sakkāya-diṭṭhi
Identity view
[ suk-KAA-ya dit-thee ]
Seeing it in life
Sakkāya-diṭṭhi takes form, feeling, perception, formations, or consciousness as ‘I, mine, my self.’ Uprooted at stream-entry.
In short
The view of a self in the five aggregates.
The analysis
Sakkāya-diṭṭhi takes one or more of the five aggregates as 'I,' 'mine,' or 'my self.' Twenty variations are traditionally enumerated — four possible relationships to self-view for each of the five khandhas. It's the first fetter uprooted, completely, at stream-entry.
Where it sits
Sakkāya-diṭṭhi is one of the ten fetters and specifically the form diṭṭhi takes when it involves a self-view — its severance at stream-entry is what makes the first stage of awakening a genuine, permanent shift.
Taking a habitual pattern — 'I am someone who panics about money' — as describing a fixed, essential feature of who one is, rather than a conditioned formation among fifty others, arising and passing, is sakkāya-diṭṭhi at an ordinary, everyday scale.
Commonly mistaken for
Any sense of personal identity or self-concept. Conventional selfhood functions without needing to be uprooted; this specifically names the view that an aggregate constitutes a fixed, essential self.
Fully addressed by intellectual understanding of anattā. The texts describe its removal as a direct-seeing event at stream-entry, not simply agreeing with a doctrine.
Sakkāya Sutta (SN 22.1); Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha IX.
Related terms