Skandhas: The Five Aggregates Framework

Abhidharma psychology employs the skandhas as a comprehensive analytic framework for understanding how experience is constructed and why we suffer. Form includes body and physical phenomena; sensation provides the hedonic tone (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral); perception labels and categorizes experience; mental formations include volition, attention, and habit patterns; consciousness registers bare awareness. Patanjali's yoga practice directly engages this framework: asana and pranayama work with form, pratyahara develops sensation awareness, dharana and dhyana refine perception and mental formations, and samadhi realizes the nature of consciousness itself. Abhidharma extends this by analyzing how these aggregates interact at microsecond intervals, how karma flows through them, and precisely where in this process identification and non-identification occur. Mastering this framework allows practitioners to systematically disidentify from clinging and recognize the impersonal, conditioned nature of all experience.