A Buddhist Teaching: How The Reality Tunnel Maintains Itself

The Five Skandas

“Skanda” is a Buddhist term, which,

in translation, means “heap”, like,

agglomeration.  It is a model of how mind

recreates it’s reality tunnel constantly…

moment to moment.

There are five skandas. They work in sequence.

Form:  We perceive a shape, a form, real or abstract,

we notice it.

Feeling:  Like the Terminator, we sort our records

and try to identify the form as something we’ve seen

before, to know if it is a threat or not.

Perception:  We see the form clearly. It may be

something  we’ve seen  before or not.  If we have,

our feelings about it gain validity.

Concept:  If we haven’t seen the form before,

if we can’t pigeon hole it,  mind uses what skills

it has acquired over it’s development to come up

with an explanation.

Consciousness:  The original perception has either

been digested into the whologram of the landscape,
meaning the faith or acceptance of the reality tunnel,

or dismissed as irrelevant or threatening.

This process happens constantly in our minds....

many times a second..

I'm not sure why they're called "heaps".
My guess is it's hard for the mind to
keep up with all this crap.