On the beach building a sandcastle, fully engaged in the moment, we know that our castle is temporary. It will dry out and be blown away or washed away with the incoming tide. So, why do we have such difficulty understanding that this is the nature of all life? That all, including what we call self, is impermanent. And that to insist otherwise is the cause of great suffering.

I love this metaphor of sandcastles that the Buddha used to talk about the Five Aggregates of Clinging:

• Form – this body, this physical plane of existence, 
• Feeling – the senses
• Perception – agreed upon names for everything
• Mental formations – all those thoughts and emotions!
• Consciousness – awareness of the first four aggregates.

For most of us, this looks like a list of who we are, the makings of self. But as we look closer we can see that, much the way a sandcastle is a temporary assembly of grains of sand, this self is an assembly of fundamental elements that come together and fall apart: earthy bones; watery blood, sweat, and tears; the air we breathe; the fiery process of turning food into energy and synaptic brain activity.

The assembly of this body lasts longer than an afternoon’s sandcastle, but we know there is a tide, a natural rhythm, to this human life. To rail against the nature of impermanence is like a child having a tantrum when a turret of the carefully constructed sandcastle crumbles.

Most of us have lost enough loved ones to accept the fact that this body ages and dies. But this begrudging acknowledgment is insufficient to end clinging. Why? Because we cling not just to life but to identity.

From the day we are born, we are defined by our family, community, and culture. Sometimes we just accept these labels, but often it feels stifling, and sometimes even crippling. Different cultures and times in history offer more stringent constraints or greater freedom to define ourselves. But while a different identity might feel more accurate, like a piece of clothing that fits rather than rubs us raw, does a new identity label end suffering?

The Buddha’s teachings centered on the Five Aggregates to show how the habit of naming and claiming a solid sense of separate self blinds us. The word ‘aggregate’ means a conglomeration. The Pali word for it is khanda, often translated as heap. So this body we think of as solid is a heap of molecular formations. These sensations arise and fall away. These perceptions are culturally informed and change over time. And thoughts! They change depending on causes, conditions, and other factors. 

Consciousness isn’t solid and separate either, is it? If you’ve ever had surgery, fainted, or passed out, where was your consciousness? And what about when we’re sleeping? In dreams, we lose all sense of this separate solid self in time and space.

But why is this list called the Five Aggregates of CLINGING? Because most of us cling to the idea that this body, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness are who we are. 

For one student in class, this conversation brought to mind the scene in Alice in Wonderland when the hookah-smoking caterpillar asks her, “WHO are YOU?”

To this question, Alice answered, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

The caterpillar’s question evokes the Buddha’s night of awakening when Mara, the demon, taunted Siddartha, asking him “Who are you?” and more pointedly “Who do you think you are?”

Most of us can relate to this. Our self-talk is populated with inner voices that demean us or inflate us. Noticing them is part of the important work of cultivating awareness and lovingkindness. We can have skillful conversations with these inner critics who nag, seduce, confuse, and label us.

When they ask “WHO are YOU?” what do we answer?

For Siddhartha, the awareness cultivated through meditation and investigation, allowed him to recognize that he had a right to be liberated from Mara’s seductive delusions and vicious taunts. As the story goes, he placed the palm of his hand on the ground and asked the earth to be his witness.

The earth is our witness as well! We are fleeting expressions of all the elements coming together in this time and place. We may not know for what purpose, but we can cultivate awareness and lovingkindness to meet whatever arises. With Wise Intention and Wise Effort, we can use whatever interests, inclinations, skills, and knowledge we have for the benefit of all beings.

Freed from all this clinging and need for the perfect labels, we can participate without self-doubt or self-aggrandizement. We can live!

So ask yourself: Am I this body? These sensations? These perceptions? These thoughts? This consciousness?

The Buddha taught that to claim any one of these is to suggest that we had independent choice in the matter, that we have control over them, that we are isolated and unaffected by the flow of life all around us, that we are unaffected by time, preconditions, genetics, culture, social influences, the ebb and flow of the tides of existence.

The labels don’t fit!
Not because they are the wrong labels and we need to find better ones, but because there is no separate self to label. This body comes from a series of cominglings of ancestors. We can play around with it a bit, sure. Food intake, exercise, etc. will have an impact, but only to a certain extent. And even those decisions to make changes to the body are influenced by the cultural norms around us that we value. 

Do we have control over the senses? We all have varying abilities to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. These abilities may change over time, and we may be able to improve some of them with modern technology. But if they were us we’d have more volition over them. If we were born without vision or hearing, was that a choice we made? And wouldn’t we have ordered a nose that could smell flowers but not a skunk? Wouldn’t we have ordered some kind of on/off switch to help with chronic physical pain?

And perception? We didn’t think up these culturally agreed-upon labels for things. Our parents and society told us the names of objects and how everything works. Scientific research shows that other species see things in totally different ways. Perception is not who we are, it’s just a way to experience life.

And thoughts? We like to think our thoughts are our own, but even the most creative writers draw from the culture and styles available. They weave stories out of what they observe and use the skills they inherited or developed.

And consciousness is just awareness. It’s not who we are. 

So then who are we? 
No worries, this is not a disappearing act. It’s an act of liberation! Can we practice letting go of needing to be solid,  separate, and seen? Can we let go of the nouns we use to define ourselves and have fun with verbs?
Here’s a fun exploration: Find a term you use to describe yourself and see if you can reword it. In class, we tried this with one student who came up with the statement, “I am a problem solver.” We playfully explored the possibility that she could say, “I enjoy identifying challenges and finding solutions.” It’s a verb-based pattern of thought that has more freedom and could change over time without any sense of loss of identity or self-diminishment. If someday she loses interest in problem-solving, it won’t be a loss of identity. Just a different way of being in the world.

Isn’t this much more life-affirming than the painful chase to ‘be’ someone, grasping at, and clinging to this erroneous sense of an isolated self whose walls must be constantly fortified?

It is possible to be in the world as if playing on the beach building sandcastles, engaged in the moment and at the same time understanding that what has our attention is temporary and will fall apart on an incoming tide, dissolve in the wind and the rain of life. Whole civilizations rise and fall. There is no final perfection.

Instead of making us sad, understanding the Five Aggregates frees us from unreasonable expectations in life –in our bodies, our loved ones, and the world. We can hold all of life in an open embrace, and engage in wholesome beneficial ways to offer loving kindness to ourselves and each other.

The Buddha’s sandcastle analogy can be found in the Radhasamyutta, SN