Four Foundations: Mindful of The Five Skandhas

This mindfulness teaching helps us study our human tendency to develop and cling to a separate self, the source of much suffering. In the classical teachings, we humans interpret our experience through the simultaneous workings of body (senses and sense objects), feeling tone (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral), perception (labels, expectations), mental formations (decisions based on impulse, past conditioning, mind-states, narrative), and consciousness (simple awareness). Observing these skandhas loosens our identification with those aspects of self we grasp so tightly.