Skandha

Etymology and meaning

Skandha (स्कन्ध) is a Sanskrit word that means "multitude, quantity, aggregate", generally in the context of body, trunk, stem, empirically observed gross object or anything of bulk verifiable with senses. The term appears in the Vedic literature. The Pali equivalent is Khandha (sometimes spelled Kkhanda). The word Khandha appears extensively in the Pali canon, where state Rhys Davids and William Stede, it means "bulk of the body, aggregate, heap, material collected into bulk" in one context, "all that is comprised under, groupings" in some contexts, and particularly as "the elements or substrata of sensory existence, sensorial aggregates which condition the appearance of life in any form".

According to Thanissaro, the Buddha never defined a "person" in terms of the aggregates (Pali: khandha) per se, but "such a notion is expressed by some modern scholars as if it were pan-Buddhist". Thanissaro adds that almost any Buddhist meditation teacher explains it that way, and even Buddhist commentaries from about 1st century CE onwards have explained it that way. In Thanissaro's view, this is incorrect, and he suggests that skandha should be viewed as "functions or aspects" of a sentient being.

According to Dalai Lama, skandha means "heap, group, collection or aggregate". Adrian Snodgrass asserts that the term literally means "heap", and the concept refers to the teaching accepted by all Buddhist schools that "the personality is an aggregate of five constituent parts". Paul Williams et al. translate skandha as "heap, aggregate", stating it refers to the explanation of the psychophysical makeup of any being. Damien Keown and Charles Prebish state skandha is phung po in Tibetan, and the terms mean "collections or aggregates or bundles", and in the context of canonical Buddhism the concept asserts that "the notion of a self is unnecessarily superimposed upon five skandha" of a phenomenon or a living being.

Johannes Bronkhorst renders skandha as "aggregates", stating that the meaning and importance of the concept is in explaining the non-self concept in Buddhism. The Buddhist texts assert the five aggregates are what there is to a person and personality, and in each skandha – body, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness – there is emptiness and no substance.

Description: the five skandhas

The Buddha teachings in the Pali Canon describe the five aggregates as follows:

1. "form" or "matter" (Skt., Pāli रूप rūpa; Tib. gzugs): matter, body or "material form" of a being or any existence. Buddhist texts state rupa of any person, sentient being and object to be composed of four basic elements or forces, that is earth (solidity), water (cohesion), fire (heat) and wind (motion).
2. "sensation" or "feeling" (Skt., Pāli वेदना vedanā; Tib. tshor-ba): sensory experience of an object. It is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
3. "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).
4. "mental formations" (Skt. संस्कार saṃskāra, Pāli सङ्खार saṅkhāra, Tib. 'du-byed): '"constructing activities", "conditioned things", "volition", "karmic activities"; all types of mental imprints and conditioning triggered by an object. This skandha includes any process that makes a person initiate action or act.
5. "consciousness" (Skt. विज्ञान vijñāna, Pāli विञ्ञाण viññāṇa, Tib. rnam-par-shes-pa): "discrimination" or "discernment". This includes, states Peter Harvey, awareness of an object and discrimination of its components and aspects, and is of six types. The Buddhist literature discusses this skandha as,
   1. In the Nikayas/Āgamas: cognizance, that which discerns
   2. In the Abhidhamma: a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance.
   3. In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.

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". 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.

Understanding Four Noble Truths

Bhikkhu Bodhi (2000b, p. 840) states that the aggregates are linked to dukkha in the Buddha's Four Noble Truths teaching in the following way:

1. Understanding suffering: the five aggregates are the "ultimate referent" in the Buddha's elaboration on dukkha (suffering) in his First Noble Truth: "Since all four truths revolve around suffering, understanding the aggregates is essential for understanding the Four Noble Truths as a whole."
2. Clinging causes future suffering: the five aggregates are the substrata for clinging and thus "contribute to the causal origination of future suffering".
3. Release from samsara: clinging to the five aggregates must be removed in order to achieve release from samsara.

Understanding dukkha

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta the Buddha provides the classic elaboration on the first of his Four Noble Truths, "The Truth of Suffering" (Dukkhasacca):

The fourth category of Dukkha consisting of "five bundles of grasping fuel", states Harvey, are the "five aggregates" that form a person. Each aggregate is an object of grasping (clinging), at the root of self-identification as "I, me, myself". All five are phenomenon that formulate a sense of personality, and they trigger suffering, pain or unsatisfactoriness. Everything that makes a person is a factor of dukkha, and these in Buddhist thought are not a source of pleasure but of sorrow. Nirvana requires transcendence from all five skandhas and the sense objects.

Each of the five skandhas trigger clinging asserts "Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta", and the delusion of identifying "I, mine, myself" through that skandha. This clinging creates karmic imprints that lead to rebirth and more Dukkha. This ceases when this clinging ceases, no more karma is being produced, and rebirth ends.

