Traditional Buddhist teachings point to the Five Skandhas, or “heaps” as the most elemental or essential aspects of who we are. The Skandhas are: Form, Feelings, Perceptions, Intention, and Consciousness. The Five Skandhas have served as an essential template for Buddhist teaching for centuries, the basis for countless commentaries and Insights, like an evolving spiritual genome of our humanity. For this conversation The Five Skandas are being viewed as The Five Innate Elements, they are: Life, Cognizance, Virtue, Intention, and Awareness. The Skanda of Form is interpreted here as Life, which means to include all forms of Life generally and human Life in particular. Both Feelings & Perceptions are interpreted as Cognizance which includes all mental concepts and images. The brain is essentially the conceptual organ of the body, just as the heart is the circulatory organ and the lungs the respiratory organs of the body, the brain processes all perceptual data as sensory, emotional, and cognitive concepts. Consciousness is the Absolute nature of everything in multiverse, and Awareness, the individuated quality of Consciousness, our Absolute nature. The fifth Element is Virtue, the Relative nature of all organisms.
The Five Elements are a means to view the esoteric, physiological, and psychological fabric of our humanity in the context of contemplative tradition and contemporary neuro-science, a delineated and integrated and interdependent psychology prior to any limiting conditional constructions from Life experiences. Each Element is perfect, their integrity with each other is perfect, and the result, our humanity, is perfect.
