Vedana is one of the five aggregates for interpreting human
personality. It is one of the pancha skandha through which Buddhists explain
the human personality. Vedana in this context means feelings.
For interpreting the human personality, as Buddha declined
to accept the conception of atma, he introduced the theology of “five
aggregates.” His refusal to accept the eternal existence of atma and is empirically
conditioned form as the nature of human personality led him to understand its
real nature.
Through his active meditations, Buddha understood that the
human personality is an aggregate of five constituents. According to Pali
Buddhism they are vedana (feeling), sanna (perception), sankhara (disposition),
rupa (form0 and vinnana (consciousness).
He also observed that all these constituents are
impermanent, and thus the satisfaction one can draw from them is limited. He
was clear that the attachment implicitly developed by the human being towards
these elements of human personality leads to severe dissatisfaction and dukha
(suffering).
When we examine the process of sense perception, the natural
course of experience gets solidified into a metaphysical concept because of the
overstretched activity of emotions. The solidified emotional stage is
misinterpreted as the eternally existing self that is considered as an agent
behind all experiences. The doctrine further says that each of the elements in the
five aggregates influences the others, or each is dependent on the others in
the process of characterizing the human personality.
In the case of Vedana, the process of contact with the world
works together with ignorance and sankhara (dispositional tendency) in a person
to generate tanha (desire). It is possible to explain pratityasamutpada
(dependent arising) with the doctrine of pancha skandha.