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Guided Meditation: Banana Tree Trunk; Dharmette: The Simile of the Five Aggregates (4 of 5): Mental constructions as Banana Tree Trunk - Ying Chen, 陈颖

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 11, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome, welcome to our 7 a.m. meditation and dharma talk. I'm happy to see the chat messages coming in from all around the world.

Here we are, on the five aggregate simile this week. Today we are going to speak about the fourth simile, and we'll practice with it. I don't know how exactly we could practice with it just yet, because the simile may or may not be connecting with many of us who don't know the trees so much. We'll see how it works.

The fourth simile of the five aggregates is about this Pali word Saṅkhāra.¹ Saṅkhāra is often translated as mental formations or mental fabrications. It's a kind of human mental process or the force that is capable of constructing things—constructing ideas, constructing a sense of solidity based on ideas. This constructing force can construct the other clinging aggregates that we've been speaking about. It's a deep-rooted force, and yet this force of constructing forms something that looks very solid, concrete, and persistent, strong even. But when we look and examine it carefully, as what the sutta was pointing to, we see all these constructing forces are rather ephemeral. The sutta uses the words void, hollow, and insubstantial.

Buddha used the simile of plantain trees, or banana trees. In tropical places, you see these kinds of trees, and from the outside, the trunk is solid. But if you look internally, the tree trunks are formed by all of these big pieces of leaves wrapping around and around and around. They look like a solid trunk, but they are actually hollow inside. They can't be used to really make anything long-lasting or sustaining. That's the nature of this Saṅkhāra. If we look internally, they are just things wrapped around and around, forming something that looks solid, but they're actually not.

We'll practice with this a bit. My invitation is to maybe pay careful attention to this force that may be inside of us that can make stuff up. You may have a certain experience, and then there is a force that wants to make this a real thing that you've got to fix, or some real thing that you're judging, particularly in relationship to this force of making a sense of a self—I, me, mine—based on the momentary experience that's happening. Those are my introductory words, and we'll begin meditating with this.

Guided Meditation: Banana Tree Trunk

Take a few long, deep breaths, inviting yourself to come home to this body, mind, and heart. Entering into this home here and now.

Feeling and sensing the global sense of the body.

Feeling and sensing the posture. Feeling and sensing the outer environment—the space, temperature.

And feeling and sensing the inner environment. Maybe some mood, thoughts, activities in the mind, and movements in the body.

Becoming mindful and present. You may not necessarily be anchoring on any specific thing, but you're present for the momentary experiences.

Committed to being present, one moment at a time. It's not a forceful thing, but rather the heart values being present. A sense of being home may become fuller. You can simply rest here.

The movements and the flow of the breath may become more obvious now. The energetic body can be more felt, sensed. A sway, tingling sensations. You can feel the dance within this body.

The foamy body, light, airy, maybe bubbly, like water bubbles.

And perceptions may float in and out like the mirage, the shimmering mirage at high noon in a hot season.

Softening and deepening into the sea of change in the body and in the mind.

Resting in a quiet stillness, you may notice the forces of Saṅkhāras that stitch experiences together into a solid story or belief.

A momentary wave of emotion can become "I am that emotion."

Or if something persists for a while, Saṅkhāra can claim, "It's always like this."

When this can be seen clearly, we have a choice to set it free.

There is nothing to fix. Staying in the being and staying in the clear knowing, it has an innate capacity to set free what's not graspable.

When we're simply being with a clear knowing that's available here and now, it's possible to release any contention that's here. And it's possible to feel and sense a kind of wellbeing that can hold non-wellbeing. They don't have to be in conflict with each other.

There may be tenderness and a care that's available, that can be felt.

Dharmette: The Simile of the Five Aggregates (4 of 5): Mental constructions as Banana Tree Trunk

I'd like to read this part of the sutta that speaks about Saṅkhāras as a plantain or banana tree trunk. Here it is:

Suppose, practitioner, that a person needing heartwood, seeking heartwood, wandering in search of a heartwood, would take a sharp tool and enter a forest. There they would see the trunk of a large banana tree—straight, fresh, without a fruit-but-core. They would cut it down at the root, cut off the crown, and unroll the coil. As they unroll the coil, they would not even find softwood, let alone hardwood. A person with good sight would inspect it, ponder it, and carefully investigate it. And it would appear to them to be void, hollow, and insubstantial. For what substance would there be in the trunk of a plantain tree?

