Grasping and the Aggregates

Q & A
1

“But ma’am, is that grasping the exact same thing as the five grasping aggregates? Or is grasping one thing and the five grasping aggregates another?”

”That grasping is not the exact same thing as the five grasping aggregates. Nor is grasping one thing and the five grasping aggregates another. The desire and greed for the five grasping aggregates is the grasping there.”
(MN 44)

I didn’t properly understand this, I thought desire and greed come under “sankharas”, so under the aggregates. So what is the meaning of this and how am I supposed to understand what the nun Dhammadinna is saying here?

2

Hi,

Is the form body the same thing as the mental process of grasping?
Are the mental processes of grasping and craving identical to the processes of sights and sounds?

If not, then the senses and aggregates can be understood as conditional processes that might be craved and grasped, but not necessarily so. Clearly, the arahants do not crave or grasp at the aggregates or anything at all.

In DO and regarding the aggregates, saṅkhārās are related to volition/intention, which can be influenced by greed and desire but, as above, are not identical to them.
Arahants experience intentions, like picking up a cup of water to drink, but without any greed or ignorance.

SN36.6:
" When touched by painful feeling they look forward to enjoying sensual pleasures. Why is that? Because an unlearned ordinary person doesn’t understand any escape from painful feeling apart from sensual pleasures. Since they look forward to enjoying sensual pleasures, the underlying tendency to greed for pleasant feeling underlies that.

They don’t truly understand feelings’ origin, disappearance, gratification, drawback, and escape. The underlying tendency to ignorance about neutral feeling underlies that.

If they feel a pleasant feeling, they feel it attached. If they feel a painful feeling, they feel it attached. If they feel a neutral feeling, they feel it attached.

When a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don’t sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental.

It’s like a person who is struck with an arrow, but was not struck with a second arrow. That person would experience the feeling of one arrow.

In the same way, when a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don’t sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental.

When they’re touched by painful feeling, they don’t resist it. There’s no underlying tendency for aversion towards painful feeling underlying that."

3

Upadana is “inseparably” connected with puthujjana experience. But there is possibility of experience with total absence of upadana. So quote marks because this is actually the task: to go beyond the first noble truth - by understanding it, particularly important is relationship with upadana as condition bhava, since bhava applies to puthujjana, cessation of suffering = cessation of bhava here and now.

But as long upadana is a part of experience, continuation of suffering is granted.

4

Dhammadinna is just saying desire and greed is included within the five aggregates. Yes typically under sankharas.

It’s not the whole of the five aggregates, nor is it outside of them.

So it’s emphasizing the idea that conditioned phenomena self perpetuate more conditioned phenomena.

Until one day the noble eightfold path is developed and desire for rebirth ends, then the process runs out of fuel.