The Buddha was still at the deer park near Varanasi, and he turned to the five seekers and said:
"Here's something to look at closely. The body isn't you.
If the body really were you — your self, the thing you actually are — then it would never let you down, and you'd be able to tell it: 'Be like this, don't be like that,' and it would obey. But you can't. The body gets sick, ages, falls apart, ignores your wishes completely. That's the giveaway: it isn't you.
And the same goes for the rest of what you take yourself to be:
- The body isn't you.
- Your feelings — pleasant, unpleasant, neutral — aren't you.
- Your perceptions — the way you recognize and label things — aren't you.
- Your impulses and reactions — the mental habits that push you around — aren't you.
- Your awareness itself — the knowing that's happening — isn't you.
For every one of them, it's the same test: if it were truly you, it would do what you say and never cause you grief. But none of them do. They all break down, shift, and run on their own. So none of them are you."
(These five are traditionally called the Five Aggregates — in canonical translation: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness.)
The Questions
Then the Buddha walked them through it directly.
"Tell me — is the body something that lasts, or something that changes?"
"It changes," they said.
"And something that's always changing — does that bring ease, or does it bring suffering?"
"Suffering."
"So does it make any sense to look at something that's always changing, that brings suffering, that won't hold still — and say, 'This is mine, this is what I am, this is my self'?"
"No. It doesn't."
He ran the same three questions through all five — body, feelings, perceptions, impulses, awareness — and every time the answer came back the same: always changing, never reliable, not worth calling "me."
The Takeaway
"So here's how to see it. Any body at all — past, future, or right now; your own or someone else's; near or far; big or small — look at it honestly and you'll see: this isn't mine, this isn't what I am, this isn't my self.
And the same for every feeling, every perception, every impulse, every flicker of awareness — all of it: not mine, not me, not myself.
When you really see this, you stop being so gripped by all of it. You loosen your hold on the body, on feelings, on perceptions, on impulses, on awareness. And when the grip lets go, you're free. And once you're free, you know you're free — you can feel it directly: Done. There's nothing left to chase. This is finished."
How It Landed
That's what the Buddha said, and the five of them were glad to hear it.
And while he was speaking, something completed in all five of them at once. Letting go of every last bit of grasping, their minds came fully free.
At that point there were six fully awakened people in the world — the five of them, and the Buddha.