Fourth Skhanda

Jeffrey

I find it confusing to understand the fourth skhanda. I have heard it as formations and volition. Those seem quite different. Volitions would be things you crave or are averse to. Formations would be beliefs, sounds like. I wonder if anyone else wants to guess about this or even is there someone in fact who can show or teach what the fourth skhanda is?

FullCircle

I posted the same question one time- that fourth aggregate has always confused me too. I heard a monk one time call it karma. I think songhill or prairie ghost said they think of it as the 'doing' aggregate and however they put it- it made sense - maybe I can find the post...

Jeffrey

Is it kinda the 'story lines'? Like your dog is barking and then a story of resentment comes up? Or it is cold and then you tell this story of how much winter will be dreary. Or you have a hot cup of coffee and you are pleased but expecting a hang over when the cup empties?

Just guessing.

sova

So, the 5 skandhas or aggregates or heaps are

form
perception
feeling
mental fermentations / fabrications
consciousness[es]

I don't know which tradition you follow, as modern day embodiments of the teachings might explain these things in different terms, but you can check out this awesome write-up

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/khandha.html

Especially this
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/khandha.html#passage-52


A professional jogger might tell you that running is a controlled fall,



I recently read "karma" rendered as "evolutionary momentum" which I think is a very suitable name. It can be focused and directed toward liberation via the Buddhist path

mental formations also have momentum



you know, sit on it.. in stocking a grocery store the largest challenge is simply knowing where to put things

PrairieGhost

Fermentations and volition could be seen as the tangles and snags a tailor makes when learning to sew.

Jeffrey

So it is like ripples coming from a lack of skill and prajna (or even vjnana)?

taiyaki

Actions of body, speech and mind triggered by an assumed object?

oceancaldera207

taiyaki said:

Actions of body, speech and mind triggered by an assumed object?

This is how I always took it. in a very deep rooted sense.

driedleaf

Maybe it can be called a karma kitchen, or as it is pictured in the wheel of life, a pottery wherehouse, whereby the potteries would be karma. Perhaps it is different from karma, perhaps one in the same. I guess some would just suggest not to dwell on it, and that it is not ours. Perhaps that is one way to approach it. Either way, meditation may help uncover it.

sova

oceancaldera207 said:

taiyaki said:

Actions of body, speech and mind triggered by an assumed object?

This is how I always took it. in a very deep rooted sense.

well said

pegembara

Ear + sounds + ear consciousness
The meeting of the 3 is contact.

Contact gives rise to feeling....to perception .... to formations. Consciousness, feeling and perception arise nearly instantaneously. All that comes after are formations ie. intention, thoughts, emotions etc.

PrairieGhost

Jeffrey:

So it is like ripples coming from a lack of skill and prajna (or even vjnana)?

Or more prosaically, it's when we aren't sure of ourselves.

Citta

Sometimes it can be useful to compare and contrast a system with one that compliments or stands outside it. To that end it might be instructive to research the Five Lights of Dzogchen, and the modifications of Vayu.

Cinorjer

That fourth skandha is a puzzler, isn't it? I've heard it translated a lot of different ways. As habits, as volition, as willpower. As the tendency to act.

Eventually, one Teacher explained it best to me, I think, by saying we'd be best translating it as personality. Are you shy, or a risk taker, proud, humble, reluctant to try new things, an introverted bookworm or outgoing party animal? Your personality effects how you react to any situation more than the other skandhas.

Think about it. Given the same emotions, about the same form (physical inherited characteristics) and the same situation as we perceive it to be, then what determines how we act in any situation? Two men walk into a bar, see a woman by herself, and both feel the form skandha as nature wants to merge male and female. The emotions are pleasure from anticipation of a drink and conscious of perhaps even more pleasure later, mixed with a bit of fear that the woman won't accept his advances and he'll get shot down. Both men have memories of a woman refusing their advances.

Yet one man sits and glances at the woman once in a while, never getting up the nerve to actually ask her to dance or buy her a drink, while the other man zooms in and introduces himself.

Both men have the same situation, but different actions. The difference is in the fourth skandha, the willingness to act or not. Volition. Personality, if you will. One man is outgoing, a risk taker, while the other man is shy and unsure of himself so is unable to act in spite of his desire.

And personality seems to be something formed early in life. It can also be changed, although not easily, by a deliberate act of will if we see it as something under the control of our mind instead of something that controls who we are.

Citta

IMO It is important to remind ourselves that the skandhas are not " things"..they are faulty perceptions. Although faulty they function in predictable ways...they come with the human territory. They arise with certain conditions and cease to arise when those conditions are no longer present.

DairyLama

Jeffrey said:

I wonder if anyone else wants to guess about this or even is there someone in fact who can show or teach what the fourth skhanda is?

The 4th skhanda is basically a catch-all for all mental phenomena that are not consciousness, feeling or perception. It's essentially the internal world that we create for ourselves.

Cinorjer

PedanticPorpoise said:

Jeffrey said:

I wonder if anyone else wants to guess about this or even is there someone in fact who can show or teach what the fourth skhanda is?

The 4th skhanda is basically a catch-all for all mental phenomena that are not consciousness, feeling or perception. It's essentially the internal world that we create for ourselves.

That's pretty good. We all have an entire internal world inside our minds, a paradigm or map if you will of the world as we expect it to be. When confronted with something, we reach to the map and pull out a label that tells us how to act and think about the situation.