In this chapter we will look at the teaching of the five aggregates--form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. In other words, we will look at the Buddhist analysis of personal experience, or the personality.

In the preceding chapters, I have several times had occasion to note that Buddhist teachings have been found relevant to modern life and thought in the fields of science, psychology, and so forth. This is also the case for the analysis of personal experience in terms of the five aggregates. Modern psychiatrists and psychologists have been particularly interested in this analysis. It has even been suggested that, in the analysis of personal experience in terms of the five aggregates, we have a psychological equivalent to the table of elements worked out in modern science--that is to say, a very careful inventory and evaluation of the elements of our experience.

The Samyutta Nikaya

The Grouped Discourses

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Samyutta Nikaya XXII.48

Khandha Sutta

Aggregates

Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu  

At Savatthi. There the Blessed One said, "Monks, I will teach you the five aggregates & the five aggregates of clinging/sustenance. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak." "As you say, lord," the monks responded. The Blessed One said, "Now what, monks, are the five aggregates?

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth

Translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera

Thus have I heard:

On one occasion the Blessed One was living in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers) near Varanasi (Benares). Then he addressed the group of five monks (bhikkhus):

"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, meditating deeply on Perfection of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aspects of human existence are empty*, and so released himself from suffering.  Answering the monk Sariputra, he said this:

Body is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than body.