What is my function in life?

 Animals use the ‘reptilian’ primitive brain for survival – fight, flight or freeze. Their function is to survive and breed.

 Humans have the ability to recognise consciousness, and therefore can know their true nature. That’s if they ever get around to asking the question, “Why am I here?”… and sticking with it! So the function of being human is to know our true nature – unless we adopt the animal mode.

 While investigating our true nature, we can share with others at the same time. This utilises the two truths of absolute reality and temporary reality. However, we too have a reptilian brain, which can cloud our consciousness.

 One of the problems in life is finding a relative, worldly function, and then holding onto it with much pride. We do this to give ourselves a sense of belonging and satisfaction, but it can also imprison us. Our jobs and family comes to mind.

 This idea of function has concerned me for most of my life. Ego wants to play a part in the world. I loved those days when I had a sense of function and worth, but it doesn’t seem to happen any more…pity! It was a feeling of self satisfaction, a job well done, aren’t I good…smugness. Well, everyone else was doing it so why not me?

 Then this morning it hit me! Function is a moment-to-moment experience. It comes and goes. And there’s no point in hanging onto it, as, once achieved, it’s gone! Intellectual understanding is not the same as discovering something for oneself. Although I may have an intellectual understanding of the way we hang on to experiences, the actual experience is much more profound, and its meaning seems to change as it has gone to the heart of the matter. And one just says, “Wow!”

 Part of our Samsaric dungeon of existence is the memory of one moment of consciousness clinging to the next moment of consciousness. There is an illusion that we are the same, continuous, unchanging entity – but we are not! This illusory entity hangs together because of the five skandha. We can see these as we might see the ingredients of a biscuit: form, feeling, perception, karmic formation and consciousness. Take one ingredient away and we fall apart!

 It is our own consciousness that holds this temporary entity together.

 We are sacred space, but we became too active within this space, filling it and creating ‘form’ = ignorance. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form! From that, the other skandha arose….

 The Five Skandha (heaps)

The sutras describe five aggregates:

1 Form, or matter: known as “rupa”, includes external and internal matter. The physical world and the material body.

2 Sensation or feeing: sensing an object as either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

3 Perception or cognition: registering whether an object is recognised or not.

4 Karmic formation or volition: all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, decisions and compulsions triggered by an object.

5 Consciousness or discernment: mental faculties.