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Saṅkhāra in Buddhism
In Buddhism, the equivalent Pāli term saṅkhārā (or saṅkhāra) plays an extremely important role.
Here, Saṅkhāra, in the sense of the totality of imprints or habitual patterns, is enumerated as one of the Five Khandhas (or Five Aggregates) that constitute a being, alongside Rūpa (form or matter, including both the physical body and the objects of the senses), Vedanā (Feeling or Sensation — raw sensory information, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral), Saññā (Perception, the mental act of recognizing and interpreting sensory information), and Viññāṇa (Consciousness, awareness of an object through the sense organs).
The imprints — including both habits, thoughts, intentions, desires, and tendencies that cause action (karma), as well as the body’s automatic vital functions — are described here as one of the fundamental constituents of a being.
The imprints or habitual patterns (Saṅkhāra) are classified into three categories: bodily imprints (kāya-saṅkhāra), verbal imprints (vacī-saṅkhāra), and mental imprints (citta-saṅkhāra).
From each category, the Pāli suttas mention only certain specific types of imprints, relevant in the process of meditation for establishing the level the practitioner has reached in the process of calming the mind–body complex, namely:
- among bodily imprints (kāya-saṅkhāra), inhalation and exhalation are mentioned;
- among verbal imprints (vacī-saṅkhāra), the arising of thoughts and the process of sustained analysis are mentioned;
- among mental imprints (citta-saṅkhāra), sensation and perception are mentioned.
The Pāli suttas state that upon entering deep meditation (jhāna) or samādhi, these imprints or habitual patterns cease in a certain order (verbal imprints in the second jhāna, then bodily imprints in the fourth jhāna, and finally mental imprints in the ninth jhāna); upon emerging from samādhi they restart in reverse order.
In the absence of comparative studies of Buddhism with Samkhya, Advaita Vedānta, and Yoga Sūtra, Western translators have struggled greatly to find an exact equivalent in English for the Pāli term saṅkhāra.
Although he suspected the equivalence of the Pāli term saṅkhārā with the Sanskrit term saṁskāra, the great early twentieth-century pioneer of translating Pāli Buddhist texts, T.W. Rhys Davids, highlights it as “one of the most difficult terms in Buddhist metaphysics.” He suggested that saṅkhāra represents “putting together,” “aggregate,” or “component things” depending on context, and often translated it as “formations” or “volitional formations.”
I. B. Horner often translated saṅkhāra as “formations”, “conditioned things”, “constructions,” or “activities” of body, speech, and mind.
Caroline Rhys Davids translated saṅkhāra as “synergies”, “confections”, or “compounded things”. In her later period, she became critical of the term’s standard interpretation, arguing that early Buddhism was focused on “becoming”, and that saṅkhāra meant “the forming”, “the constructing”, or “making” (the “active, forming, willing” aspect of human beings) rather than merely static “compounded things”.
Some Western translators still use T.W. Rhys Davids’ century-old rendering of saṅkhāra as “volitional formations”, which contributes to the English translation of ancient Pāli Buddhist texts appearing somewhat blurred.
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