Five Skandhas Buddhists do not accept the existence of a soul, some unchanging thing that is somehow “the essence” of a person. Instead they see a human being as a composite of five skandhas. The word skandha literally means “heap.” Imagine a heap of junk: take away all the individual pieces of junk that make up the heap, and the heap is gone. There is no “heap essence” or “heap soul” aside from the pieces of junk on the heap. In Buddhism, the five “heaps” that make up a person are these: form, feelings, perceptions, impulses toward actions (and the actions themselves), and consciousness.
