Skandha is another of those untranslated terms and#8211; it literally means a trunk of a tree! In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte Sangharakshita offers his understanding of the and#8220;The Five Skandhas.and#8221; From the inspiring talk, and#8220;The Awakening of the Bodhi Heartand#8221;, from the 1969 series and#8220;Aspects of the Bodhisattva Ideal.and#8221;
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The Five Skandhas
[Music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] Some of you might not have encountered these five scundas before. Scunda is another of those untranslatable terms. It usually is translated as aggregate, or confection, or something equally unsatisfactory. It's really untranslatable. It literally means a trunk of a tree. But that doesn't get us very far, does it? But the five scundas are one of the basic Buddhist doctrinal categories. Whether it's Pāli literature, Sanskrit literature, Tibetan, Chinese, over and over again. You get references to the five scundas, the five aggregates, or as Dr. Kondha delights to translate to the term, the five heaps. It doesn't help us very much either. So what are these five scundas? Let's refer back to them a little so that we're quite sure where we are and what we're dealing with, and what we're trying to ponder on. The five scundas are, first of all, rupa. Rupa means bodily form. In modern Hindi, it means beauty, but it's also neither here nor there. Simply bodily form, anything perceived through the senses. And secondly, faitanā. Faitanā means feeling. It means emotional, positive, negative, pleasant, painful, and so on. Thirdly, the sannyā, which is very roughly, very roughly, indeed, perception. Sometimes translated as sensation, but it seems that sensation is a more suitable translation for a faitanā. So sannyā is perception, the recognition of something as that particular thing. When you say, "Oh, that's a cloth, that's sannyā," you recognize it as this particular thing. You identified it, pointed it out, labeled it, and so on. Fourthly, the sannyā. More and more untranslatable, usually translated by some German scholar steering forces, but we may say very roughly, indeed, volitional activities, acts of will, and so on. And fifthly, vignana, or consciousness. Consciousness through the five physical senses, through the mind, at various levels, and so on. So these are the five scumtas. Rupa, material form, faitanā, feeling, emotion, sannyā, perception, sanskāras, volitional activities, vignana, consciousness. And I must warn you that if you want to make anything of Buddhist thought at all, especially on its more technical side, its philosophy, its metaphysics, you must know these five off like that. Rupa, vignana, and so on. You must be able to reel them off and know what you're talking about. Otherwise, you don't get very far with Buddhist philosophy. Now, we're not dealing now so much with Buddhist philosophy. This is just by the way, but we may say that in Buddhist thought, generally speaking, these five, these five scumtas are regarded as exhausting our entire psychophysical existence. In the entire range of our psychophysical existence on all levels, there's nothing. No thought, no feeling, no aspect of our physical existence, which does not fall under, which is not included in one or another, of these five scumtas, these five abrogates, these five heaps. And this is why at the very beginning of the harpsutra, what does it say? What does the text say? That the bodhisattva awloka-jeshvara, coursing in the profound perfection of wisdom, looked down, looked down on the word, looked down on conditioned existence, and saw five heaps, five scumtas. That's just what he saw, no more than that. He saw that the whole of conditioned existence, psychophysical conditioned existence, consists of just these five things, that nothing occurs, nothing takes place. Nothing exists on the conditioned level of existence, the Sanskrita level, which is not includeable under one or another of these five scumtas. We hope you enjoy the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]