A 'person' can be described as a number of phenomena into a single working unit. In Western philosophy, one usually refers to Body, Mind and (sometimes) Soul or Spirit. In Buddhism, the Five Aggregates (Skandhas in Skt.) are used to analyse a person. Please note that the terminology can be confusing, as e.g. the term 'Feeling' refers to something very specific here: :
1. Form - the body (rupa Skt.)
2. Primary Consciousness or Perception- the five sense consciousnesses (smell, touch, taste, seeing and hearing) and mental consciousness, in other words, direct perception (samjna Skt.)
3. Feeling - this refers only to the mental separation of perceptions into pleasant, unpleasant and neutral (nothing more). (vedana in Skt.)
4. Recognition, Consciousness, Discrimination or Distinguishing Awareness - in many ways similar to the discriminating intellect which makes us realise the difference between a chair and a flower. (vijnana in Skt.)
5. Compositional Factors, Volition - these are all other remaining mental processes, in general "thoughts". (samskara Skt.)
To begin with, it is interesting to see that four out of five aggregates are concerning the mind, and they do not directly correspond to the divisions made in Western psychology at all. Furthermore, the distinctions in Buddhist psychology are made from the point of view of how to obtain liberation and buddhahood; certainly not to figure out how 'the brain works'.
Simply said, in Buddhism, the brain is regarded as a part of the body where many of the instructions of the mind are led to the other parts of the body, it is not regarded as the 'factory of thoughts'; thoughts are purely a function of the (non-physical) mind.
"From contact comes feeling.
From feeling comes reaction.
This is what keeps us in the cycle of birth and death.
Our reactions to our feelings are our passport to rebirth."
Ayya Khema
To use a simple example of how this works, let's say: something touches our hand:
- This is physical contact, and (as we know from Western science) our nerve cells pick up the movement of the skin, and translate it into energy (more subtle part of the Body).
- This energy is then picked up by Primary Consciousness/Perception, which is an aspect of the mind, in Buddhism, this is actually called the Contact (see below as the 5th. Omnipresent Mental Factor); the contact between the physical and the mental aspects.
- Next, the mental process of Feeling evaluates the Perception and decides it to be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
- Simultaneously, Recognition/Discrimination gets to work in finding out what the thing is touching my hand, is it pressure or heat, etc. and is it related to other information; maybe I see a table near my hand and consider it likely that my hand must be touching the table.
- Based on the Feeling and Discrimination, the mind creates the Compositional Factors/Volition, which are for example, the reaction to the hand to withdraw if it is unpleasant, an instruction to the eyes to check what is touching the hand, possibly projections/thoughts like 'it must be this bothersome fly again' or 'I am touching the table I am walking past' etc.