Three marks of the skandhas

The Buddhist scriptures assert that all five skhandhas have three characteristics often called ti-lakkhana (tri-lakshana, three marks). These are Dukkha, Anicca (impermanence) and Anatta (non-Self).

Each of the skandhas, states Buddhism, come into being and dissolve (Samsara). This is applicable to all beings and their environs, including human beings, as well as beings who have reincarnated in deva (god) and naraka (hell) realms.

Further, states Buddhism, each of the skandhas, a person and every being lacks a self and substantiality. This is the "non-Self" (anatta) doctrine, and it holds that a belief in self is a source of Dukkha (suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness).

Realizing the real nature of skandhas, both in terms of impermanence and non-self, is necessary for nirvana.

No essence

The Buddha taught that aggregates are appearances which don't have an essence either separately or together, all that is perceived as an aggregate or a whole has no real existence. The explicit denial of substantiality or essence in any of the five skandha appears in the early Buddhist texts:

All form is comparable to foam; all feelings to bubbles; all sensations are mirage-like; dispositions are like the plantain trunk; consciousness is but an illusion: so did the Buddha illustrate [the nature of the aggregates].

The skandha doctrine, state Mark Siderits et al., is a form of anti-realism about everyday reality including persons, and presents an alternative to "substantialist views of the self". It is a Buddhist reductionism of everything perceived, each person and personality as an "aggregate, heap" of composite entities without essence. This 'no essence' view has been a source of sustained questions, major disagreements and commentaries, since ancient times, by non-Buddhist Indian religions, as well as within Buddhist traditions.

Arahants

Another application of the skandha theory in Buddhist texts is in descriptions of the enlightened, perfected state of Arhat and Tathagata. The perfect state of enlightenment is one without any personality, no "I am" conceit, no physical identification, no intellectual identification, no identification in direct or indirects terms related to any of the five skandhas, translates Peter Harvey, because "a tathagata has abandoned the personality factors". The physical, the personality factors (skandhas), and any sense of Self or I are a burden, and the enlightened individual has dropped this burden, thus becoming a "man of nothing", not clinging to anything internal or external. No one can find him because he has no "I", no self and no identity, while his citta expands to infinity; he is beyond the reach of the unenlightened human beings, as well as the army of the Mara (demon of death in Buddhism).

Understanding in Theravada Abhidhamma

While early Buddhism reflects the teachings as found in the Pali Sutta Pitaka and the Chinese Āgama, the Early Buddhist schools developed detailed analyses and overviews of the teachings found in those sutras, called Abhidharma. Each school developed its own Abhidharma, the best known is the Theravāda Abhidhamma. The Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma has been preserved partly in the Chinese Āgama.

Six sense bases

The Theravada tradition teaches the "six sense bases" theory, which is understood as six pairs of internal and external sense bases that accommodate "all the factors of existence", it is "the all", and "apart from which nothing at all exists", states Bhikkhu Bodhi. These six sense bases in the Theravada exegesis are an alternative to the five skandhas, but they are corollaries of the skandha doctrine and not an innovation. In this teaching, found in texts such as Salayatana samyutta, the coming together of an object and a sense-organ results in the arising of the corresponding consciousness. The suttas themselves don't describe this alternative. It is in the Abhidhamma, striving to "a single all-inclusive system" that the five aggregates and the six sense bases are explicitly connected.

The Maha-punnama Sutta, also called The Great Full-moon Night Discourse, describes the impermanence of the aggregates to assert that there is no self, and the right discernment is, "this is not mine, this is not my self, this is not what I am". This Maha-punnama Sutta theme is retained in the Theravadin six sense bases exegesis, states Bhikkhu Bodhi, which sum up the conditioned existence as "the all" of the sense bases, and that the "six bases are empty of a self and of what belongs to the self".

Twelve sense bases

An alternate formulations of the aggregates is in the terms of Twelve Sense Bases:

Bodhi states the six sense bases is a "vertical" view of human experiences while the aggregates is a "horizontal" (temporal) view. The Theravada Buddhist meditation practice on sense bases is aimed at both removing distorted cognitions such as those influenced by cravings, conceits and opinions, as well as "uprooting all conceivings in all its guises".

Eighteen Dhātus

The eighteen dhātus – the Six External Bases, the Six Internal Bases, and the Six Consciousnesses – function through the five aggregates. The eighteen dhātus can be arranged into six triads, where each triad is composed of a sense object, a sense organ, and sense consciousness. In regards to the aggregates:

Four Paramatthas

The Abhidhamma and post-canonical Pali texts create a meta-scheme for the Sutta Pitaka's conceptions of aggregates, sense bases and dhattus (elements). This meta-scheme is known as the four paramatthas or four ultimate realities.

