The five aggregates (skandhas) are the scheme the Buddha chose to describe the nature of the individual human existence. It is a common doctrine among virtually all schools of Buddhist thought, being basic to the Buddha's philosophical teachings. The remarkable aspect of it is that it describes the human existance as a combination of physical and mental elements without recourse to the idea of a soul that is distinct from the mind, and -- most especially -- does not assert any governing agent that can be identified as a self within the individual. That is to say, each of the five aggregates is an equal component of the individual, which amounts to a conventional self only when all are present and functioning.
(Charles Patton).
(rapa-skandha, ruupa): is form in general, all physical bodies, including one's own, in the ‘external’ world; but more particularly, the human corporeal image as perceived by its own five sense-consciousnesses.
(vedanaa): the sensations and feelings received through the five bodily senses in contact with environmental events and physiological processes.
(sa~nj~naa): all kinds of mental functions and formations of images and ideas based on such perceptions.
(Samskara-skandha): conscious acts of will moved by the pleasurable or painful nature of the mental activities, as well as latent impulses and habit-patterns resulting from previous actions, which await opportune occasions and conditions to remanifest as desires or aversions.
(vij~nana): of the four previous factors, discriminating between them by attachment to pleasure and avoidance of pain. Together these five ‘heaps’ of processes incessantly change and interact; and yet manas, the mind, mistakes their illusory flux for its changeless and immortal self.
These five constituent aggregates of the illusory individuality incessantly change and interact, and it is their flux that we mis-identify as a fixed individuality. But only when the illusion of a permanent ego is at last discarded, can Insight be gained into the doctrine of non-self.
