The Aggregates of Self
Buddha indicated that the self, that part of you that incarnates from lifetime to lifetime was causal.
The part of you that exists from one lifetime to another is composed of all things. You are the energy of the universe.
Change is continuous and the aggregate of the self is constantly shifting.
In Buddhist Yoga, we refer to our mutlilife karmic traits as samskaras. They are the internal karmic patterns that make each of us who we are.
There are the samskaras, the tendencies from your other lifetimes, ways of seeing, habits that are so strong, they affect you now. They are the operative situations in your life that are created by karma.
The Buddhists believe that everything in life is random. There are patterns that are intrinsic to life. We don't know why, we just know they're there like the DNA. We have no idea.
Our spirit grows and develops traits in each incarnation that it passes through, and then collects and carries the essence of those traits into future lifetimes. In Buddhist Yoga we refer to our multi-life karmic traits as samskaras.
You're an emanation of enlightenment. Enlightenment, which is the universe, has created the hallucination that is you in a form that shifts.
You're composed of an aggregate of different forms and energies, the samskaras. These are lines within your own being. When you go into samadhi, these lines dissolve gradually so you become less formed.
The samskaras that were developed in previous incarnations are usually hidden by the temporary amnesia of infancy and by the transient personality.
As we grow older and mature in each incarnation, we are drawn back to samskaras, to previous interests and pursuits.
Past life knowledge is not the wedding album of existence. Past life remembrance in Buddhism is the ability to bring a greater awareness we had in another life into this life.
Spiritual evolution is a movement from the states of mind that reflect life less accurately to the states of mind that reflect life more accurately.
You identify with your self. You have a personal history. You have commitments. There are things that you want to experience and other things that you want to avoid.
The ideas that we have about self are an aggregate within a state of mind, and they chain us to a state of mind.
All souls do not reach enlightenment. Some souls reach a certain point and stay there. Some souls actually decline and go into different cycles.
You are on a vast wheel of birth and death. You have been through thousands of lifetimes, thousands yet to come.
You reincarnate forever because you exist forever. You can't die. You can't be born, your essence that is. You are on a big wheel.
Every moment gives birth to the next moment and influences it. Getting out of that chain of perpetual being is getting off the wheel of birth and death. That is enlightenment.
If you do well within this life, that awareness will be held within the causal structure, the part of us that lives from one lifetime to another. It will be available to you in your next life and in future lives.
It is through many lifetimes of shifting the aggregate of the self that one finally reaches a point of maximum velocity whereby one can snap off the circle completely and move into freedom.
When thought stops, a doorway opens into dimensions that are pure and unassociated. They're nonbinding realities. They're non-samskaric, which simply means that they're beautiful; they're ecstatic.
Words like meditation, karma, samskaras, they're just words. You can get into the jargon, you can speak it, but that doesn't mean you'll be any freer.
The final battles are the samskaras of good karma. They prevent Samadhi. Naturally for a religious person the avoidance is intensive. They are so hung up on good karma and on method.
The three principal samskaras have to do with sex, money and power. In all those countless incarnations that one goes through in the religious practice, the avoidance is tremendous. We brand those things as evil.
The process of eliminating the samskaras and reaching complete enlightenment is very technical, wonderful, and mystical process.
