is Rupa, Rupa.

And what it means is, it's kind of the Skandha, the element of the mind that is connected to everything that's physical.

So, the better he recognised that actually our experiences often cause us suffering, in some kind of way.

And again, Buddhism is really about trying to cope with the suffering so that we can be happy.

That's, that's what they're trying to achieve really.

And the Buddha recognised actually it's our experiences and some of the ways that we kind of attach different ideas to our experiences that can cause us to suffer.

So, what he did was he had this kind of experience of seeing things, really breaking down experience, and he broke it down into these five aggregates and the first one is Rupa.

It refers to the kind of physical parts of experience.

So Rupa, so that would be physical objects so the things around you.

It would be your arms, your if you're looking, if you're watching this on a phone, it would be a phone.

It would be the chair or the floor that you're sitting on, another person, the physical objects.

And also it would be the sense organs that you have in your body.

So it could be your eyes, it could be your ears, your nose to be able to smell something, tongue, touch, skin.

anything that's going to help you sense the world.

And these are kind of physical organs that give us what we call the sense data.

And it tells us something about the world and the experience that we, the world that we live in, the reality that we live in.

But that on itself, that's by itself, doesn't tell us everything.

So if we think back to the, the analogy of the stick, if we're just talking about experience of the stick, then that's not really going to give us a full kind of understanding of, you know, sticks.

If we're just thinking about the, the touch of it, that doesn't really tell us what a stick is or how we can.

So the next one we're going to look at is Vijana, which loosely translates from the Pali as consciousness but it's not quite the same way we would think about it if you think about kind of the English language.

And to really understand it we need to go back to Rupa and we need to think about how, you know, you think about the eye meeting the physical eye meeting the physical object in the world that connects now to really gain consciousness of that object.

to really gain consciousness of that object.

Vijana needs to be present.

So here we've got you know, this brain it's connecting between the two and what it starts is according to this, the Buddhist tradition, what happens is visual consciousness arises.

So you see an object and you suddenly become aware of it and that's it that's, that's so we've had this kind of two step process so far.

The eye meets the object and secondly, Vijana the consciousness arises, and then you have visual consciousness.

You suddenly are aware of the object.

Now at this point, you still haven't attached any kind of judgments or feelings.

It's just pure awareness at this point.

So those are the first 2 Skandhas.

And, you know, the most important thing that we need to translate sense data is consciousness, without it, we can't, you know, how can we actually understand anything? So you need a mind, you need consciousness of Vijana.

And again, this is when Rupa and Vijana interact.

Let's have a quick true or false, just to make sure that we're on track.

Rupa and Vijana are both parts of the mind that deal with the physical world.

Is that true? Or is that false? You can go ahead and pause if you wish to, to have a think about it.

So the question was Rupa and Vijana are both parts of the mind that deal with the physical world.

Is that true or false? True.

So remember Rupa is the physical parts of the, the physical objects and the physical organs and Vijana is the consciousness parts that comes together that helps you achieve that kind of awareness of the physical object.

So it's those two things come together that gives you visual consciousness.

So well done for getting that correct.

Now, how does this translate to, I mean, so far we're looking at material objects and awareness of them, but then how does that become a personal experience? If you look at the young lady here, she's, you know, she's looking at her cereal.

She's not that impressed by the looks of it, but it's just cereal.

It's just an object.

So how does looking at an object create a feeling inside of us? So this is the next stage.

So how does it, how does observing or experiencing physical things in the world create emotions inside of us and for the Buddha he realises that there are the two physical ones that we've looked at and also three major mental factors of experience.

And those are the aggregate feeling, the aggregate of perception and mental formations and volition.

And these are big words.

They look a bit scary.

Don't be scared because once we unpack them, it will make complete sense to you.

Just to be clear that these three aggregates function to turn kind of mere observation, mere awareness of objects into personal experiences, okay? And the first one is Vedana which means a feeling and it's, yeah, it's an aggregate a feeling.

So basically what happens when visual consciousness arises, you know, you see an object and you become aware of it.

What happens is a feeling arises inside of you.

And that can be either pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent.

So this is like the third stage, the Buddha realised, of when we observe things, this is the third thing that happens.

Okay, we're just going to have a quick experiment now, let's see what you think.

Here's a picture of an ice cream.

