For many of us, our bodies can be a painful and confusing place because our feelings reside there, according to the Buddhist understanding. The Buddha did not break up human experience into a simple duality of the psyche (immaterial) and physical (material). Rather, he taught that our experiences can be classified into five categories called the skandhas, or aggregates: form, meaning the physical world; sensation; our perception of those sensations; mental formations or actions; and consciousness. In this framework, an emotion is not a singular cognitive event, but rather a series of dependently arising phenomena that the mind perceives and mistakes to be independent.

For many of us, our bodies can be a painful and confusing place because our feelings reside there, according to the Buddhist understanding. The Buddha did not break up human experience into a simple duality of the psyche (immaterial) and physical (material). Rather, he taught that our experiences can be classified into five categories called the skandhas, or aggregates: form, meaning the physical world; sensation; our perception of those sensations; mental formations or actions; and consciousness. In this framework, an emotion is not a singular cognitive event, but rather a series of dependently arising phenomena that the mind perceives and mistakes to be independent.