Rupa

Meaning

Rūpa is the first of the five aggregates, the material side of conditioned existence: one’s own body, the sense faculties and the forms they perceive.

Rūpa is one half of the pair nāma-rūpa, name-and-form, which appears throughout the suttas. The other half, nāma, is not simply the remaining four aggregates: in the formula of dependent origination, “name” covers feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention, while consciousness is treated separately.

It is worth remembering that rūpa carries several meanings in the canon - from visible form, that is, the object of the eye (and likewise for the other senses), to material form in general. What follows concerns rūpa as the first of the five aggregates.

The four great elements

The canon analyses rūpa into four “great elements” (mahābhūta) and the material form derived from them. Earth, water, fire and wind sound alchemical, but they denote properties of materiality:

• earth - solidity and resistance
• water - fluidity and cohesion
• fire - temperature, warming and ripening
• wind - movement, expansion and pressure

The same part of the body can be examined through several elements at once: it is solid, warm, moving and held together. Some suttas add space (ākāsa) and consciousness to the four.

Buddhism is interested in matter as part of conditioned existence - an aggregate that arises, changes, is experienced and becomes an object of clinging. The question “what particles is it made of” therefore matters far less than it might seem.

All material elements of rūpa, internal and external, are to be seen in the same way, through the lens of not-self: “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” Bones and stones look quite different at first glance. But if both are seen as the quality of solidity, which solidity exactly is “I”?

Why it is called rūpa

In SN 22.79 the Buddha explains the name rūpa through the verb ruppati - is afflicted, is deformed under impact, is affected. Form “is affected” by cold, heat, hunger, thirst and so on.

Instead of reasoning about what matter consists of, attention is directed to an observable property: the material changes, is damaged, and does not obey an “owner.”

Rented accommodation

The suttas suggest observing the elements of rūpa from the outer to the inner. All the vast external elements are subject to change: mountains erode, earth weathers away, water washes out shores and cities, fire goes out, wind arises and ceases.

If even the enormous external elements are impermanent, what of this body - small, fragile and in constant need of maintenance? All the more so since the elements of the body are a continuation of the great external elements. At which moment does inhaled oxygen become us? When it reaches the nose, the lungs, the blood, the cells and the molecules of those cells?

Hence the body in the canon is something like a rented flat: convenient to use, worth keeping in good condition, sensible to redecorate. Trouble begins when the rental agreement is taken for a deed of eternal ownership. All the more so because the move-out date will come regardless.

In practice

Body scanning is one of the principal methods of meditation and the practice of many vipassanā schools. Over time, instead of the familiar objects - “leg,” “back,” “hand” - attention begins to distinguish simpler characteristics: hardness, warmth, cold, pressure, vibration, pulsation, movement.

What follows also becomes clearly distinguishable:

• the tone of these sensations - pleasant, unpleasant, neutral (vedanā)
• the process of recognising what is happening (saññā)
• the resulting reactions and intentions (saṅkhāra)

As a result, the body stops being a solid and self-evident object and comes to be experienced as a continuously changing process with no owner to whom it belongs.