See if you can just be aware of how you feel about looking at an ice cream, do you feel, is this a pleasant image? Is it unpleasant or is it, are you indifferent? You don't care, okay? I'm going to show you a couple more images and see if you can be aware of how you feel about these images.

Okay, and you can see already straight away my reaction is to kind of go, oh slavery.

So obviously I have quite deep negative feelings about slavery, obviously, for obvious reasons.

How do you feel about it? So I'm assuming most of you are going to look at an image like that and probably feel this is unpleasant.

Marmite okay, very controversial in my classroom, very controversial.

I don't think I've ever seen students become so split over something like Marmite and put, I put this up because my, my students, just before we broke up were we were, I was teaching online and they were talking so much about Marmite peanut butter.

So for me, I'm indifferent because you know, I'm not a, it's okay for me.

I don't mind Marmite.

I'm not a massive fan, I'm indifferent, but for some students makes me, it's really interesting.

Some students have these quite strong reactions to something as simple, simple as Marmite.

Again, you've got this physical object in the world.

It's just an object, but it creates this kind of, either love or disgust.

So think about how you feel about it? Bullying okay, or you know, someone who's being picked on.

How would you feel if you, if you saw that? Okay, your eye, your eyes see it, Okay, your eye, your eyes see it, you become aware of it, and then suddenly you, inside you, it kind of creates a feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness or indifference.

of pleasantness or unpleasantness or indifference.

Let's say that most of us would feel perhaps that this isn't an unpleasant thing to witness or even, you know, experience yourself.

So, this is what the Buddha was talking about.

So, this is what the Buddha was talking about.

Now we have these experiences and then immediately we start to attach certain emotions, feelings to them.

The second one is Samjna, and this is perception.

Now it's not perception in the way that we would probably understand it in the West.

So before we go into what it actually means, what I would like you to do is have a look at these pictures.

And which of these would you associate together? So which would you associate together and why? And see if you have any particular feelings, when you look at these objects.

So you can go ahead and pause for a second and see if you, which ones would you group together? And do you have any particular feelings towards any of them? Hey, hopefully you've had a minute or so to think about that.

So most people would probably group the birthday party and Christmas together.

And then you might look at the images of the diya lamps at bottom.

Some of you might recognise that as the festival of Diwali.

Big festival in India, really, really important, really interesting if you ever get a chance to go and experience it, it's a really nice one and you get cakes, okay? So a lot of my Hindu friends, they, they give me cakes, which is wonderful.

So yes, we would probably group those together as something joyful, something, celebratory, maybe a festival.

And it might be, it might be that you haven't even experienced Christmas or, or Diwali but you might have an awareness of birthday party.

So you start off of the experience that you have, and then you start to connect those experiences to other ideas and now we're kind of getting into the territory if Samjna.

The last picture is actually one of those robotic hoovers.

So yeah, we might not really necessarily associate it with, with that.

So how do you feel? with that.

So how do you feel? How do you feel when you think about birthdays or Christmas? I love Christmas so much.

I start planning for Christmas as soon as the summer holidays is over, then I start planning for, for the run up to Christmas and all the festivals.

And it really gives me a feeling of joy and excitement, just, you know, hearing music, Christmas music.

So again, you have this physical object, So again, you have this physical object, your physical senses, they interact with these objects and it creates an emotion inside us.

And this is something that the Buddha noticed Samjna loosely translated it means, and this is a loose translation, knowledge that puts things together.

So this is what I mean about categorising things.

And it's, it's a faculty.

It's something that we have in our minds of recognition.

So it puts the ideas together.

So for example, if you had, I don't know if you went to the gym and you saw some equipment in the gym.

You might not recognise what the, what that piece of equipment is, but you would recognise that it belongs to the gym and therefore it must be a piece of equipment that you would use.

Or similarly, if you go in the kitchen or you go to a shop and you see an object in the aisle, that's for cooking utensils.

You might not recognise what the object is for, but you would soon be able to piece together.

The information around you and kind of think, okay this, there's a bowl, there's a scale, there's some, a sieve or whatever.

And then you will start to recognise that all of these objects are categorised together and that's what Samjna does, it helps us categorise information.

We're bombarded with information all the time and our minds have to very, very quickly sift through this information to make it easy for us to understand.

So that's something that it does.

Like I said, it allows us to conceptualise and group things because we associate things with previous experience.

because we associate things with previous experience.

