“I understand Sakkaya as Pancupadanakkhandha.”
– That is correct.
“Is it appropriate to take Sakkaya as a perception (sanna) and Sakkaya Ditthi as a view (ditthi)?”
– No. That is not correct.
I think it is a good idea to understand what is meant by pancakkhandha first.
– To do that, it is better to start with rupakkhandha.
Rupakkhandha is defined to be of 11 types: “past, present, future, internal (one’s own), external, close-by, far away, good, bad, fine (sukuma), granular (olarika).”
– We can focus on the five categories bolded.
So, rupakkhandha (collection of all rupa experienced by any given person) includes all rupa that one has experienced in the past (including past lives), one’s experienced at the present time, and one’s images about rupa to be experienced in the future.
– In the other important categories in bold, includes one’s own rupa and those external.
– Also, rupa includes all types: rupa rupa (visuals), sadda rupa (sounds), rasa rupa (tastes), etc.
So, as you can see, one person’s rupakkhandha is different from another. It is all about what one has experienced, experiencing, and expect to experience.
The other four aggregates are the same way.
Thus, it would be clear that pancakkhadha is one’s own world.
From all that one would be “attached to” only a tiny fraction. That is pancupadanakkhandha.
– “Sakkāya” comes from “sath” + “kāya”, where “sath” means “good” and “kāya” is a “collection.”
– P.S. Here “kāya” is the same as those parts of the five aggregates (pancakkhandha) that one perceives to be “good/enjoyable/beneficial..”
– Thus, “sakkāya ditthi” is to VIEW pancupadanakkhandha as good, and “should be mine”/”beneficial to be taken as mine”.
That is just a ditthi (view). That wrong ditthi goes away at the Sotapanna stage. A Sotapanna would see that attachment to anything in this world (“avijja paccaya sankhara”) will ALWAYS end up with “jati paccaya jara, marana, etc),i.e., to more births and more suffering.
– But the perception (sanna) of a “me” will still be there in a Sotapanna. That wrong perception is very hard to get rid of. It reduced gradually at the higher stage of magga phala and goes away completely only at the Arahant stage.
– In other words, a Sotapanna removes ditthi vipallasa. But it is only at the Arahant stage that sanna (and citta) vipallasa removed.
– There are more details. But that is a CRITICAL summary to be understood.