BUDDHISM – THE FIVE AGGREGATES

The Five Aggregates were among Buddha's central ideas.

The Five Aggregates describe our sensory apparatus. They are manifest form, sensation, perception, concepts (mental formations), and consciousness. The Aggregates apply to all of our senses and our mind which is considered as a sixth sense. They describe how we experience the world.

In Buddha's times the words for such psychological phenomena didn't exist. The present translations of Buddha's Aggregates stretch our understanding beyond common sense... into the realms of philosophy.

Even the word aggregates is not easy to understand, the modern word would be components, or simply parts.

The idea behind the Aggregates is for example: 1. a visual object, 2. the light waves, 3. the contact with the eye, 4. the neurological signal, and 5. the recognition by the mind.

The original idea is that once the Five Aggregates are set in motion, once the wheels start turning, they keep repeating. Once the mind recognises something it becomes an object (a thought object, a manifest form)... and so the mind perceives it again, the wheel turns again, and the momentum is self perpetuating.

This is why Buddha says the Five Aggregates are Dukkha, not turning smoothly. This is an effect of the focused mind.

At present, the sequence gives 2. sensation and 4. concepts, which means that the sequence could start repeating at the 2nd. or 4th. stage, as well as the 5th.

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Back to Chapter Four : Buddhism and Wheels
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