The Eighteen Dhatus

This is the ALL

The eye and visible objects            visual consciousness

The ear and sounds                         sound consciousness

The nose and odours                       smell consciousness

The tongue and tastes                     taste consciousness

The body and tangible objects      touch consciousness

The mind and objects of mind      mental consciousness

This is all there is, past, present and future. There is nothing other than this.

The Five Skandhas (five bundles that together consitute a human being)

The body (including the external senses and their objects – that is the physical world)

Feeling

Perception

Mental Formations

Consciousness

Each of these has consciousness: body consciousness, feeling consciousness, perception consciousness, mental formations consciousness and consciousness of consciousness.

To fully understand all this each element needs to be understood and understanding means the extinction in every element of desire/greed, aversion/loathing/hate/anger, and delusion/ignorance/not seeing and not accepting life as it really is.

All these are impermanent, continually changing as described in the article on impermanence – the flow of consciousness.

This requires special training and practice which takes most of us a long time, if we undertake it at all.