The Five Aggregates are processes. One has to do with the body, the body aggregate. That's the process of our contact with the world. The eye sees something. The ear hears something. Our body feels something. The same goes for the taste and the smell. So there are five contacts in our body aggregate. It's a process. It's something that's happening at a particular moment.
Now following that process of body contact, we will have Perception and Vedana seemingly arising together, sometimes maybe not quite exactly together but they more or less come up together and they are automatic. We put a label on what we see, for example, we heard a car. These are perceptions. We like it or we don't like it or it's neutral - our Vedana. Most of our contacts throughout the day produce totally neutral Vedana. We just go about the day doing what we are doing. But there are contacts that we like which then often develop into desires. There are contacts that we don't like and they often develop into aversions. That's where we are moving into the other aggregate called Mental Formations.
Mental formations are our thoughts around our body contact, our perception and our Vedana. Where we build a story around experiences. This is how the process works. It's very linear. We have a contact, we have perception plus Vedana and we have mental formations surrounding it.
Now if we are able to note "contact" very mindfully, noting "contact, contact, contact", then we will never move into mental formations. This is one area where we can guard against Dukkha in our thoughts, by being very mindful. If you are actually able to be mindful when you are grabbing a door. Mindfully, reaching for it, grabbing it, opening it, you are not going to have a story, you are not going to have mental formations. This is an area where we can stop Dukkha coming up by being purely mindful with contact after contact after contact.
Now Consciousness is the fifth of the aggregates and basically consciousness is not part of this kind of lineal process. Consciousness is with each part because we only know what we are doing, if we are conscious of the doing. We only are aware of our contact, if consciousness is with the contact. We are only aware of Vedana, if consciousness is with the Vedana. We are only aware of perceptions, we are only aware of mental formations, if consciousness is actually with them at that time.
So that's how the five work, they are processes, happening all the time and it's helpful to remember, as I mentioned the other day with perception and Vedana, that they come from a past conditioning. They just automatically come up.
It's in mental formations that we create our wisdom or we create our Dukkha.