Skandhas

The skandhas — usually translated as aggregates or heaps.

These answer the question: what do we usually take to be a person?

There are five:

1. Form (rūpa) — the body and material aspects, including sense organs and physical objects.
2. Feeling (vedanā) — pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tone of experience.
3. Perception (saṃjñā) — recognition, labeling, identifying “this is red,” “this is a face,” etc.
4. Formations (saṃskāra) — habits, intentions, emotional patterns, karmic tendencies, mental movements.
5. Consciousness (vijñāna) — basic knowing of an object (eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, mental consciousness, etc.).

So the skandhas say: what you call “me” is just this rolling bundle of physical and mental processes, no owner inside the bundle.