Fig. 11.1 Two stages in the contemplation of the six sense-spheres
XI.1 THE SENSE-SPHERES AND THE FETTERS
The previous satipaṭṭhāna exercise was concerned with analysing subjective personality with the help of the aggregate scheme. An alternative or complementary approach is to turn to the relationship between oneself and the outer world.1 This is the topic covered by contemplation of the sense-spheres, which directs awareness to the six “internal” and “external” sense-spheres (ajjhattikabāhira āyatana), and to the fetter arising in dependence on them. Here are the instructions for this exercise:
He knows the eye, he knows forms, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and he also knows how an unarisen fetter can arise, how an arisen fetter can be removed, and how a future arising of the removed fetter can be prevented.
He knows the ear, he knows sounds, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and.… He knows the nose, he knows odours, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and.… He knows the tongue, he knows flavours, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and.… He knows the body, he knows tangibles, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and.…
He knows the mind, he knows mind-objects, and he knows the fetter that arises dependent on both, and he also knows how an unarisen fetter can arise, how an arisen fetter can be removed, and how a future arising of the removed fetter can be prevented.2
According to the discourses, to develop understanding and detachment in regard to these six internal and external sense-spheres is of central importance for the progress towards awakening.3 An important aspect of such understanding is to undermine the misleading sense of a substantial “I” as the independent experiencer of sense objects. Awareness directed to each of these sense-spheres will reveal that subjective experience is not a compact unit, but rather a compound made up of six distinct “spheres”, each of which is dependently arisen.
Each of these sense-spheres includes both the sense organ and the sense object. Besides the five physical senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body) and their respective objects (sight, sound, smell, flavour, and touch), the mind (mano) is included as the sixth sense, together with its mental objects (dhamma). In the present context, “mind” (mano) represents mainly the activity of thought (maññati).4 While the five physical senses do not share each other’s respective field of activity, all of them relate to the mind as the sixth sense.5 That is, all perceptual processes rely to some extent on the interpretative role of the mind, since it is the mind which “makes sense” out of the other senses. This shows that the early Buddhist scheme of six sense-spheres does not set pure sense perception against the conceptual activity of the mind, but considers both as interrelated processes, which together bring forth the subjective experience of the world.
It is particularly intriguing that early Buddhism treats the mind just like the other sense organs. Thought, reasoning, memory, and reflection are dealt with in the same manner as the sense data of any other sense door. Thus the thinking activity of the mind shares the impersonal status of external phenomena perceived through the five senses.
Insight into this impersonal character of “one’s own” thoughts can be gained even with the first few attempts at meditation, when one discovers how difficult it is to avoid getting lost in all kinds of reflections, daydreams, memories, and fantasies, despite being determined to focus on a particular object of meditation. Just as it is impossible only to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch what is wished for, so too, with an untrained mind, it is not possible to have thoughts only when and how one would like to have them. For precisely this reason a central purpose of meditative training is to remedy this situation by gradually taming the thinking activity of the mind and bringing it more under conscious control.6
The above passage from the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta lists both the sense organs and sense objects for contemplation. On the face of it, the instruction to “know” (pajānāti) eye and forms, ear and sounds, etc. seems rather flat, but on further consideration this instruction may reveal some deeper implications.
Often these six senses and their objects occur in descriptions of the conditioned arising of consciousness (viññāṇa).7 An intriguing aspect of this conditional situation is the role that subjective influence plays in the perceptual process. Experience, represented by the six types of consciousness, is the outcome of two determinant influences: the “objective” aspect on the one hand, that is, the in-coming sensory impressions; and the “subjective” aspect on the other hand, namely, the way in which these sense impressions are received and cognized.8 Supposedly objective perceptual appraisal is in reality conditioned by the subject as much as by the object.9 One’s experience of the world is the product of an interaction between the “subjective” influence exercised by how one perceives the world, and the “objective” influence exercised by the various phenomena of the external world.
Understood in this way, the fact that the satipaṭṭhāna instruction directs awareness to each sense organ could have deeper implications, in the sense of pointing to the need to recognize the subjective bias inherent in each process of perception. The influence of this subjective bias has a decisive effect on the first stages of perception and can lead to the arising of a fetter (saṃyojana). Such subsequent reactions are often based on qualities and attributes assumed to belong to the perceived object. In actual fact, these qualities and attributes are often projected on the object by the perceiver.
