What are the five aggregates in buddha meditation?
Answers
The Buddha teaches in the Pali Canon the five aggregates as follows:
"form" or "matter"[a] (Skt., Pāli रूप rūpa; Tib. gzugs): matter, body or "material form" of a being or any existence.[5][21] Buddhist texts state rupa of any person, sentient being and object to be composed of four basic elements or forces: earth (solidity), water (cohesion), fire (heat) and wind (motion).[3]
"sensation" or "feeling" (Skt., Pāli वेदना vedanā; Tib. tshor-ba): sensory experience of an object.[21] It is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.[b][c]
"perception" (Skt. संज्ञा saṃjñā, Pāli सञ्ञा saññā, Tib. 'du-shes): sensory and mental process that registers, recognizes and labels (for instance, the shape of a tree, color green, emotion of fear).[21]
"mental formations" (Skt. संस्कार saṃskāra, Pāli सङ्खार saṅkhāra, Tib. 'du-byed): '"constructing activities",[21] "conditioned things", "volition", "karmic activities"; all types of mental imprints and conditioning triggered by an object.[22][23][d] Includes any process that makes a person initiate action or act.[21]
"consciousness" (Skt. विज्ञान vijñāna, Pāli विञ्ञाण viññāṇa, Tib. rnam-par-shes-pa): "discrimination" or "discernment"[e]. Awareness of an object and discrimination of its components and aspects, and is of six types, states Peter Harvey.[21] The Buddhist literature discusses this skandha as,
In the Nikayas/Āgamas: cognizance,[24][f] that which discerns.[25][g]
In the Abhidhamma: a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance.[h]
In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.[i]
The initial part of the Buddhist practice is purification of each of the above "five aggregates" through meditation and virtues. Ultimately, the practice shifts to considering these as naive, then transcending them to reach the state of realization that there is neither person nor self within, or in any other being, states Harvey, where everyone and everything is without self or substantiality and is a "cluster of changing physical and mental processes".[20][26] David Kalupahana clarifies that the individual is considered unreal but the skandha are considered real in some early Buddhist texts, but the skandha too are considered unreal and nonsubstantial in numerous other Buddhist Nikaya and Āgama texts.[27]