5 aggregates Flashcards
(6 cards)
What is sensation
These are the feelings you get from your body or mind.
Every experience gives a feeling: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Feelings happen when your senses meet the outside world.
Example: Feeling happy when hearing music or pain from a cut.
What is perception
This is your ability to recognise and understand what you’re experiencing.
It’s how your brain labels things based on past experience.
Example: Seeing a red fruit and knowing it’s an apple.
Mental formations
These are your thoughts, intentions, and habits.
It includes how you react, your personality, and decisions you make.
It’s what drives your actions and can affect your karma.
Example: Choosing to help someone, or your tendency to be kind or angry.
What is form
This is the physical stuff — your body and all physical things.
It includes your organs, bones, skin, and the material world.
It’s about what you can touch and see.
Example: Your hand, a cup, the earth.
what is consciousness
This is awareness — knowing that something is happening.
It’s not thinking — it’s more like the basic awareness through your senses (seeing, hearing, etc.).
Example: Hearing a noise and being aware of it, before you think about what it is.
What are the 5 aggregates
The Five Aggregates in Buddhism are the parts that make up a person. Form is the physical body and objects, sensation is the feeling we get from experiences, and perception is how we recognise and understand things. Mental formations include thoughts, emotions, and intentions, while consciousness is our basic awareness through the senses. Together, they show that there is no fixed self, supporting the idea of anatta.