Ultimate realities

There are four paramatthas; three conditioned, one unconditioned:

Mapping of the paramatthas

The mapping between the aggregates, the twelve sense bases, and the ultimate realities is represented in this chart:

Twelve Nidanas

The Twelve Nidanas describe twelve phenomenal links by which suffering is perpetuated between and within lives.

Inclusion of the five aggregates

Embedded within this model, four of the five aggregates are explicitly mentioned in the following sequence:

The interplay between the five-aggregates model of immediate causation and the twelve-nidana model of requisite conditioning is evident, for instance underlining the seminal role that mental formations have in both the origination and cessation of suffering.

Three lives

According to Hans Wolfgang Schumann, the nidānas are a later synthesis of Buddhist teachings meant to make them more comprehensible. Comparison with the five skandhas shows that the chain contains logical inconsistencies, which can be explained when the chain is considered to be a later elaboration. This way it is explainable that nāma-rūpa in consciousness in the nine-fold are the beginning or start, while in the twelve-fold chain they are preceded by ignorance and formations. Those can only exist when nāma-rūpa in consciousness are present. Schumann also proposes that the twelve-fold is extended over three existences, and illustrates the succession of rebirths. While Buddhaghosa in Vasubandhu maintains a 2-8-2 schema, Schumann maintains a 3-6-3 scheme, putting the five skandhas alongside the twelve nidānas.

Understanding in the Mahayana-tradition

The Mahayana developed out of the traditional schools, introducing new texts and putting other emphasises in the teachings, especially sunyata and the Bodhisattva-ideal.

Prajnaparamita

The Prajnaparamita-teachings developed from the first century BCE onward. It emphasises the "emptiness" of everything that exists. This means that there are no eternally existing "essences", since everything is dependently originated. The skandhas too are dependently originated, and lack any substantial existence .

This is famously stated in the Heart Sutra. The Sanskrit version of the classic "Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra" ("Heart Sutra") states:

The noble Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,

while practicing the deep practice of Prajnaparamita
looked upon the Five Skandhas,
seeing they were empty of self-existence,

said, "Here Shariputra,

form is emptiness, emptiness is form,
emptiness is not separate from form,
form is not separate from emptiness;
whatever is form is emptiness,
whatever is emptiness is form."

The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness.

Madhyamaka

The Madhyaka-school elaborates on the notion of the middle way. Its basic text is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, written by Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna refuted the Sarvastivada conception of reality, which reifies dhammas. The simultaneous non-reification of the self and reification of the skandhas has been viewed by some Buddhist thinkers as highly problematic.

Yogacara

The Yogacara-school further analysed the workings of the mind, and developed the notion of the Eight Consciousnesses. These are an elaboration of the concept of nama-rupa and the five skandhas, adding detailed analyses of the workings of the mind.

China

Sunyata, in Chinese texts, is "wu", nothingness. In these texts, the relation between absolute and relative was a central topic in understanding the Buddhist teachings. The aggregates convey the relative (or conventional) experience of the world by an individual, although Absolute truth is realized through them.

Commenting on the Heart Sutra, D.T. Suzuki notes:

When the sutra says that the five Skandhas have the character of emptiness [...], the sense is: no limiting qualities are to be attributed to the Absolute; while it is immanent in all concrete and particular objects, it is not in itself definable.

Tathagatagarbha

The Tathāgatagarbha Sutras, which developed in India, played a prominent role in China. The tathagatagarbha-sutras, on occasion, speak of the ineffable skandhas of the Buddha (beyond the nature of worldly skandhas and beyond worldly understanding). In the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra the Buddha tells of how the Buddha's skandhas are in fact eternal and unchanging. The Buddha's skandhas are said to be incomprehensible to unawakened vision.

Tibet

The Vajrayana tradition further develops the aggregates in terms of mahamudra epistemology and tantric reifications.

Insubstantiality

Referring to mahamudra teachings, Chogyam Trungpa identifies the form aggregate as the "solidification" of ignorance (Pali, avijja; Skt., avidya), allowing one to have the illusion of "possessing" ever dynamic and spacious wisdom (Pali, vijja; Skt. vidya), and thus being the basis for the creation of a dualistic relationship between "self" and "other."

According to Trungpa Rinpoche, the five skandhas are "a set of Buddhist concepts which describe experience as a five-step process" and that "the whole development of the five skandhas...is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality," while "the practice of meditation is to see the transparency of this shield."

Deity yoga

Trungpa Rinpoche writes (2001, p. 38):

[S]ome of the details of tantric iconography are developed from abhidharma [that is, in this context, detailed analysis of the aggregates]. Different colors and feelings of this particular consciousness, that particular emotion, are manifested in a particular deity wearing such-and-such a costume, of certain particular colors, holding certain particular sceptres in his hand. Those details are very closely connected with the individualities of particular psychological processes.