Satipaṭṭhāna contemplation of the six sense-spheres can lead to recognizing this influence of personal biases and tendencies on the process of perception. Contemplating in this way will uncover the root cause for the arising of unwholesome mental reactions. This reactive aspect forms in fact part of the above instructions, where the task of sati is to observe the fetter that can arise in dependence on sense and object.
Although a fetter arises in dependence on sense and object, the binding force of such a fetter should not be attributed to the senses or objects per se. The discourses illustrate this with the example of two bulls, bound together by a yoke. Just as their bondage is not caused by either of the bulls, but by the yoke, so too the fetter should not be imputed to either its inner or its outer conditions (for example eye and forms), but to the binding force of desire.10
In the discourses there is considerable variation in the usage of the term “fetter”,11 which suggests that to speak of “fetters” does not always necessarily refer to a fixed set, but may sometimes include whatever falls under the same principle, in the sense of fettering and causing bondage. The most common presentation of “fetters” in the discourses lists altogether ten types: belief in a substantial and permanent self, doubt, dogmatic clinging to particular rules and observances, sensual desire, aversion, craving for fine-material existence, craving for immaterial existence, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance.12
The eradication of these ten fetters takes place with the different stages of realization.13 Since all these ten fetters might not necessarily manifest in the context of actual satipaṭṭhāna practice, and since the term “fetter” has a certain breadth of meaning in the discourses, during contemplation of the sense-spheres awareness can be directed in particular to the fettering force of desire and aversion in regard to whatever is experienced.
The pattern of a fetter’s arising proceeds from what has been perceived, via various thoughts and considerations, to the manifestation of desire and thereby to bondage.14 A mindful observation of the conditions that lead to the arising of a fetter constitutes the second stage of contemplation of the sense-spheres (cf. Fig. 11.1 below). The task of awareness in this case, paralleling contemplation of the hindrances, is non-reactive observation. Such non-reactive observation is directed towards individual instances in which perception causes desire and bondage, and also towards discovering the general patterns of one’s mental inclinations, in order to be able to prevent the future arising of a fetter.
As with the contemplation of the hindrances, the second stage of contemplation of the sense-spheres (concerned with the arising and removal of a fetter) follows a progressive pattern from diagnosis, via cure, to prevention. In contrast to the contemplation of the hindrances, however, contemplation of the sense-spheres places a stronger emphasis on the perceptual process. This constitutes an additional degree of refinement, since attention is here directed to the first stages of the perceptual process, which, if left unattended, can lead to the arising of unwholesome mental reactions.
To fill in some background to this aspect of satipaṭṭhāna, I will briefly survey the Buddha’s analysis of the perceptual process, with particular attention to the implications of the “latent tendencies” (anusaya) and “influxes” (āsava), and also to restraint at the sense doors. This will provide the necessary basis for evaluating the early Buddhist approach to “cognitive training”, and for examining the Buddha’s pithy instruction to the ascetic Bāhiya that led to his immediate full awakening.
The conditioned character of the perceptual process is a central aspect of the Buddha’s analysis of experience. According to the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, the conditional sequence of the average perceptual process leads from contact (phassa) via feeling (vedanā) and cognition (saññā) to thought (vitakka), which can in turn stimulate conceptual proliferation (papañca).15 Such conceptual proliferations tend to give rise to further concoctions of proliferations and cognitions (papañcasaññāsaṅkhā), which lead from the originally perceived sense data to all kinds of associations concerning past, present, and future.
The Pāli verb forms employed in this passage from the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta indicate that the last stage of this perceptual process is an event of which one is the passive experiencer.16 Once the conditioned sequence of the perceptual process has reached the stage of conceptual proliferation one becomes, as it were, a victim of one’s own associations and thoughts. The thought process proliferates, weaving a net built from thoughts, projections, and associations, of which the “thinker” has become almost a helpless prey.
The crucial stage in this sequence, where the subjective bias can set in and distort the perceptual process, occurs with the initial appraisal of feeling (vedanā) and cognition (saññā). Initial distortions of the sense data arising at this stage will receive further reinforcement by thinking and by conceptual proliferation.17 Once the stage of conceptual proliferation is reached, the course is set. The proliferations are projected back onto the sense data and the mind continues proliferating by interpreting experience in line with the original biased cognition. The stages of cognition and initial conceptual reaction are therefore decisive aspects of this conditioned sequence.
