The five aggregates

The five aggregates (Pali pañcakkhandha, Sanskrit pañcaskandha, literally "five heaps" or "bundles") are Buddhism's way of taking apart what we casually call a "person" or a "self." The teaching analyzes a human being into five interacting streams of process, none of which, alone or together, is a permanent self. Examining them is meant to show, firsthand, that there is no fixed "me" hiding behind experience, but rather a flowing collection of changing parts.

The five are: (1) form (rūpa), the physical body and the material side of experience; (2) feeling (vedanā), the basic tone of every experience as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, before any thought about it; (3) perception (saññā), the mind's recognizing and labeling, "that's red," "that's a voice," "that's a friend"; (4) mental formations (saṅkhāra), the whole array of intentions, emotions, habits, and reactions, the volitional impulses that drive action; and (5) consciousness (viññāṇa), the bare awareness or knowing that arises through the senses and mind, registering each object. Together these five, constantly arising and passing, make up the felt sense of being someone.

The point of the list is liberating, not merely academic. We naturally cling to these heaps as "me" and "mine," and that clinging, Buddhism says, is a chief source of suffering. Watching the aggregates in meditation, a practitioner sees each one arise and dissolve, impermanent and impersonal, like noticing the separate instruments in what sounded like a single sound. Seeing through the solid sense of self that the five seem to add up to is a key step toward the freedom and peace at which the whole path aims.