and object desire, like, 'i want an apple', and such. The fourth is disposition, which deals with habits, (smoking) emotions, (anger) motives, and intentions. The fifth and final, is the self consciousness. This skanda takes the center, so to speak, as the narritive part of the self, the part that writes the story. It fills in the blanks, connects the 5 skandas, and strings together the 'stills'. The 5 skandas of the self are said to be no more than 'heaped' together, so as to drive home the Buddha's point of the self's impermanence. This is called Anicca. He believes that if this point is driven home, we won't be so inclined to hold on to the notion of permanance. Anicca is, in a sense, the notion of transiency. Only once we have recognized suffering and understand the cause can we begin to stop it. When we are selfless we are free. The challange is to remain selfless and free. This is difficult because it is the law of life that we see others as an 'extention of ourselves', and not our rivals. Often in life in order to attain private fulfillment it's necessary to view others as rivals, for either having something you want, or standing in the way of attaining it. We don't usually see people as extentions of ourselves, it seems to be our nature to uphold a very strong sense of self. we "lock ourselves inside our skin encapsulated egos and seek fulfillment through their enlargement." Buddha wants us to see that it's the ego that strangles us and holds us back, "tis the self by which we suffer." The Buddha based his teachings on a frank assessment of our plight as humans: there is unsatisfactoriness and suffering in the world. No one can argue this fact. If the Buddha's teachings were to stop here, we might indeed regard them as pessimistic and life as utterly hopeless. But, like a doctor who prescribes a remedy for an illness, the Buddha offers hope (the third Noble Truth) and a cure (the fourth Noble Truth). ...
