Skandha

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The skandhas (Sanskrit: Pāli: Khandha; literally: "heap" or "bundle") are the five aggregates through which the functioning and experience of an individual is created according to Buddhist phenomenology. They are:

rūpa, "form", the body:
all physical and material objects. (Including the six sense organs and their objects - 18 Dhatus).
vedanā, "sensation" or feeling (NOT emotion):
pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
saṃjñā, "perception" or "cognition":
registers whether sense data is recognised or not (ie sound of a bell or shape of a tree).
saṃskāra, "mental formations", "volition":
all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, compulsions, and decisions. Saṃskāras are the source of karma.
vijñāna, "consciousness":
conscious base that support all experience. (ie not asleep, knocked out or unconscious).

The five Skandha are a fundamental Buddhist concept and play an important part in Buddhist doctrine. For it is through the five Skandha that the world (Samsara) is experienced, and nothing is experienced apart from the five Skandha. Furthermore it is through the five Skandha that clinging (Upadana) occur and through the five Skandha that suffering (Duhkha) arises.

Buddhist doctrine describes one physical and four mental skandha, which conveys the relative experience of the world by an individual. The order of the skandha is important, as the latter are dependent on all the former. So, for a given experience, in order for the fifth Skandha (consciousness) to be present, all the previous four need to be present also. ie Consciousness cannot exist without a body. Likewise, for the fourth skandha (volition) to be present, all the previous three need to be present. ie Volition cannot exist without feeling. Something must be felt as pleasant before the volition to experience more of it. Or something must be felt as unpleasant before the volition to experience no more of it.

The Heart Sutra, an important Mahayana text, contains an extended elucidation on the emptiness of the five Skandhas.

Excerpt:

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The same applies to sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness."

We can see in sutra form, an expounding of the Buddha's doctrine of Anatman (No-self, No-I). Here the doctrine of the Five Skandha supports the concept of Anatman. For if there is "No-self", "No-I", then what experiences? The answer lies in the five Skandha.

The eighteen Dhatus function through the five Skandha. The dhatus make up the triads of: sense organ, sense object and sense consciousness.

According to Chogyam Trungpa (1976, p.20-22), the five skandhas are "a set of Buddhist concepts which describe experience as a five-step process" and that "the whole development of the five skandhas...is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality," while "the practice of meditation is to see the transparency of this shield." (ibid, p.23)

References

Trungpa, Chogyam (1976). The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Boulder: Shambhala. ISBN 0877730849.
Epstein, Mark (1995). Thoughts Without a Thinker. BasicBoooks. ISBN 0465039316.