Meditation: Seeing Volitional Formations; The Five Aggregates (4/5) Mental Formations & Karma

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Meditation: Seeing Mental Formations; 5 Aggregates (4/5) Mental Formations & Karma. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 28, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Meditation: Seeing Volitional Formations

Hello friends, greetings. So happy to be with you in this moment in time and practicing together. Today we continue to explore the five aggregates, the constituents of our experience as human beings, and today we turn our attention to the fourth aggregate, the sankharas^[1], often translated as mental formations or volitional formations. They include both the aspect of physical behavior, physical speech—including internal speech—as well as thoughts, or mental behavior.

They include both what is intentional in the way of purposive aspects of our mind, as well as a reactive aspect of mind. This includes, especially with psychological behavior, our thoughts, the proliferation of thoughts, as well as cultivating thoughts of compassion, kindness, clarity, and mindfulness. This bucket of experience leads with volition, even if the volition seems to be mild in the moment, but as part of a pattern of behavior that has built up internally.

And again, in our practice this morning, the guided meditation, I'll guide us to turn attention to noticing the movement of the mind or the movement of the body. For example, if there is an intention to move, to pay attention to that volitional formation for that movement. Or if you notice that the mind has been distracted and there's a volitional formation to pull the mind back, to bring it back, or yank it back—hopefully not yank it, but if that is the case, to notice all these volitional formations in the mind and in the body. Notice internal speech, the patterns that pull us into particular patterns of experience. That is the frame for today's practice.

So let us arrive. Letting go of these words, these explanations, and just arriving. Arriving in your experience in this moment. Making a moment to fully arrive.

Settle with the body, making sure the body is sitting comfortably. Shoulders are rolled back, perhaps the spine is straight with a sense of integrity, and the body is relaxed. The body is soft.

Bringing awareness to the poise of the body. What is the poise of the body? What is the poise of the mind? Heart? Citta^[2], translated as mind-heart, hyphenated. What's the poise of our heart-mind in this moment? I'm aware.

Is it possible to release, to soften, to calm these poises of the body, mind, and heart with gentle intention?

Setting our intention at the outset of this practice. Setting a wholehearted intention to be present, fully present. To be kind. Being undistracted, not following any distraction, sound, or alluring thought that arises. Setting an intention for gentle persistence—gentle with kindness and ease with each breath.

As we feel relaxed in the body and mind, bringing awareness to all the volitional formations in our sphere of experience. If you're turning your awareness to know the breath, there is volitional formation there. In this intention, this volition to be aware.

If you find the mind is lost in thought, there is some thinking that's happening. It is volitional, even if it may be reactive based on patterns of thinking in this way for years. Notice.

It is helpful to have a relaxed posture in the mind and the body, and let this stream of experience, the stream of volitional formations, be known. As if you're watching a movie of your mind.

Volitional or mental formations. I recall, and in this moment is the storm of mental volitional formations. Become aware of the landscape and recognize this constituent of human experience clearly. It's like this, being human.

If you notice there is some discomfort perhaps in the body, and there is the desire, the intention, the volitional formation to move, pay attention. Pay attention to that. Get to know it. And if and when you move, notice the volitional formation in this behavior of movement. How it shows up with this bodily action. Slow it down. Don't let it be reactive. Study it.

Are there familiar patterns of sounds internally? Thoughts internally arising? The sankharas, this familiar pattern set into motion. Noticing its energy, movement, or maybe it's calming. The volitional formations are calm. Notice.

Notice if the mind picks up a pattern, as if picking up a stick. As if it's used to doing that. There's leftover energy, volition from doing it before, and it just does that automatically seemingly now. This pattern of thinking, engaging. Get to know this, and can it be released if it's not helpful or healthy, skillful?

As we turn to bring this sitting to a close together, can we give rise, can we cultivate appreciation? Thoughts, volitional formations, mental formations of appreciation, gratitude, goodwill, and kindness for ourselves, for others who practice with us, and all beings everywhere. Wishing well. Sharing the goodness of our cultivation, regardless of how we may judge it to be today—distracted, sleepy—it doesn't matter. You showed up. There's goodness here, trust it.

Sharing this goodness with all beings everywhere. May my practice, may my cultivation be of benefit to all beings. May all beings be free. May all beings be happy, including myself. May your practice, everyone, and take a moment to transition the recordings.

The Five Aggregates (4/5) Mental Formations & Karma

Hello and good day. Today we continue exploring the five khandhas^[3], the five heaps. Often these five constituents of our experience are also called aggregates, which is this funky word. And today we come to the fourth one, which is the sankharas, translated as formations, volitional formations, or mental formations. Sometimes it's simply translated as volition, because volition is the leading one in this bunch of formations.

Sometimes in this category, we perhaps simplify it and think of mental formations as just thoughts—just this tangle of thinking that we often experience in our experience of being human. More generally, it's helpful to think of the sankharas as both the reactive and the purposive aspects of the mind that include intention as well as behavior.

