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On Sat­ur­day I spot­ted this video, sort of an Alan Watts mashup, on mind­ful­ness. It’s worth watch­ing, as it talks briefly about what we’re dis­cussing. This won’t show up in the e-mail, so to watch it, click here.

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So, last week, we looked at a sug­ges­tion or two about what mind­ful­ness looks like, and where suf­fer­ing comes from. This week, I want to give you another sug­ges­tion, so that you start to both appre­ci­ate and notice what your mind does, and what realm the mind oper­ates in.

Buddhism’s 6 consciousnesses

In addi­tion to the nor­mal 5 senses, Bud­dhism adds in “men­tal consciousness.”

These things make up the 6:
eyes — sight,
ears — hear­ing,
tongue — taste,
nose — smell,
body — sen­sa­tions, and
the sixth, mind — men­tal formations.

The first 5 oper­ate one way, the 6^th, another. That we are unaware of the real­ity of the dif­fer­ence between sen­sory input, and our thoughts about it/them, and how they oper­ate, is sam­sara (igno­rance and con­fu­sion, lead­ing to suffering.)

Rather than get all philo­soph­i­cal, I’d like you to do an exper­i­ment, for which you will need an orange.

Please, go get an orange!

I’ll wait until you get back, (sound of twid­dling thumbs and the occa­sional sigh…) Or, if you must, grab another piece of fruit.

Set the orange down. Look at it. See how the light reflects off of it. Look at the colour, tex­ture, and all the lit­tle pore-like thin­gies. Really look.

Now, scrape your fin­ger­nail along the skin, and lis­ten to the sound. Pierce the skin, and start peel­ing, and direct your atten­tion to the sound of peel­ing, then to the sound of sep­a­rat­ing the segments.

Go back to look­ing, see­ing how the orange pieces look.

Bring the skin to your nose, and smell it. Set it down. Bring a seg­ment to your nose, and smell it. Give it a lit­tle squeeze, and smell again.

Squish one of the seg­ments in your fin­gers, and really feel the pulp, juice, and any seeds or pith.

Pop a seg­ment into your mouth, and chew it slowly. See if you can take 5 min­utes to eat one seg­ment. Really taste it!

Take another seg­ment, and rub it on your arm or leg, or just get cre­ative, and use your body to feel the orange section.

Now, stop, and go either wash or hose off. (Again, I’ll wait until you get back…)

Now, let’s think about what just happened.

You’ve likely not thought about this before, but your eyes only pro­vide visual data, your tongue pro­vides taste data, etc. You can’t hear with your eyes, in other words. This may seem obvi­ous, now that you think about it(!) but humour me.

Let’s go back to the orange. The only orange you have ever seen is the one right in front of you. The same is so for all sense data. All sense data hap­pens in the here and now, and never any­where else.

So, what I hear now is what I hear now.

None of your sense organs did any­thing other than what they do. Your eyes, your ears, did not name the orange, nor did they tell sto­ries about the orange (where it came from, what it tastes like, etc.) The sense organs only present to “you” sense data by con­vert­ing what they are aware of into elec­tri­cal impulses, which are “read and inter­preted” by our brains.

Data, then, like to object per­ceived, is empty — it “just is.” All inter­pre­ta­tion is done by your mind, which only deals in phan­toms, abstrac­tions, and thoughts.

What you think about what you see, there­fore, is not equal to what you see!

On to the 6^th con­scious­ness — men­tal for­ma­tions. As your senses oper­ate (in the here and now) your mind takes in the data. It com­pares the data to other data. Here’s the hard part: data is data, and there­fore not real! Mind does not expe­ri­ence here and now—it’s too busy ana­lyz­ing, judg­ing, and con­trast­ing. As soon, then, as you start a men­tal for­ma­tion (a men­tal game) you exit the present moment and fall into imagination.

Here’s a quote from a Tri­cy­cle arti­cle on this topic — I’m bor­row­ing heav­ily from the article.

This is the impor­tant point to rec­og­nize: Thoughts do not per­ceive any­thing directly; they can­not per­ceive the actual, unique object. They can only impute gen­er­al­i­ties and unclear abstrac­tions. In con­trast, the five senses do directly per­ceive spe­cific things, but they do not make con­cep­tual judge­ments about them.
(Tri­cy­cle Spring 2010, “The Path of Faith and The Path of Rea­son­ing, ” p 74, Gyamtso)

A few months back, a client was telling me a long story about what was going to hap­pen in a future sit­u­a­tion. I tried in vain to help him to under­stand that, despite all of the data (what he’d heard and seen oth­ers doing — he hadn’t tasted them yet…) the inter­pre­ta­tion of the data was all his, and had noth­ing to do with what he’d seen and heard. He argued that his thought were real­ity — the truth.

Finally, I said, “OK, take a break. Do you like pizza? ”
Pause… Then “… Yes… ”
Me: OK, imag­ine your favourite pizza. Really get into how it looks and what it smells and tastes like. You may even notice that you are start­ing to sali­vate. Have you got it? “
Him: ”Yes! ! ! I love pizza! ! ! “
Me: “Per­fect! Now, take a bite! “
Silence. Then, “I can’t. It’s not real. ”
Me: “Hmm. You think?

Many peo­ple mis­tak­enly con­fuse their inter­nal judge­ments, sto­ries, and inter­pre­ta­tions for real­ity. They describe how hard done by they are, in glow­ing detail, and even make them­selves sad or angry (just like my sali­vat­ing client.) And I say some­thing to the effect that the story is imag­i­nary (not that some­thing didn’t hap­pen, but that it isn’t hap­pen­ing now, and they are upset­ting them­selves now by imagining.)

Suf­fer­ing is thus caused by men­tal for­ma­tions, which want to dic­tate what things mean, and they do so with lit­tle or no evidence.

This why a client can say, “My hus­band never loved me, and always treats me badly. ” I might say, “Even right now? ” but if I do, all I get is a puz­zled look. Then, “That’s how it appears (or seems) to me.” I agree. Her hus­band is doing what­ever, and my client is mak­ing it fit the story she already believes. And at the same time, pre­tends that she’s being objective. 

Objec­tiv­ity would actu­ally be:

“In this moment I hear my husband’s words, and here is the story I am con­coct­ing out of them. I am lump­ing this behav­iour with oth­ers, so as to judge him inad­e­quate. Per­haps I might have a breath, and ask him about his intent this time.”

Next week, we’ll use an anal­ogy, using movies, and the TV show “24,” to dis­cuss this fur­ther. In the mean time, spend the week see­ing what you see, hear­ing what you hear, like with the orange, and just watch your mind try to attach stories.

Have a breath, and hold you mind to one thing: “What is my present moment expe­ri­ence of this taste? ”(No stories!)

Deli­cious!

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Read about it here:

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Incom­ing search terms:

• sam­sara senses
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Related posts:

1. Mind-full
2. Exer­cises in Mind Emptying
3. Mind Movies
4. The Bliss of an Empty Mind
5. Big Mind

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Tagged with: Buddhism • emptiness • Perception • simple-presence

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