Five aggregates
Form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness, and the distinction between aggregates and clinging.
What the five names mean · SN 22.56 and SN 22.79
SN 22.48 groups experience as form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. Each category includes past, present and future instances, internal or external, near or far. SN 22.56 and SN 22.79 explain the five names:
- Form · rūpa
- The four great elements and material form derived from them.
- Feeling · vedanā
- Pleasant, painful or neutral feeling. SN 22.56 describes feeling arising through contact at each of the six senses.
- Perception · saññā
- SN 22.79 illustrates perception through perceiving colors. SN 22.56 distinguishes perception of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and mental objects.
- Formations · saṅkhārā
- Also translated as fabrications or choices. SN 22.56 explains this aggregate through six classes of intention directed toward the objects of the senses.
- Consciousness · viññāṇa
- Consciousness through the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
SN 22.56 · The Fourfold Round · SN 22.79 · Being Chewed Up · Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Aggregates and clinging · SN 22.48 and MN 44
SN 22.48 distinguishes aggregates from clinging-aggregates: the latter are associated with the effluents and subject to appropriation. In MN 44, Dhammadinnā explains that clinging is neither identical to the five clinging-aggregates nor entirely separate from them. Desire and passion concerning them constitutes the clinging.
Her account connects self-identification with craving, and its cessation with relinquishing craving through the Eightfold Path.
SN 22.48 · Aggregates · Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu · The Shorter Elaboration · MN 44
Examining them as not-self · SN 22.59
The Buddha examines each aggregate through its vulnerability to affliction, its resistance to complete control and its impermanence. He asks whether something changing and stressful is fitting to regard as oneself or one’s possession.
The instruction is to relinquish identification with every instance of each aggregate. The discourse connects this understanding with disenchantment, dispassion and release.
Five images for investigation · SN 22.95
Form is compared to foam, feeling to a bubble, perception to a mirage, formations to a banana trunk and consciousness to a conjuring trick. Each image accompanies careful examination that finds no dependable substance to grasp.
These are the discourse’s contemplative comparisons, directed toward disenchantment and release.
Related reading & terminology
The summaries follow the linked discourses. “Formations,” “fabrications” and “choices” are translation choices for saṅkhārā. The same term appears in different classifications; MN 44 also uses “mental fabrication” for feeling and perception in another context.