Buddhism
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Also known as: aggregate, khandha
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
skandha, according to Buddhist thought, the five elements that sum up the whole of an individual’s mental and physical existence. The self (or soul) cannot be identified with any one of the parts, nor is it the total of the parts. They are: (1) matter, or body (rūpa), the manifest form of the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water; (2) sensations, or feelings (vedanā); (3) perceptions of sense objects (Sanskrit: saṃjñā; Pāli: saññā); (4) mental formations (saṃskāras/sankhāras); and (5) awareness, or consciousness, of the other three mental aggregates (vijñāna/viññāṇa). All individuals are subject to constant change, as the elements of consciousness are never the same, and man may be compared to a river, which retains an identity, though the drops of water that make it up are different from one moment to the next.
