Shankhāra (sankhāra)

Buddhist Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines
Nyanatiloka Thera (1952)
Buddhist Publication Society

Shankhāra (Pali. Sanskrit, samskāra) this term has, according to its context, different shades of meaning. Which should be carefully distinguished.

(I) To its most frequent use (1-4, following) the general term “formation” may be applied, with the qualifications required by the context. This term may refer either to the act of “forming” or to the passive state of “having been formed” or to both.

(1) As the second link of the formation of dependent origination, (paticcasamuppāda) shankhāra has the active aspect, “forming”, and signifies “karma”, i.e., wholesome or unwholesome violation activity (cetanā) of body (kāya-sankhāra), speech (vacī-sankhāra), or mind (citta- or mano-sankhāra). This definition occurs, e.g. at Samyutta Nikaya (SN) 12:2, 27. For sankhāra in this sense, the word, “karma-formation” has been coined by the author. In other passages, in the same context, sankhāra is defined by reference to (a) meritorious karma-formation (punn’abhissankhāra), (b) by demeritorious sankhāra (apunn’abhissankhāra), (c) imperturbable sankhāra (ānenj’abhissankhāra), e.g. in SN 12:511; DN 33. This threefold division covers karmic activity in all spheres of existence; the meritorious karma-formations extend to the sensuous and the fine-material sphere, the demeritorious ones only to the sensors sphere, and the “imperturbable” only to the immaterial sphere.

(2) The aforementioned three terms, kāya, vacī, and citta-sankhāra are sometimes used in quite a different sense, namely as (1) bodily function, i.e. in-and-out-bereathing (e.g. Majjhima Nikaya (MN) 10); (2) verbal function, i.e., thought-conception and discursive thinking; (3) mental function, i.e. feeling and perception (e.g. MN 44).

(3) It also denotes the fourth group of existence (sankhāra-kkhandha), and includes all “mental formations’ whether they belong to ‘karmically forming’ consciousness or not.

(4) It occurs further on the sense of anything formed (sankhata) and conditioned, and includes all things whether in the world, all phenomena of existence. This meaning applies e.g. to the well-known passage: “All formation are impermenant…. subject to suffering (sabbe sankhāra aniccā… dukkhā). In that context, however, sankhāra is subordinate to the still wider and all-embracing term Dhamma (thing): for dhamma includes also the Unformed or Unconditioned Element (asankkhata-dhātu), i.e. Nibbāna (e.g. in sabbbe dhammā anattā, “all things are without self”).

(II) sankharā also means sometimes ‘volitional effort’, e.g. in the formula of the roads to power (idhipāda); in sasankhāra- and asankhāra-parinibbāyī (anāgāmī); and in the Abhidhamma terms asankhārika- and sasankhārika-citta, i.e. without effort, spontaneously, and with effort prompted.

In Western literature, in English as well as in German, sankhāra is sometimes mistranslated by ‘subconscious tendencies’ or similarly (e.g. Prof, Beckh: ‘unterbeweBte Bilderkräfte,’ i.e. subconscious formative forces). This misinterpretation derives perhaps from similar usage in non-Buddhist Skr literature, and it’s entirely inapplicable to the connotations of the term in Pāli Buddhism, as listed above under I, 1-4. For instance, with dependent origination, sankhāra is neither subconscious nor a mere tendency, but it is a fully conscious and active karmic volition. In the context of the five groups of existence (see above I, 3), a very few of the factors from the group of mental formation (sankhāra-kkhandha) are also present as concomitants of subconsciousness, but are of course not restricted to it, nor are they mere tendencies.