Question

What are the five “aggregates” (skandhas) and how do they relate to the doctrine of Anatman?

Answer 1

Five Skandhas or aggregates, which are basically the five aspects of a human being: Form, or the body; Feelings, or our basic positive, negative, or neutral reactions to stimuli; Perception, the basic process of labeling or identifying things; Consciousness, our awareness of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and thoughts; and Mental Fabrications, all of our active processes of mind. On to the Five Skandhas.

The First Skandha: Form (Rupa)

Rupa is form or matter; something material that can be sensed. In early Buddhist literature, rupa includes the Four Great Elements (solidity, fluidity, heat, and motion) and their derivatives. These derivatives are the first five faculties listed above (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) and the first five corresponding objects (visible form, sound, odor, taste, tangible things).

Another way to understand rupa is to think of it as something that resists the probing of the senses. For example, an object has a form if it blocks your vision -- you can't see what's on the other side of it -- or if it blocks your hand from occupying its space.

The Second Skandha: Sensation (Vedana)

Vedana is a physical or mental sensation that we experience through contact of the six faculties with the external world. In other words, it is the sensation experienced through the contact of eye with visible form, the ear with sound, nose with odor, tongue with taste, body with tangible things, mind (manas) with ideas or thoughts.

It is particularly important to understand that manas - mind or intellect - is a sense organ or faculty, just like an eye or an ear. We tend to think that mind is something like a spirit or soul, but that concept is very out of place in Buddhism.

Because vedana is the experience of pleasure or pain, it conditions craving, either to acquire something pleasurable or avoid something painful.

The Third Skandha: Perception (Samjna, or in Pali, Sanna)

Samjna is the faculty that recognizes. Most of what we call thinking fits into the aggregate of samjna. The word "samjna" means "knowledge that puts together." It is the capacity to conceptualize and recognize things by associating them with other things. For example, we recognize shoes as shoes because we associate them with our previous experience with shoes.

When we see something for the first time, we invariably flip through our mental index cards to find categories we can associate with the new object. It's a "some kind of tool with a red handle," for example, putting the new thing in the categories "tool" and "red."

Or, we might associate an object with its context. We recognize an apparatus as an exercise machine because we see it at the gym.

The Fourth Skandha: Mental Formation (Samskara, or in Pali, Sankhara)

All volitional actions, good and bad, are included in the aggregate of mental formations, or samskara. How are actions "mental" formations?

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

The aggregate of mental formations is associated with karma because volitional acts create karma. Samskara also contains latent karma that conditions our attitudes and predilections. Biases and prejudices belong to this skandha, as do interests and attractions.

The Fifth Skandha: Consciousness (Vijnana, or in Pali, Vinnana)

Vijnana is a reaction that has one of the six faculties as its basis and one of the six corresponding phenomena as its object.

For example, aural consciousness - hearing - has the ear as its basis and a sound as its object. Mental consciousness has the mind (manas) as its basis and an idea or thought as its object.

It is important to understand that this awareness or consciousness depends on the other skandhas and does not exist independently from them. It is awareness but not a recognition, as recognition is a function of the third skandha. This awareness is not a sensation, which is the second skandha.

For most of us, this is a different way to think about "consciousness."

The five skandhas are essentially a method for understanding that every aspect of our lives is a collection of constantly changing experiences. There is no one aspect that is truly solid, permanent or unique. Everything is in flux. Everything is dependent upon multiple causes and conditions.

For example, rupa-skandha refers to everything in our material world–our body and our physical surroundings. All these things are constantly changing. Vedana-skandha refers to our sensations that are positive, negative or indifferent–all our sensations are fleeting, changing from moment to moment. Samjna-skandha refers to all of our recognition or labeling of everything that we see, hear, smell, touch, or think; these labels are also constantly in flux. Samskara-skanda (all of our mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, etc.) are dependent on many causes and conditions and always changing. Our consciousness itself is not one single thing, but a collection of consciousness (vijnana-skandha) that are also constantly changing.

In the Buddhist view, by contemplating on the characteristics of the skandhas, we can overcome self-grasping. Self-grasping is attachment to a concept of self that is unique, independent and permanent. In the Buddhist view, it is this attachment to this distored view of the self that is the root cause of suffering. Therefore, by letting go of this attachment, we can liberate ourselves from suffering.

The concept of no self or selflessness (also known as anatta or anatman in Buddhism) can sometimes be confusing. The Buddha taught that there are five aggregates that constitute a living being; however, to solely identify with these is to rob ourselves of knowing our true nature which isn’t defined by these five phenomena. The authentic atman is the true spiritual atman of the Upanishads, eternal and unchanging. The empirical atman is the psychophysical individuality, the person, which is ephemeral and changing. This psychophysical individuality is made up of five components, which are called skandhas, or aggregates. In other words, the five skandhas, or aggregates, make up what we would call the everyday person. just like everything else in existence, the skandhas, too, are characterized by suffering (duhkha), impermanence (anitya), and no-self (anatman).

The doctrine of anatman made it necessary for the Buddha to reinterpret the Indian idea of repeated rebirth in the cycle of phenomenal existence known as samsara. To this end he taught the doctrine of pratityasamutpada, or dependent origination. This 12-linked chain of causation shows how ignorance in a previous life creates the tendency for a combination of aggregates to develop. These in turn cause the mind and senses to operate. Sensations result, which lead to craving and a clinging to existence. This condition triggers the process of becoming once again, producing a renewed cycle of birth, old age, and death. Through this causal chain a connection is made between one life and the next. What is posited is a stream of renewed existences, rather than a permanent being that moves from life to life-in effect a belief in rebirth without transmigration.