Five Skandhas

The Five Skandhas are like five pieces of cake that make up a bigger cake called a person. These five pieces of cake help us understand what we are made of and how we experience the world around us.

The first piece of cake is called Form. This means our physical body, like our arms and legs, our eyes and ears, our nose and mouth, and everything that we can touch and feel.

The second piece of cake is called Feeling. This means how we experience things, like when we feel happy, sad, angry, or scared. Sometimes we feel things in our body, like when we get butterflies in our stomach, or our heart beats faster.

The third piece of cake is called Perception. This means how we understand things, like when we recognize a dog versus a cat. Perception helps us understand what is happening around us.

The fourth piece of cake is called Mental Formation. This means all the things we think about, like our thoughts and ideas. We can imagine things that are not real or we can remember things that happened in the past.

The fifth and final piece of cake is called Consciousness. This means our overall awareness of everything happening around us. It helps us experience and understand the world around us through our five senses.

Together, these five skandhas make up who we are, but we must remember that just like how we can take apart a cake and look at each piece separately, we must also remember that these skandhas are not permanent and can change over time.