What are skhandas?

Answer 1

The five "skhandas" (Sanskrit) are the constituents of "self" in Buddhist theory. They are variously defined in English as "aggregates" , "heaps" or "bundles".

The five are:

form (physical form)

perception (sight, hearing, smelling, taste, touch and "consciousness")

feeling (positive, negative or neutral valuation of sense data)

mental formations ("thoughts")

consciousness (sometimes described as the "subconscious" but also perhaps referring to Cartesian apperception -- or reflection on self... "who" is it that observes: "Cogito ergo sum." / "I think therefore I am." (William James has also written on the notion of apperception and consciousness...)

In the oldest Pali texts, all five are consider "impermanent" , "unsatisfactory" and "not-self". Thus Buddhism does not posit a fixed and enduring self or soul.

In a famous parable from the "Questions of Milinda" a Buddhist practitioner explains to a king that the self can be understood by considering the flame of a lamp viewed at 10:00 and midnight and 2:00 -- energetically the same but not the same...

(The notion or "reincarnation" , "transmigration" or "rebirth" as a result of "karma" -- the law of cause and effect that operates in the realm of intentional human acts -- seems not entirely coherent without a definite entity (soul or self) to experience rebirth (a "retributed entity" ) -- though clearly all beings are the product of evolution from prior beings and thus have experienced -- in some sense -- "rebirth" -- and, by natural selection, are the result of some set of -- adaptive or maladaptive -- intentional acts occurring prior to conception... The question occurs, what or who is it that "migrates" ? -- conception itself is governed by natural selection and genetically some elements shaped by natural selection are heritable -- but in what sense does a self or soul migrate or reincarnate...?