In
Buddhism,
sentient beings are beings with
consciousness,
sentience, or in some contexts
life itself. Sentient beings are composed of the five aggregates, or
skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. In the
Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha is recorded as saying that "just as the word 'chariot' exists on the basis of the aggregation of parts, even so the concept of 'being' exists when the five aggregates are available." While distinctions in usage and potential subdivisions or classes of sentient beings vary from one school, teacher, or thinker to another, it principally refers to beings in contrast with
buddhahood. That is, sentient beings are characteristically
not enlightened, and are thus confined to the death, rebirth, and
dukkha (suffering) characteristic of
saṃsāra.