The field of sensory activities, grouped together under the heading "three categories" that make the world what it is:

Question

Gérard, could you explain what the five aggregates are?

Answer

Sentient beings are made up of a body and a mind. Buddhism divides the body and mind into five elements, generally translated as the 'five aggregates'. This is the harmonious and provisional association of the five elements that make us up. These are

1.       form, in other words the body, the material aspects

2.       perception, in other words impressions, sensations or simple feelings

3.       conceptualization, that is to say the image that comes to mind

4.       volition (or reaction), that is to say the voluntary act or impulsive desire and

5.       consciousness, which represents the activity of the mind that synthesizes the action of the mind. This is recognition, discrimination or conscious activity.

Within the five aggregates, form represents the physical, material aspect, while the other four elements make up the spirit part. These two dimensions are inseparable. Buddhism establishes the non-duality of body and mind.

The word form is a translation of the Sanskrit word 'Rupa', while the Chinese ideogram translating this word means 'color'. It therefore refers to what is visible, through shapes and colors.

The element 'form' is itself divided into 'inner form' and 'outer form'. Our five senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - which Buddhism calls the 'five roots', represent the inner form. The word 'root' is used because each of these five roots gives rise to a consciousness. The five categories of objects of perception - shapes and colors, sounds, scents and odors, tastes and touch - represent the outer form and are called the five objects or the five places.

The five roots are joined by a sixth, the root of consciousness. Its counterpart, as an object of perception, is phenomena. In its broad sense, the root of consciousness covers other consciousnesses, and in its restricted sense, it concerns the objects of consciousness that have no material form.

The Sutra of Flowery Ornamentation teaches:

"The mind never stops, manifesting all forms, Innumerable, inconceivably numerous, Unknown to each other. Just as a painter cannot know his own mind, but paints thanks to the mind, so is the nature of all things.

The mind is like a skilled painter, capable of painting the worlds: The five aggregates are all born of it; There is nothing it does not do.

(…)

If people know that the actions of the mind create all worlds, they will see the Buddha and understand the Buddha's true nature".

This passage clearly indicates that the phenomenal world is the product of our mind and does not exist outside it. The five aggregates, it should be remembered, are the five elements that constitute us: the shapes, sounds, smells and so on that we perceive, the way we interpret them, our reactions and the awareness we derive from them. They are called the five shadows because they hide the true aspect of things from us, or the five accumulations because their accumulation produces suffering.

The human being is effectively the receptacle of suffering because of his attachment to his body and his mind, through these five aggregates.

The proliferation of the five aggregates is also part of the eight fundamental sufferings that human beings endure. These eight sufferings are birth, old age, illness, death, the sufferings caused by separation from those or what we love, meeting those or what we hate, not getting what we want and the proliferation of the five aggregates.

The five aggregates are also one of the building blocks of the One Thought Three Thousand principle. They form part of the three domains which are the domain of beings and the domain of the five shadows, both of which form the retribution of the principal, to which is added the domain of the territory, representing the retribution of the support.

From this point of view too, since the five aggregates are included in a thought, it is obvious that the world that seems external to us is also an integral part of our mind.

The five aggregates we have just mentioned therefore constitute the distinction in five terms of all the constituent elements of the body and mind (all phenomena linked to the individual) and also of matter and mind (all inner and outer phenomena).