So too, practitioners, whatever kind of mental formations there are—whether past, future, or present; internal or external; gross or subtle; inferior or superior; far or near—a practitioner inspects them, ponders them, and carefully investigates them. As they investigate them, they appear to them to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance would there be in mental formations?

This image of a banana tree trunk, as I was saying, has leaves that coil up and form the trunk, but they are hollow once they are uncoiled. If the person is looking for something that's long-lasting, strong, and steady—stable, like building something strong, which is used to symbolize how we're searching for some kind of lasting well-being, a deeper kind of well-being, the heartwood—you won't find it in these coiled mental formations, in this banana tree trunk, because inside it's hollow.

That is the nature of Saṅkhāras. Different mental formations get stitched together; they kind of coil together to form a sort of illusion that something is solid, but when you look carefully, that's not the case. I want to use an example to maybe illustrate this. I remember on a meditation retreat, in the middle of the retreat, I noticed in one sitting there was some experience that began to emerge. My mind began to name it, you know, "This is X." Then there was this force, as if that wasn't enough, it was trying to name it yet another word. "Oh no, it's something like this." This happened multiple times in a row; it was trying to name what this experience is. Initially, I was naming this in English. After a while, I felt like, "Oh no, this doesn't quite capture exactly what it is," and I started throwing Chinese words at it. At some point, I noticed, "Wow, this has a force in it. It really wants to nail it." Then I recognized, "Wow, this is the force of Saṅkhāra. It's trying to make it a thing," based on the experience that's floating through and flowing through.

I thought to myself, "Wow, there's no end to this. I can make it this, I can make it that, but the experience is just what it is." It may not need a word. It may not need an image. It may not need any conceptual ideas to be associated with it, and it doesn't need any justification. When that was seen, some part of me began to soften. "Oh, I can just let it be. I don't need to have it be something." That's the momentary freedom that can become available when we begin to recognize the nature of this momentum, the nature of this force that's happening.

This is maybe a trivial example, but often when this force begins to take its own ride along its own momentum, it can begin to create this sense of a self by wrapping around these layers of mental and physical activities that are happening—perceptions, ideas, and beliefs. At some point, we will lose track of seeing the momentary, ever-changing experiences; we turn them into a banana tree trunk. It becomes about "me" rather than the experiences that are changing.

In our meditation, I offered some pointers where sometimes when we have certain waves of emotions, the Saṅkhāras can function by turning the momentary experiences into something else. Maybe I'm experiencing some kind of sadness, or maybe even an extended kind of sadness. Then it can be turned into, "I'm always like this." That's a construction; that's not the reality. We can overlay on top of that even further by declaring, "This is how I am. I'm always like this, ever since I was little." You can see this kind of construct begins to limit us and blocks so many other possibilities that are here too. Because of this, we can't see joy or happiness that may be momentarily available here, that's present too. We can't see a kind of well-being that may be here.

That's the danger of getting lost in the construct, the constructing force. The Dharma practice offers us a way to stay in the immediacy of our felt sense experience. Then we can begin to see how the forces stitch together and coil these layers of construct. We see how it's being constructed. And in seeing it, we have an opportunity to choose something different. We can see, "Oh, the experiences are just experiences." The force leads to dukkha,² and we have an opportunity to choose to let go of coiling. Often, this letting go doesn't need some kind of active doing. Instead, this letting go, moving away from this constructing force, comes very naturally when we begin to see the phenomenon just as it is. It gets released as a natural unfolding of the Dharma.

For the rest of the day, as you go about your day, maybe pay attention to these forces that may be making stuff up, constructing realities in our heart and mind. And just have a lot of humor around this. This part of ourselves tries very hard to make this life work. By practicing, you can begin to see there is a different possibility, a different kind of well-being that may be available by not keeping feeding into these constructs.

Have a wonderful rest of the day, and may your day be filled with this exploration and the Dharma joy. Be well, everyone.