By Victor M Fontane
We can define Abhidharma then as the law or “isness” of things. Its whole contents with all the details, is based on the point of view of egolessness. meaning the absent of ego itself but also the absence of the projections of ego.
Skandhas (the “heaps” of our basic being or the five aggregates):Form
According to abhidharma, ego consists, in one of its aspects, of eight kinds of consciousness. The Eight Consciousnesses is a classification developed in the tradition of the Yogācāra school of Mahayana Buddhism. They are the consciousnesses of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch, mind, manas and store. These consciousnesses are always in flux and flowing with countless input and output happening at each and every moment. In other words are Eight kinds of discernment: (1) sight-consciousness, (2) hearing-consciousness, (3) smell-consciousness, (4) taste-consciousness, (5) touch-consciousness, (6) mind-consciousness, (7) mano-consciousness, and (8) ālaya-consciousness. There are six sense consciousness, a seventh which has the nature of ignorance, cloudiness, confusion; a seventh consciousness which is an absence of precision and the eight what we can called the common ground or the unconscious ground of all of them. It is the one that makes it possible for all the other seven to operate.
Feeling this aggregate of feelings is the way in which we experience the ripening of our karmic potential . It's how we experience objects and things, either physical or mental. This development of relating to things in terms of positive or negative value is an extension of the basic pattern of ego stablished by form. Feeling in this sense is something much more fundamental than just pure sensation. All kind of concepts develop on the basis of felling’s basic dualism. Fundamentally it is of the nature of positive and negative, but feeling also has the third possibility of indifference. Perception Feeling: relating process then consists of extremes, of polarities, dichotomies. Feelings cannot be developed unless there are two extremes of some kind. Following from that, because of having some sense of taking sides with this extreme as opposed to that extreme, the subtleties of feeling have a solid, grasping quality in dealing with the projection of the world outside, rather than responding purely and directly. Perception is based on that which is manifested by form and feeling and that which is not manifested by them.
Mental Formations: This includes all our mental activities, including thoughts, emotions (like anger, worry, fear, joy, envy, jealousy, etc), attitudes, intentions, and habitual tendencies. According to Theravada tradition there are 52 mental formations.
Consciousness: Consciousness is the subjective knowledge that arises in recognition of the other four skandhas. Simply put, this is your awareness of skandhas one through four.
Like all conditioned or compound phenomena, the five skandhas are impermanent and subject to change and decay. Understanding the nature of the aggregates helps us to realize the insubstantial and impermanent nature of the self and leads to the insight of no self (anatta), which is the foundation of the Buddhist path to liberation.
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