Part One
The Fundamentals of Buddhism
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Chapter Twelve
The Five Aggregates
In this chapter we will look at the teaching of the five
aggregates--form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. In other words, we will look
at the Buddhist analysis of personal experience, or the personality.
In the preceding chapters, I have several times had occasion to note
that Buddhist teachings have been found relevant to modern life and thought in the
fields of science, psychology, and so forth. This is also the case for the analysis of
personal experience in terms of the five aggregates. Modern psychiatrists and psychologists
have been particularly interested in this analysis. It has even been suggested
that, in the analysis of personal experience in terms of the five aggregates, we have a
psychological equivalent to the table of elements worked out in modern science--that is to
say, a very careful inventory and evaluation of the elements of our experience.
What we are going to do now is basically an extension and refinement
of our analysis at the end of Chapter 11. There, we spent some time on the teaching of
not-self, exploring briefly the way the analysis of personal experience can be carried
out along two lines: with regard to the body, and with regard to the mind. You will recall
that we examined the body and mind to see whether we could locate the self, and saw
that the self is not to be found in either of them. We concluded that the term
"self" is just a convenient term for a collection of physical and mental factors, in the same way that
"forest" is just a convenient term for a collection of trees. In this chapter we will
take our analysis still further. Rather than looking at personal experience simply in terms
of body and mind, we will analyze it in terms of the five aggregates.
Let us first look at the aggregate of matter, or form. The aggregate
of form corresponds to what we would call material, or physical, factors of experience. It
includes not only our own bodies but also the material objects that surround us--the earth,
the trees, the buildings, and the objects of everyday life. Specifically, the
aggregate of form includes the five physical sense organs and the corresponding material objects
of those sense organs: the eyes and visible objects, the ears and audible objects,
the nose and olfactory objects, the tongue and objects of taste, and the skin and tangible
objects. But physical elements by themselves are not enough to produce
experience. The simple contact between eyes and visible objects, or ears and audible
objects, cannot result in experience. The eyes can be in conjunction with a visible object
indefinitely without producing experience; the ears can be exposed to a sound indefinitely
with the same result. Only when the eyes, a visible object, and consciousness come
together is the experience of a visible object produced. Consciousness is therefore
an indispensable element in the production of experience.
Before we go on to our consideration of the mental factors of
personal experience, I would like to mention briefly the existence of one more set of an
organ and its object, and here I speak of the sixth sense--the mind. This is in addition to the
five physical sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin). Just as the five
physical sense organs have their corresponding material objects, the mind has for its object
ideas, or properties (dharmas). And as in the case of the five physical sense organs,
consciousness must be present to unite the mind and its object so as to produce
experience.
Let us now look at the mental factors of experience and see whether
we can understand how consciousness turns the physical factors of existence into
personal, conscious experience. First of all, we must remember that consciousness is mere
awareness of, or mere sensitivity to, an object. When the physical factors of
experience--for example, the eyes and a visible object--come into contact, and when consciousness,
too, becomes associated with the material factors of experience, visual
consciousness arises. This is mere awareness of a visible object, not anything like what we would
normally call personal experience. Our everyday personal experience is produced
through the functioning of the other three major mental factors of experience:
the aggregate of feeling, the aggregate of perception, and the aggregate of volition,
or mental formation.
These three aggregates function to turn this mere awareness of the
object into personal experience.
The aggregate of feeling, or sensation, is of three kinds--pleasant,
unpleasant, and indifferent. When an object is experienced, that experience takes on
one of these emotive tones, either the tone of pleasure, the tone of displeasure, or the
tone of indifference. Let us look next at the aggregate of perception. This is an aggregate
that many people find difficult to understand. When we speak of perception, we have in
mind the activity of recognition, or identification. In a sense, we are talking about
attaching a name to an object of experience. The function of perception is to turn an
indefinite experience into an identifiable, recognizable one. Here we are speaking of the
formulation of a conception, or an idea, about a particular object. As with feeling, where we have
an emotive element in the form of pleasure, displeasure, or indifference, with
perception we have a conceptual element in the form of the introduction of a definite,
determinate idea about the object of experience.