So this is what I mean about Christmas.

If you've experienced Christmas, you might recognise other festivals in other cultures that you don't belong to, but you would, you'd probably recognise that Christmas is special for us over here.

And therefore another festival in another country might be equally as special.

So you're making that kind of conceptual link and, and it's a mental tool it helps us learn things.

It helps us work out where things belong.

It helps us work out where things belong.

It helps us group things.

And if you think every time you have a new experience, we kind of go for this scanning process where we're looking for familiar information that we can kind of attach it to.

And you might've seen a lot of this in school where your teachers are trying to help you remember certain concepts.

What they do is they try to group them together.

And this is what Samjna does, it's another mental aggregate.

Now Samskara, it is volition.

Now Samskara, it is volition.

Now this is a extract from the Dhammapada, which is, it's basically some of the wisdom of the Buddha written down it's basically some of the wisdom of the Buddha written down So what I'd like you to do is just give yourself a minute to read through this and think what is the, to read through this and think what is the, what is this extract telling us? So give yourself a second to read through it and we will, we're going to try unpack it in a moment.

Okay, let's have a try of reading this together.

So, "Mind precedes all mental states.

Mind is their chief, So, "Mind precedes all mental states.

Mind is their chief, they are all mind ruled.

If with an impure mind, a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox." So what does this mean? It's the idea that it's our mind It's the idea that it's our mind that's behind all of our actions.

The way that we perceive things, it's behind everything that we perceive it's behind everything that we perceive and it's behind all of our actions that our subs, are consequences of what we see.

And if that's impure, if you have, I mean, you might have heard it in other areas.

I mean, most of the world's religions talk about having an impure heart, impure mind.

If you have that, then it's going to impact on the actions that you have.

And actions are very important.

There's a lot of focus on action in the Indian traditions on action in the Indian traditions because of the impact it has back on the person.

It's quite different from the Abrahamic tradition.

So it's Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, So it's Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, where God will, you know what? where God will, you know what? And what's the actions that you do, what you do in your life has an impact on where you end up, you know, heaven or hell.

This is slightly different because the way you act impacts on you, some of you will be familiar with the idea of karma.

Karma is a Hindu and Buddhist idea, and we will look at that later on.

So this comes back to the volition, Samskara is about how your mind really hasn't, the state of your mind has an impact on the actions that you produce.

Okay, so let's have a look at the Skandhas, particularly Samskara-volition.

So let's try and break this down a little bit.

Imagine that you see someone dropped 20 Pounds on the street.

I myself have seen this, not that long ago actually, in the marketplace where I, where I live.

I was too far away to be able to kind of do anything, but I was interested to see what happened.

Someone did come to chase after the gentlemen and returned it, which was really nice actually.

But let's try and investigate, let's try and analyse actually what's happening and that way we can understand the Samskara the last, the last Skandha.

So what happens is you have Rupa, which is the physical Rupa and Vijana is the physical, physical aspect of your mental faculties, according to Buddhism.

So Rupa is the eye, the organ of the eye and the 20 pound note is the physical money.

And Vijana is the kind of awareness that arises.

So the eye sees the money, the Vijana awareness arises and you suddenly become aware that there's money and it's on the floor.

And then Vedana is the, if this kind of experience of, well, this feeling is this thing that's happening, is it really, is it a pleasant experience? Is it unpleasant or is indifferent? So some people might immediately think, Ah! 20 pounds or some people might think, Oh, I hope I hope they, that, that gets back to the man on time.

Or, or maybe someone just, doesn't they're not even that worried about it.

And then Samjna arises, which is trying to link it to other experiences.

So it might be for example, and I can talk about my own personal experience.

I saw the money be dropped.

I became aware of it.

Then I had this feeling of unpleasantness because I thought I hope someone returns it because I was too far away to get, to get to the man.

And then I kind of, I suppose some point in my mind, I've linked it to experiences of myself losing money or people that I know who've lost money, which was also unpleasant.

And then Samskara arises which is, And then Samskara arises which is, is this right or wrong and how will I act? So the Samskara part is really the kind of moral part.

This is where we were talking about karma a moment ago.

It drives you to act in different ways.

Okay, so a Quick Fire! Cause again, I've thrown a lot of information at you, lots of key terms here.

