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Transforming the Five Aggregates with Mindfulness
To invite the bell to sound, one must practice conscious breathing and a verse uniting body, speech, and mind to transcend the path of anxiety. The sound of the bell is the voice of the Buddha calling us back to our true home; upon hearing it, we must stop all thinking and return to ourselves to allow the Buddha to be in our heart. After the practice of the solid mountain, the fresh flower exercise allows us to restore our freshness through breathing, for a human being is a flower that needs care. To love, one must be capable of offering one’s solidity and freshness to the other by saying: “I am here for you,” which constitutes the true language of love to relieve suffering.
Mindfulness applies to consumption to avoid creating war within oneself, illustrated by the image of a couple eating the flesh of their own child or a skinless cow assaulted by living beings. We must practice selective touching to nourish ourselves with healthy and healing elements in the present moment, such as the blue sky or a tree, a capacity for awakening that Paul Verlaine touched while in prison. The human person is composed of five elements, compared to the sections of an orange:
- Form, the physical body that must be touched with mindfulness to establish harmony within it.
- Feelings, which require healthy consumption to avoid toxins.
- Perceptions, often erroneous like mistaking a rope for a snake, thus creating illusions and suffering.
- Mental formations, which reside as seeds in store consciousness and manifest at the level of mind consciousness; anger must be embraced by mindfulness and not suppressed.
- Consciousness, which is the base of all formations.
Each person is the king or queen of their own territory constituted by these five elements and must tend to it to put an end to the internal civil war. It is only by establishing peace within oneself, by transforming one’s perceptions and mental formations through continuous practice, that one can truly reconcile with others.