The Five Skandhas: Fabrications

Samskara skandha, the fourth aggregate, means “conditioned things,” “mental” or “volitional formations,” “dispositions,” or “fabrications,” which highlights the willful quality of suffering. Skandhas show us that suffering doesn’t just happen to us but is the product of the stories we make up. When I experience the first skandha, form—a look from a stranger, say—that sensory contact simultaneously gives rise to the second skandha as an unpleasant sensation in my chest. The third skandha, conception, identifies this form based on its qualities (“stranger,” “funny look”), and consciousness, the fifth skandha, apprehends it through the sense of sight in conjunction with its corresponding object (look). But it’s samskara that distinguishes this look from any other and constructs a story based on my previous impressions and habits. Maybe, because of my history, I interpret the look as dismissive and get angry in response.

Fabrications are the reason we see things not as they are but as we are, and reliably, the result is more suffering. But note that samskara are volitional, which means I can choose to act differently in response to what I perceive. I can choose attention and mindfulness—also samskara—to see the situation more clearly and notice that the stranger wasn’t looking at me at all—that it was all a story and that, to be free, I can let it go.

Tip: Remember that fabrications are not a problem; it’s the way they color our experience that creates suffering. But faith, determination, wisdom, and tranquility are all samskara, so we can always train ourselves to use them to see things as they really are.

“What we have experienced in the past is filtered through the way we look at things now, our dispositions (samskara). That is why conceptual thought will not allow us to see things anew. If we want to experience things as they are, conceptual thinking about those things must come to an end.”

–Bhante Bodhidhamma

“The behaviors we adopt and the goals we pursue take root in the psyche. They affect the ways we interpret experience, and these ways constitute who we are. Doer and deed co-arise. Hence, our continuity of character, bearing the stamp of repeated choice and habit. Hence, also our freedom, for new options arise with each present act of will.”

–Joanna Macy

Tip: No matter how strong a habit, how convincing a story, it is neither lasting nor fixed. Everything that’s created can be not created or created differently. Everything that’s created will also end. Remind yourself of this when ensnared in a story, or when in the throes of a painful mental formation like shame or arrogance or doubt.

 “Behold now, monks: All compounded things (samskara) are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!”

–The Buddha

♦

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of our series on the five skandhas: form, sensation, conception, fabrications, and consciousness.