Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence - the Five Skandhas:Wesley1982 wrote:The whole body as an individual makes up your "self" as a person.justsit wrote:Is the whole body the self? Or just part of it? What part?
Is it in the arm? the feet? or??
Form, Sensation, Perception, Mental formations, and Consciousness.
What's most important to understand about the skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities
that an individual possesses, because there is no-self possessing them. This doctrine of no-self is called
anatman or anatta.
Basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self,
or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas. Buddha taught
that if we can see through the delusion of the individual "self," we experience that which is not subject to birth and death.