Don't be scared of the key terms. It's fine, okay? Right, so what is visual consciousness? What is the Dhammapada? What are the three mental, mental Skandhas? And which ones do we associate feelings of unpleasantness and pleasantness, unpleasantness and indifference? So which terms are you going to use for these? Have a quick pause, have a think about it.

Don't worry if you get them wrong, if you keep going back.

Important thing is to just keep trying, okay? So have a pause and then have a go.

Okay so, hopefully you've had a moment to think about that and I've moved myself in the corner by the acorn this time.

So let's have a look at the answers.

What is visual consciousness? That's when Rupa and Vijnana meet, so well done.

What is a Dhammapada? It's a collection of sayings by the Buddha.

What are the three mental States? The mental States of the Skandhas? And that's Samjna, Samskara and Vedana.

And the last one is Samskara, And the last one is Samskara, which I'm blocking with my face.

Let's just move my face over here.

So, which ones do we associate feelings of pleasantness, unpleasantness and indifference? that's Samskara and Vedana.

Well done.

So what is the point of all of this? Why are we even talking about this? If that's the way the mind works and the purpose of these teachings is really remember, we talked about how illusion how according to Hinduism, Buddhism, we're not really aware of reality, the way that actually reality is formed.

And because of that, particularly in the Buddhist tradition, Buddhism is kind of saying that, that illusion, that belief in something that isn't quite true it causes a lot of suffering, particularly the teaching of Anatta, the idea of no self.

This idea of you being this kind of permanent being that, with a body and a brain and that kind of, the brain just throws out all this kind of information.

What the Buddha experienced, and it's very important for us to recognise that through Buddhism, this isn't just a theory.

This is something that he has said that he experienced and actually many other people have said that they've experienced the same thing.

His experience was, no this is how thought happens.

It's not, the human being is a collection of things that are constantly changing, constantly moving, including thought.

So really the point of the Skandhas is to really help people understand the idea of Anatta that, you know, the self isn't, this concrete thing, this person that you think is you is actually a collection of all sorts of things, lots of ideas.

And the good thing about that is it means that you can intervene with your thought process, because if you have had a terrible, terrible experiences swimming, for example, or you had a really bad, bad experience with water, then you can start to deconstruct that and say, "Well, actually that was, that was something that happened at this time, I'm no longer that person.

At that time, this is how I reacted, but this is a new person.

I'm a new person today.

Every moment I'm a new person, I'm going to react this way." And also can help us become aware of the kind of mental habits that cause us to suffer, Cause us to suffer from.

And the classic for me, I can speak personally is snacking.

I'm terrible at snacking, I'm always eating crisps, chocolate, terrible, terrible ones.

I've got very, I've got much better over the years.

And part of the reason is because through teaching Buddhism over these years it's kind of, some of it's kind of stuck with me and it's made me think, okay, do I really want to eat this snack? Do I really need it? And it's just kind of helping me be aware of why do I want the snack? Is it because I'm hungry? Is it cause I need a little burst of energy? Or is it just because I'm bored? Maybe I'm feeling a bit down, those kinds of things.

So, and so the Skandhas can kind of help us intervene in our own kind of bad habits in a way.

Okay, right what I would like you to do is have a go at this tasks.

So I'll move myself again, over here.

So the task is, I want you to choose an experience and try and break it down as the Buddha did.

Now I've put in the support box over here that you can think of some other term, that you can think of some other term, some other experiences eating, going to the shops, whatever.

Choose an experience and try and break it down as the Buddha did and create a diagram that shows the stages of experience and label them as I've put in the, in the support box.

Which type of Skandha is it? Okay, so a really, really big, well done today, Okay, so a really, really big, well done today, this was not an easy lesson.

Quite a lot of strange terminology we're not used to and you know, the psychology itself, but well done for sticking with it.

I'm sure that you feel like you've learned something.

So what I'd like you to do now is, do the quiz, make sure that you have gone back through some of the things that you, that we've learned today.

And so that way you can try, you know, just kind of remember, try and recall some of the things that we've learned.

And the other thing I'd like you to do is it's always good to get some practise in.

So maybe today or tomorrow, later on today or tomorrow, think back and think, okay, three things that I've learned.

Can I remember them? Can I tell someone about them? Because if you can do that, it means some of it's really stuck with you.

So really well done.

And I'll see you again next time, looking forward to it.