SANKHARA NOTES
THE SELF-FABRICATOR
And why do you call them 'fabrications'? Because they fabricate fabricated things, thus they are called 'fabrications.'
What do they fabricate as a fabricated thing? For the sake of form-ness, they fabricate form as a fabricated thing. For
the sake of feeling-ness, they fabricate feeling as a fabricated thing. For the sake of perception-hood... For the sake of
fabrication-hood... For the sake of consciousness-hood, they fabricate consciousness as a fabricated thing. Because they
fabricate fabricated things, they are called fabrications. Khajjaniya Sutta (SN 22.79)translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu © 2001
The word sankhara has a lot of complexity. In the most fundamental way, it is translated as “fabrication”
or “concoction”, that is, as a noun. It can also be translated as a verb, “fabricating” or “concocting”. Another
way to translate it is as the “fabricator” or “concoctor”. It can also be understood as synonymous to the word
“kamma” (it has the same root word, “kara”-see quote below). It is also is frequently referred to as having the
same function as “cetana”, volition. Finally, it can be understood as synonymous with the process called
“papanca”, translated as “proliferation”, or “expansive elaboration”, meaning the way the mind concocts an
internal narrative and response to an initial perception.
Bhikkhu Bodhi, the well-respected contemporary commenter on Buddhism, supplies this definition to the
word:
The word sankhara is derived from the prefix san (pronounced samng), meaning “together,”
joined to the noun kara, “doing, making.” Sankhara are thus “co-doings,” things that act in
concert with other things, or things that are made by a combination of other things. BPS “Anicca
Vata Sankhara”, 1999
Sankhara appears as a concept in different contexts in Buddhist psychology. In the Five Aggregates
(pancakkhanda), it represents one aspect of how the personality is organized. The aggregates are form,
feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness. In this regard, sankhara represents the “memory
storehouse” of assumptions, attitudes, strategies, and associated memories, etc. that co-occur with feeling
and perception, processing form (sensory input), reflected in consciousness.
In the process of Contingent Provisional Emergence (paticcasammupada), sankhara is the dynamic activity
of influencing feeling and perception, rather than the latent storehouse of memories. Here are the 12 links of
the traditional concept:
1. Ignorance regarding the impermanent and fabricated nature of reality,
2. Sankharas/cetasikas fabricate transient misrepresentations of reality that we call “ego”.
3. This process stimulates the mind, biasing conscious awareness to reflect reality inaccurately.
4. This inaccuracy blends the raw input sensory data with the fabricated process that unwholesome
sankhara develops (this is the stage called “name and form”).
5. All of the “six sense bases” are subjected to this biasing (the sixth sense base is the mind/sense of
self/memory).
6. This arrangement is affected by sensory stimulation (this stage is called “contact”).
7. The initial impression created through contact is feeling
8. As a result of the biasing and misperception, feeling quickly morphs into craving. Craving is a felt
sense of urgency, either pleasantly attractive, unpleasantly unattractive, or neutral.
9. Craving is intimately associated with clinging. Clinging represents the “solidifying” of the ongoing
process of misperception into a more or less coherent internal narrative. The “solidifying” becomes
out of synchrony with the ongoing cascade of new sensory input. In effect, the process is
“enchanted” by the fabrication, more or less disregarding the fresh input.
10. The next link is “Becoming”, that is, the movement toward acting as a consequence of craving and
clinging.
11. The next link is the fruition or peak moment of becoming, called “Birth”.
12. Since reality is in a constant state of more or less rapid flux, that “birth” is followed immediately by
“Death”, the completion of the process. As it is actually experienced subjectively, the transition
from birth to death is blended, so that the untrained mind continues to be invested in craving and
clinging, through the ongoing dynamics of ignorance and mental fabrication.
Sankhara also represents the “coming together” aspect of the accumulated mental elements (cetasikas) of
Buddhist Abhidhamma, the psychology of the mind. In this respect, it is synonymous functionally with cetana,
usually translated as “volition”.
I understand the function of cetana/sankhara as quite similar to the Freudian concept called “ego”. We
usually think of ego as a thing that we possess, “my ego”. I think of ego as a function or process, whereby the
data input from the sense doors is sorted through, prior to conscious awareness, in order to create meaning
from the input. In this way, the elements available to the mind (cetasikas), are influenced through prior
conditioning (cetana/sankhara/kamma), to produce a more or less coherent and useful, though momentary,
sense of self (I call this “selfing”). An important element of the conditioning is the degree of emotional
potency associated with the memory, combined with how often the associations have been reinforced
through repeated activation.
SANKHARA/SANKHARIZING
DATA SOURCE
Eyes
Ears
FEELINGS
PERCEPTIONS
CETASIKAS
UNIVERSAL or
PARTICULAR
WHOLESOME
VOLITION
FREEDOM
FROM
SUFFERING
UNWHOLESOME
VOLITION
SUFFERING
Nose
Tongue
Somatosensory
array
karmic choice
The actions
of sankhara/kamma manifest in three ways: in terms of formLine
(theofphysical
world, including the
cognition
way the body functions), narrative (the process of feeling and perceiving), and mental fabrications (thoughts,
emotions, moods, plans, images, etc.). Regarding narrative and mental fabrications, the outcome produces
either suffering or freedom from suffering, depending upon whether wholesome or unwholesome cetasikas
condition cetana.
Here’s another quote from Bhikkhu Bodhi, from the same source material:
A second major domain where the word sankhara applies is among the five aggregates. The fourth
aggregate is the sankharakkhandha, the aggregate of volitional formations. The texts define the
sankharakkhandha as the six classes of volition (cetanakaya): volition regarding forms, sounds, smells,
tastes, tactile objects, and ideas. Though these sankhara correspond closely to those in the formula of
dependent origination, the two are not in all respects the same, for the sankharakkhandha has a wider
range. The aggregate of volitional formations comprises all kinds of volition. It includes not merely those
that are kammically potent, but also those that are kammic results and those that are kammically
inoperative. In the later Pali literature the sankharakkhandha becomes an umbrella
category for all the factors of mind except feeling and perception, which are assigned to aggregates of
their own. Thus the sankharakkhandha comes to include such ethically variable factors as contact,
attention, thought, and energy; such wholesome factors as generosity, kindness, and wisdom; and such
unwholesome factors as greed, hatred, and delusion. Since all these factors arise in conjunction with
volition and participate in volitional activity, the early Buddhist teachers decided that the most fitting
place to assign them is the aggregate of volitional formations.
What’s to be done regarding the sankhara? As regards the Five Aggregates, the practice is to be mindful (which is,
by the way, a fabrication!) of the emerging “selfing story” as a fabrication, not as a self. Technically, noting the
emergence of a conditioner is part of the practice of Contingent Provisional Emergence, and to avoid craving and
clinging to the fabrication. As this is cultivated and proficiency is developed, the enchantment of selfing is diminished in
the capacity to control thoughts and actions. This is the process of awakening!
I hope this is beneficial to you.
Peter