Finally, there is the aggregate of volition, or mental formation,
which can be described as a conditioned response to the object of experience. In this sense it
partakes of the meaning of habit as well. We spent some time discussing volition in
Chapter 10, when we considered the twelve components of interdependent origination. You
will remember that we described volition as the impressions created by previous actions,
the habit energy stored up over the course of countless former lifetimes. Here, as one
of the five aggregates, volition plays a similar role. But volition has not only
a static value but also a dynamic value because, just as our present actions are conditioned by
past actions, so our responses here and now are motivated and directed in a particular way
by volition. Volition therefore has a moral dimension, just as perception has a
conceptual dimension and feeling has an emotive dimension.
You will notice that I have used the terms "volition" and
"mental formation" together. This is because each of these terms represents one half of the
meaning of the original term: mental formation represents the half that comes from the past,
and volition represents the half that functions here and now. Mental formation and
volition work together to determine our responses to the objects of experience, and
these responses have moral consequences in the form of wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral
effects. We can now see how the physical and mental factors of experience work
together to produce personal experience. To make this a little clearer, let us
say that you decide to take a walk in the garden. As you walk, your eyes come into contact
with a visible object. As your attention focuses on that object, your consciousness becomes
aware of a visible object which is as yet indeterminate. Your aggregate of perception
then identifies that visible object as, let us say, a snake. Once that happens, you
respond to the object with the aggregate of feeling-the feeling of displeasure. Finally, you
react to that visible object with the aggregate of volition, with the intentional action of
perhaps running away or picking up a stone.
In all our daily activities, we can see how the five aggregates work
together to produce personal experience. At this very moment, for instance, there is
contact between two elements of the aggregate of form--the letters on the page and your
eyes. Your consciousness becomes aware of the letters on the page. Your
aggregate of perception identifies the words that are written there. Your aggregate of
feeling produces an emotional response--pleasure, displeasure, or indifference. Your
aggregate of volition responds with a conditioned reaction--sitting at attention,
daydreaming, or perhaps yawning. We can analyze all our personal experience in terms of the
five aggregates. There is one point, however, that must be remembered about the nature
of the five aggregates, and that is that each of them is in constant change. The
elements that constitute the aggregate of form are impermanent and are in a state
of constant change. We discussed this in Chapter 11, when we noted that the body grows
old, weak, and sick, and that the things around us are also impermanent and constantly
changing. Our feelings, too, are constantly changing. Today we may respond to a
particular situation with a feeling of pleasure; tomorrow, with displeasure. Today we may
perceive an object in a particular way; later, under different circumstances, our
perceptions will change. In semidarkness, we perceive a rope to be a snake; the moment the light
of a torch falls on that object, we perceive it to be a rope.
Our perceptions, like our feelings and like the material objects of
our experience, are ever-changing and impermanent; so, too, are our volitional responses.
We can alter our habits. We can learn to be kind and compassionate. We can acquire the
attitudes of renunciation, equanimity, and so forth. Consciousness, too, is
impermanent and constantly changing. Consciousness arises dependent on an object and
a sense organ. It cannot exist independently. As we have seen, all the physical and
mental factors of our experience--like our bodies, the physical objects around us, our
minds, and our ideas-- are impermanent and constantly changing. All these aggregates are
constantly changing and impermanent. They are processes, not things. They are dynamic,
not static.
What is the use of this analysis of personal experience in terms of
the five aggregates? What is the use of this reduction of the apparent unity of personal
experience into the elements of form, feeling, perception, volition or mental formation,
and consciousness? The purpose is to create the wisdom of not-self. What we wish to
achieve is a way of experiencing the world that is not constructed on and around the idea
of a self. We want to see personal experience in terms of processes--in terms of
impersonal functions rather than in terms of a self and what affects a self--because this will
create an attitude of equanimity, which will help us overcome the emotional disturbances of
hope and fear about the things of the world.
We hope for happiness, we fear pain. We hope for praise, we fear
blame. We hope for gain, we fear loss. We hope for fame, we fear infamy. We live in a
state of alternate hope and fear. We experience these hopes and fears because we understand
happiness, pain, and so forth in terms of the self: we understand them as personal
happiness and pain, personal praise and blame, and so on. But once we understand them in
terms of impersonal processes, and once--through this understanding--we get
rid of the idea of a self, we can overcome hope and fear. We can regard happiness and
pain, praise and blame, and all the rest with equanimity, with even-mindedness. Only
then will we no longer be subject to the imbalance of alternating between hope and
fear.