Intention is an important aspect of it, even though I'll put an asterisk here. Sometimes you might say, "Well, I'm not intending to have all these thoughts, they're just coming. So there's no volition or intention here. Is this still, quote-unquote, volitional formations?" Yes, it is. It also has to do with the patterns that have been in place, the volitions, the way we've been thinking or acting. It also has to do with karma. I'll get to that big asterisk in a moment.

But in terms of definitions, examples of this include both reactive and purposive aspects of the mind, taking into account intention as well as behavior. It includes physical behavior—any activity, any intention to move, for example. It includes intention for verbal behavior, for any speech, gentle or not gentle, wise or unwise. It also includes a third category, which is our psychological behavior. This entails the proliferation of thoughts, or the cultivation of mental behaviors of kindness, goodwill, compassion, clarity, stability, release, and calm.

With sankharas, it includes this volitional, intentional movement of the mind. This is really important, and we can get to see this in our own practice and experience. For example, you sit, and there is this movement of mental behavior where you're turning toward calm. Or if you're practicing metta^[4]—thoughts of goodwill, kindness, etc.—either during your practice or in daily life, you can see these volitional formations. There might be a tiny bit of volition in there, or maybe a lot.

If you're in the middle of a mind storm—thinking, thinking, thinking, and it's very unpleasant—and wisdom comes and says, "No, no, stop thinking about that, this is not helpful," or "Just stop that," there can be very strong volitional formations in the mind at that point. So, you can notice the strength of these sankharas, either in our mind states or in shaping our physical behavior and speech.

In terms of speech, there is always volition before we speak, forming our speech or stopping our speaking. Sometimes it's, of course, wiser and kinder not to say anything. You might think, "Oh, sometimes I open my mouth and just say something which I regret later, and there is no volition there." Yet there is volitional formation there, having to do with the patterns in which we have done things in the past.

This brings us to karma. You cannot talk about sankharas without talking about karma; they're so intimately connected to one another. Karma is a big, huge topic, but the cliff notes for our understanding is that it is not skillful to think of karma as, "Oh, what I've done in a past life and it's affecting me," or "Whoever this person was in my past life, it's my bad karma or my good karma." That is not a helpful way to understand this teaching.

The helpful way to understand the teaching of karma, especially as it relates to sankharas, is as habit pattern. Think of karma as an empowering teaching: whatever you engage with right now, in this moment, sets into motion the tendency to do the same thing, to continue in the same way in the next moment, and in the next. We can see that in short moments. If you are feeding thoughts of anger, and you're just thinking juicy, angry thoughts in this mind moment, then the next moment is likely going to be an angry moment. You're seeding and cultivating this pattern of sankharas.

You see how karma and volitional formations are connecting? You're solidifying these volitional formations in the next moment, and the next moment, so that maybe a day, a week, or a month from now, when the stimulus comes to mind—when the perception (sañña^[5]) of a particular person or a thought arises—you might think, "I don't want to think angry thoughts about this person," but we've already spent a lot of volition and intention planting those unwholesome seeds. So with these seemingly unintentional mental formations, there's still leftover energy. It's leftover karma from when we really engaged.

Think of karma in this way: we are heirs to our own actions and decisions. Don't make it too magical, but really take responsibility. "I am responsible for my own mind, the way I think, behave, and act, whether with kindness and in skillful ways or unskillful ways." So karma is actually an empowering teaching.

The Buddha says in the Dhammapada^[6], and I love this line: "Whatever you ponder and reflect upon frequently, that becomes the inclination of your mind." That is who we become. This is the teaching of karma in this empowering way, because it's actually good news. Yes, you can change the inclination of your mind. You know this from showing up to these morning teachings for a while. You know that the inclination of your mind throughout the day starts to shift and change. You can shift this inclination of your mind, these sankharas, this fourth aggregate that we're talking about today.

Know that in the present moment, we are shaping and forming the volitional formations of our mental thoughts, our speech, and our actions. Our meditation can be a sandbox for us to see our volitional formations in the making. For example, a discomfort arises in our body in the middle of meditation, and we just jerk. Slow it down, sweetheart, slow it down. Recognize, "Discomfort. Intention to move. Okay, slow it down. Just notice this."

If you slow down and really observe your volitional formations when you're alone meditating, without the pressure of social interactions, then you can see, "Oh yeah, this is how it's happening." If you don't catch them, these volitional formations get stronger and stronger until they get out of hand. Your meditation practice is a sandbox for when you're in a social situation and somebody says something and you just open your mouth and it comes out. You get to shape and form your karma, your volition for your own actions. You get to craft it, to lovingly set into motion these beautiful actions and results in a helpful way.

Ah, that's all the time we have. That's the end of my sentence! There's always more, but I think that's enough. So I'd love to invite you today to notice the volitional formations. Notice the mental formations that are the karma or habit patterns of the past, or notice how the mind, with its own subtle volitions, is making new ones. Become aware of it. How is this happening? Am I solidifying habit patterns? In the neuro-argot of our modern minds, the neurons that fire together, wire together. So notice how we're co-creating ourselves. Of course, it's not all on our shoulders—we have the causes and conditions in our environment, our zeitgeist, and our experience. It's pretty fascinating, this being human.

Thank you all for your practice. Become aware of the sankharas today. Know them, and I'm looking forward to continuing together tomorrow. Be well.