One thing is certain in life, aside from the not so humorous joke of “death and taxes”, that we all seek to find meaning. The words we use to describe this quest vary as much as our life-paths vary, but it all adds up to the same thing. Meaning could be redefined as sensation, the ability to see, perceive, feel, connect and respond. What is love if love is not returned? What good is food if it does not nourish the body? Finding intuitive meaning, or experiencing the more subtle aspects of life gives us a greater impression of who we are, that we are sentient beings.
How do we describe what was just said? Is it a truth, a fact, or a concept? You can count the bean seeds in your hand, and come up with something that is said to be a fact, but isn’t that “fact” something that is by agreement? Those seeds could be counted in other ways as well – what was the source of those seeds, was it one seed? How many will sprout, and once sprouted how many will they produce? We don’t count that way but when we talk about finding our intuitive meaning and exploring ourselves as sentient beings that is exactly what we are doing. As sentient beings we are the bigger picture, bigger than the moment, the seeds, so to speak.
The idea of the sentient being is nothing new. In Buddhism we find many ancient Sanskrit words that describe our sentient being. No other language has given us so many words that accept the intuitive aspects of life.
Buddhism teaches of the Skandhas, the Sanskrit word that means those “things” that we so often cling to that make us feel our own existence but can also serve as a trap. There is no clean translation from Sanskrit to english, and the closest we get is aggregate, and “heap”. The word “heap” is not such a “leap” in definition: how many times have we described those times we’ve felt stuck as feeling like we’re in, or feel like a pile of.. well, you know what I mean!
There are five skandhas:
- Matter is the first of the skandhas, the physical world, which gives us the tools we need for the other skandhas.
- Feeling is the next skandhas, which is our sensory system, our pleasure and pain, and as we strive to learn how to use this ability, much like driving a car. Body has pleasure and pain, car has gas pedal and brake.
- Next in the list of skandhas we have perception. This ability goes far deeper than we initially see it: it is both the way we see things, but it is also whether or not we “see it” at all. We are amazingly capable of hiding from our perceptions those things that we do not understand, or the things that challenge our perception of what is “safe”.
- Another of the skandhas is our interpretation, the mental process or interpretation. This is another area that can delve into a depth that many of us never fully explore. It is the space of interpretation, judgment, opinion, prejudice and decision-making. We have an expression: “My mind is like a steel trap”, and it can be exactly that, limiting our ability to see things in a new way because we are so entwined in our mental need to make sense of it all.
- Finally we have consciousness, or vijnana in the Sanskrit language. Over many centuries we have strived to understand our own consciousness. How many people feel that gnawing feeling within to find a meaning for life that goes beyond the things we can hold in our hand or feel through the ordinary body senses? It is like a hunger that food cannot satisfy.
Is our consciousness the final goal? Some believe it to be. Perhaps happiness, the realization that we are a sentient being, is to find a balance between the many aspects of self, the many components of life, the combination and harmony of the five skandhas.
Author Estee Taschereau is the editor of IntuitiveMeaning.com, and offers a limited number of one-to-one sessions that help you to step outside of our day-to-day perceptions and into the levels of consciousness where we create, find purpose, and restore ourselves. Reawaken your divine self! Sessions can be scheduled for phone or Skype consultations, by appointment.
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