Two-Day+ Intensive on the Five Skandhas

The Five Skandhas are one of Buddhism's core maps of experience. Rather than a metaphysical claim about what we are, they're a practical framework: form (the body and physical world), sensation (the raw feeling-tone of experience—pleasant, unpleasant, neutral), perception (recognition and labeling), mental formations (thoughts, intentions, emotions), and consciousness (basic awareness). Together, these five aggregates are what we call "self." When you examine them closely in meditation, the boundary between observer and observed blurs.

This two-day format is intimate enough to move beyond lecture. Dharma talks set the conceptual ground; meditation practice gives you direct contact with the skandhas as they arise in your own sitting; group discussion lets you test your experience against others'. This combination—study, practice, dialogue—is characteristic of contemporary Theravada retreat work, where understanding isn't separate from sitting.

Appamada centers this retreat on perception: how we construct meaning, how that construction hardens into the felt sense of a solid self, and how that process can be witnessed in real time. Useful for anyone curious about the architecture of experience, whether you've sat before or not.