What “you”? Who is this you you (pun intended!) are taking about? Maybe there are aggregates, but they ain’t mine. What care do these aggregates demand? 
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A kiss from time to time 
I agree that aggregates exist and they are substantial. They are just empty of a self. If they are not substantial (exist), we will not able to see, hear, feel etc.
I do not think about aggregates as things that constantly exist. Their nature is to arise and cease constant in the moment. A nice feeling (sukha vedana), for example, arises for a moment and then ceases. The perception of a certain odour (a smell vinnana) arise and ceases. Tactile feelings arise and cease and give us an impression of coarseness, of embodyment, etc. They arise and cease all the time.
Talking about “the aggregates” might give the impression that they manifest at birth and are from that moment on constantly present. This is not the way they are, i believe. All khandha’s are fleeting, never constantly present. They always arise and cease and are not some object.
In this sense i believe it is better to speak of aggregation happening in the mind constantly. The moment we sense something that is the result of an unconscious proces of constructing, building and heaping up, aggregation. Like a coarsening process in the subtle, the very hard to see. The aggregation gets all attention the moment it arises. That is the problem the Buddha tackles, i feel, because the aggregation result (the aggregates) make us blind for the subtle, the very hard to see, the empty nature of mind.
The opposite of aggregation can be called an emptiness. When the mind stays empty it is extremely subtle, very hard to see, like air, space so subtle.
Aggregation weighs on the mind because the proces respresent a certain tension. That is why i believe Buddha teaches them as suffering and burdensome. Grasping even creates more weight.
Aggregates exists and they are impermanent. The opposite of aggregates is not emptiness. Emptiness is empty of a self and not empty of aggregates, and aggregates are all not self.
The aggregates that makes blind of self is ignorance. The aggregates that think of a self is greed, wrong view and conceit. The combination of these aggregates is the one that makes us think there is a self.
Aggregates are continuous, once arise they cease and then condition the next aggregate to arise. Because of this continuous arises and falls, we think it is a constant.
SN12.61
But of that which is called mind, is called thought, is called consciousness, one moment arises as another ceases continually both day and night. Just as a monkey wandering in a big forest seizes a branch and letting go of it seizes another: similarly, bhikkhus, of that which is called mind, is called thought, is called consciousness, one moment arises as another ceases continually both day and night.
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Funny. The Teacher said the exact opposite; that the aggregates are completely insubstantial and hollow.
Aggregates exist, is like saying…clouds exist, i believe.
Yes they exist but it is not like that they constant exist.
I once studied all Pali Canon texts on emptiness. If you want to read a lot about emptiness you can, for example, read the treatise on emptiness (voidness) in Patisambhidamagga.
Do you think vinnana’s can arise without mind? Arise in space? Arise in the brain?
It is not easy to speak about mind, i feel. For example, if one purifies mind, what is being purified?
Or if one says that something arises in the mind, what does mind mean here.
Is it the mind that, for example, rules the breath? Or is this the brain?
Can mind detect things that remain unconscious for us?
Do we really need eye vinnana’s to see? Can we be blind and still ‘see’?
Is mind absent when no sensing takes place such as in deep sleep or under narcosis?
Vinnana is the mind. The sutta I have quotes earlier SN12.61 shows mano, vinnana and citta are treated in the same way in this sutta. Vinnana is the mind. Vinnana usage is very wide includes in the five aggregates, six senses etc.
If one purifies mind, it is purified the defilements of the mind. The function of the mind is to cognise, knows and think. It is the defilements that arises with the mind that needs to be purified.
Something arises in the mind, it is an object of the mind that arises that cause the mind to think of that object. Any aggregates, concepts and Nibbana or anything can be object of the mind
Bodily movement can be conditioned by the mind that is how we can change directions when we walk. It can be conditioned by the body needs like breathing during when we are asleep.
Yes we need eye vinnana to see. In the sutta, depend eye and form, eye consciousness arises.
During sleep there mind still arises and ceases as again see in SN12.61. There is no sense making.
The word ‘mind’ clearly can be used in a very loose way, like the sutta’s often do, as SN12.61. In daily life the word ‘mind’ is also used in a loose way. If you would ask people on the street what mind is, probably they will all give different answers.
If one wants to discuss things, i feel, we cannot use words anymore in this loose way. We cannot just call eye vinnana mind, or ear vinnana, or mental vinnana, or thoughts, or mentallity. We have to become more precise now. That is at least my wish.
For example…what does it really mean that those asannnasattavaso beings are mindless?
Is unconscious really the same as being mindless? I believe…No.
Why would that be the case?
Anyway, i feel we need to become more precise.
We cannot based what people thinks about or how they define it. In the sutta, SN22.79
“And why, bhikkhus, do you call it consciousness? ‘It cognizes,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called consciousness. And what does it cognize? It cognizes sour, it cognizes bitter, it cognizes pungent, it cognizes sweet, it cognizes sharp, it cognizes mild, it cognizes salty, it cognizes bland. ‘It cognizes,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called consciousness.
Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma. Page 29
In the case of citta, its characteristic is the knowing of an object (vijanana). Its function is to be a “forerunner” (pubbangama) of the mental factors in that it presides over them and is always accompanied by them. Its manifestation-the way it appears in the meditator’s experience-is as a continuity of processes (sandhana). Its proximate cause is mind-and-matter (namarupa), because consciousness cannot arise alone, in the complete absence of mental factors and material phenomena.
For the unconscious being, they have no consciousness. They attain jhanas by rejecting all mentality. They are only rupa.
I know all these sutta’s. But there are many sutta’s and if you take them all together, and also rely on practise and experience, you start to see the picture that vinnana, sanna, vedana cannot be seperated. Meaning, the moment the perception of a certain sound arises, that moment ear-vinnana has arisen. They arise in the mind and have mind as forerunner (Dhp1). Vinnanas/perceptions/feeling (cannot be seperated, MN43) come and go.
Perceptions/vinnana’s arising and ceasing create the illusion that mind comes and goes. That is why vinnana is called a magician. Coming and going, movement, always instinctively attracts attention, externally but also internally.
In others words, the deceptive nature of coming and going perceptions is that it deceives us about the true nature of mind, the asankhata aspect of mind as being stilled, empty, dispassionate, signless, uninclined all the time.
It is merely the grapsing at movement, at perception/vinnana’s, the obsession with it, the attention for it, that leads to the wrong view that mind is a stream. From this wordly and defiled and wrong perspective mind is a stream, but mind is not really a stream.
The more one enters calm, stilness, and the more mind becomes free of passions and grasping…detached… the more one becomes in touch with that side, element, dimension or aspect of mind that is never seen coming and going. Its nature that is empty, still, peaceful, signless, dispassionate, unaffected. This is the Path to the Unconditioned, the Stable, the Constant, Not-desintegrating Buddha taught , i feel (SN43)
No person in the world has even seen this stilness seen coming an going.
That wise mendicant here
rid of desire and lust,
has found the peace free of death,
Nibbana, the imperishable state.
(Snp1.11)
What more must be said?
This peace, free of death, does not refer to some mere cessatio, ofcourse. It refers to the peace that is the nature of the mind free of all lobha, dosa, moha. An imperishable state…the deathless, unborn, unmade, unproduced.
I also gonna stop these debates. If people think Buddha-Dhamma is all about a mere cessation, well what cannot i do about that? No sutta’s says that, but, oke, i am gonna stop these debates.
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