Agony and Ecstasy

14
and touching, by causing them to become instruments of grasping.
The mental formation which receives the impressions of physical
contact as sensations or feelings (vedanā) is the initiation of a process
of selection of likes and dislikes, which is one of opposition. It
is here that the seeds of ill-will (vyāpada) are sown. Then, in the
perception (saññā) of this reception comes into play the memory,
which is knowledge of the past, the tendency to cling to the past,
to preserve tradition, to accept authority without understanding.
It is a sluggishness (thīna-middha) of the mind, communicated to
the body, a fear to let go what is known, a fear to up-root what
has provided security to the self in the past. When such perception
of the past, compared and clung to, is estimated and judged
in its various components, and grouped and classified in the various
compartments (saṅkhāra) of mental formations, one sees perception
becoming a conception of an ideal, the past becoming the future.
And therewith arises, the on-set of agitation and worry (uddhaccakukkucca),
projecting the memory into an ideal, the past into the
future, hope and fear becoming a volition of continuance in the insecurity
of the present. It is thought as consciousness (viññāṇa),
grown out of the entanglement which now perceives as well as conceives
the conflict of its own making. Being conceived in this conflict
of clinging to the past in memory (saññā), and of craving for
release into an ideal concept (saṅkhāra) of the future, thought seeks
a substitute but cannot find a solution either in denial or escape or
sublimation. This is the perplexity (vicikicchā) of the mind seeking
a solution outside itself without understanding that its own thought
is the cause of its perplexity.
Thus, the the hindrances (pañca nīvaranāni) have grown up with
the growth of consciousness in the five aggregates (pañcakkhandha).
And it will be, therefore, also in the mind that those hindrances will
have to be removed, for which close examination will be necessary.