Question

Do I understand right that there is a changing self, consisting of the Five Aggregates?

Answer

According to Buddhism yes, there is a changing self, consisting of the Five Aggregates, you are forever changing. Now, this isn't so difficult to understand on one level. If I took a photograph of you when you were six years old and held it in my hand here, and I say to you, "Is this you?" Is there any one of you who is going to say, yes? I mean, this is a six-year-old kid, none of you is six, and you are a lot bigger than this kid. You don't look the same, some of you guys have that stuff called a beard, that kid doesn't have a beard, so you can see that the six year old is not who you are today. In fact, the six-year-old is actually "dead", they are not anywhere on this whole planet, you can't find this person on this whole planet, so they are dead - which is a different way of looking at it.

You have a memory of the six-year-old and you kind of came from the six-year-old, but you are not the six-year-old. Scientists even reckon that every molecule of your body changes every seven years, so you don't even have a single cell in your body that this kid had. Now, the kid's likes, what did the kid like to do? Some of them still weren't on bicycles yet, they had their little tricycle, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. Would you like to do that today, on that little tricycle? No. The kid might have had some dolls, whatever, all sorts of things that this kid liked; you probably wouldn't want to have them now. What of the things are you interested in today? Would that kid want any of what you have? The headaches of paying taxes? That six-year-old wouldn't want to pay taxes. This is a way to look at the fact that you are a changing being, a changing living being, a changing self. So it is very easy to see within your own life that you are changing all the time.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.