by Ogo A. Bellard

Created on: August 14, 2007

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."-SB

The concept, experience and understanding of the individual are paramount in Buddhist teachings. The illusory concept of a permanent self is called Ignorance in Buddhism. One of the teachings of Buddha featured a way to fully comprehend what the individual is and why we experience an illusion of self, they are the Five Skandha's. These are five ways to recognise, understand and realise the true reality of the individual, ego or I.

We all tend to think of ourselves as solid individual minds, but if we look closer we find that we are not solid at all; our thoughts and feelings are in a constant state of change in relation to our current and past experiences. For example; you wake up after a good nights sleep, happy ready for action. Yet when you go to work you step into a deep puddle, now you are angry, annoyed and the world doesn't seem so happy any more. But you manage to get to work early and the top boss sees this and commends your work ethic, now you are happy again and the world seems brighter and full of promise. You sit down at your desk and find a letter of job termination, you are now very unhappy, angry and scared, but you check your emails and have a better paying job offer somewhere else, etc.

This demonstrates the state of constant change and how we are trapped in a delusional world of cause and effect, yet we still insist that we ourselves and the world around us are solid and non-changing. These states of body and mind are called Skandha's and they are interconnected each proceeding Skandha is dependant on the last.

The first Skandha is Form, this represents all our five sense and what they perceive as a fixed reality. There are five sense faculties; eye, ear, nose, tongue and touch, the objects of these faculties are sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensation. There are also imperceptible forms which cannot be physically sensed; atomic form, imagined form and unapparent form.

The senses and their objects are all combinations of elements. Because they all share these elements they are able to interact with each other and this interaction gives us the Skandha of apparent Form. This illusion granted by our senses or rather our ignorant interpretation of our sensing is what forms the base or bedrock of our, I or ego. If we can feel the wind and taste the apples, then surely we must be solid individual entities like the ground we stand on or the tree

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