I still grapple with Gautama the Buddha’s equating sickness, old age, and death with the five groups of grasping, but I think it does make sense in that my consciousness is not my own, not mine.
When consciousness takes place spontaneously with regard to the six senses, that awareness from moment to moment is free, is not conditioned in the place of occurrence by ignorance, desire, or becoming. “That being, this is so”, yet there is no doer, no sense of a do-er in control of that with respect to which consciousness takes place, no sense of a do-er in the placement of consciousness.
This is just the way I experience consciousness falling asleep, when I attend to my sense of location in space as I fall asleep. When I’m waking up, the breath in, the breath out has no length except in the free occurrence of mind.
Grasping after self, after a do-er in the five groups follows ignorance of the experience of consciousness taking place spontaneously, ignorance of the impact of consciousness, ignorance of the feeling that occurs as consciousness takes place. The sense of self connected with the do-er in the five groups knows old age, illness, and death as suffering, yet that sense of self is identically grasping in the five groups.