THE FIVE AGGREGATES

　　This is the last in the series of twelve sessions that we have spent together, and in this last session we are going to look at the teaching of the five aggregates (Skandhas): Rupa, Vedana, Samjna, Samskara and Vijnana. In other words, we are going to look at the Buddhist analysis of personal experience or the Buddhist analysis of the personality.

　　Throughout the last lectures, I have had occasions a number of times to make the point that Buddhist teachings have been found relevant to modern life and thought in the fields of science, psychology and so forth. Here, in regard to the analysis of personal experience into the five aggregates, this is also the case. Modern psychologists and psychiatrists have been particularly interested in this analysis. It has even been suggested that in the Abhidharma and in the analysis of personal experience into the five aggregates, we have a psychological equivalent to the table of elements worked out in modern science. What we have in the Buddhist analysis of personal experience is a very careful inventory and evaluation of the elements of our experience.

　　What we are going to do today is basically an extension and a refinement of what we were doing at the end of last week”s lecture. There, we spent some time on the teachings of impermanence, suffering and notself. In the course of looking at the teaching on not-self, we have explored briefly how the analysis of personal experience can be carried out along two lines, and that is with regard to the body, and with regard to the mind. You will recall that we have examined the body and mind to see whether in either of them we can locate the self, and we have found that the self is not to be found in either of them. We have concluded that the name “self” is just a convenient term for a collection of physical and mental factors, in the same way that the name “forest” is just a convenient term for a collection of trees. This week, we are going to take our analysis still further, and rather than looking at personal experience simply in terms of body and mind, we are going to analyze personal experience in terms of the five aggregates.

　　Let us first look at the aggregate of matter or form (Rupa). The aggregate of form corresponds to what we would call material or physical factors. It includes not only our own bodies, but also the material objects that surround us - the earth, the oceans, the trees, the buildings, and so forth. Specifically, the aggregate of form includes the five physical sense organs and the corresponding physical objects of the sense organs. These are the eyes and visible objects, the ears and sound, the nose and smell, the tongue and taste, and the skin and tangible objects.

　　But physical elements by themselves are not enough to produce experience. The simple contact between the eyes and visible objects, or between the ears and sound cannot result in experience without consciousness (Vijnana). The eyes can be in conjunction with the visible object indefinitely without producing experience. The ears too can be exposed to sound indefinitely without producing experience. Only the co-presence of consciousness together with the sense organ and the object of the sense organ produces experience. In other words, it is when the eyes, the visible object and consciousness come together that the experience of a visible object is 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 sk…

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