The perceptual sequence described in the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta occurs in an elucidation of a short statement made by the Buddha, in which he related his teaching to the dispelling of various latent (anuseti) types of cognitions (saññā), and to overcoming the “latent tendencies” (anusaya) that can come into operation during the process of perception.18
The discourses mention various types of latent tendencies. A commonly occurring set of seven includes sensual desire, irritation, views, doubt, conceit, craving for existence, and ignorance.19 The central characteristic of a latent tendency is unconscious activation. As the verb anuseti, “to lie along with”, suggests, a latent tendency lies dormant in the mind, but can become activated during the process of perception. In their dormant stage, the underlying tendencies are already present in newborn babies.20
A term of similar importance in relation to the process of perception is influx (āsava).21 These influxes can “flow” (āsavati) into and thereby “influence” the perceptual process.22 As with the underlying tendencies, this influence operates without conscious intention. The influxes arise owing to unwise attention (ayoniso manasikāra) and to ignorance (avijjā).23 To counteract and prevent the arising of the influxes is the central aim of the monastic training rules laid down by the Buddha,24 and their successful eradication (āsavakkhaya) is a synonym for full awakening.25
The discourses often mention three types of influx: the influx of sensual desire, desire for existence, and ignorance.26 Sensual desire and desire for existence come up also in the second noble truth as main factors in the arising of dukkha,27 while ignorance forms the starting point of the “twelve links” depicting the “dependent co-arising” (paṭicca samuppāda) of dukkha. These occurrences indicate that the scheme of the influxes is intrinsically related to the causes for the arising of dukkha.28 That is, desire for sensual enjoyment, desire for becoming this or that, and the deluding force of ignorance, are those “influences” responsible for the genesis of dukkha.
The whole purpose of practising the path taught by the Buddha is to eradicate the influxes (āsava), uproot the latent tendencies (anusaya), and abandon the fetters (saṃyojana).29 These three terms refer to the same basic problem from slightly different perspectives, namely to the arising of craving (taṇhā) and related forms of unwholesomeness in relation to any of the six sense-spheres.30 In this context, the influxes represent root causes for the arising of dukkha that might “flow into” perceptual appraisal, the underlying tendencies are those unwholesome inclinations in the unawakened mind that “tend” to get triggered off during the perceptual process, and the fetters arising at any sense door are responsible for “binding” beings to continued transmigration in saṃsāra.
A way to avoid the operation of the influxes, underlying tendencies, and fetters, and thereby the arising of unwholesome states of mind and reactions at any sense door, is the practice of sense-restraint (indriya saṃvara). The method of sense-restraint is mainly based on sati, whose presence exerts a restraining influence on the reactions and proliferations that otherwise tend to occur during the perceptual process.31 As the discourses point out, sense-restraint causes the arising of joy and happiness, which in turn form the basis for concentration and insight.32 Indeed, living with full awareness in the present moment, free from sensual distraction, can give rise to an exquisite sense of delight.
Such cultivation of mindfulness at the sense doors does not imply that one is simply to avoid sense impressions. As the Buddha pointed out in the Indriyabhāvanā Sutta, if simply avoiding seeing and hearing were in itself conducive to realization, blind and deaf people would be accomplished practitioners.33 Instead, the instruction for sense-restraint enjoins the practitioner not to dwell on the sign (nimitta) or secondary characteristics (anuvyañjana) of sense objects, in order to avoid the “flowing in” of detrimental influences.34 In the present context, “sign” (nimitta) refers to the distinguishing feature by which one recognizes or remembers something.35 In regard to the process of perception, this “sign” (nimitta) is related to the first evaluation of the raw sense data, because of which the object appears to be, for example, “beautiful” (subhanimitta) or “irritating” (paṭighanimitta), which then usually leads to subsequent evaluations and mental reactions.36
The instruction to bring restraint to bear on the secondary characteristics (anuvyañjana) could correspond to further associations in the perceptual process, which elaborate in detail the initial biased cognition (saññā).37 The tendency to biased and affective reactions is rooted in the stage of sign making, when the first barely conscious evaluations that might underlie cognition (saññā) can arise. In the context of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta’s injunction to contemplate the causes related to the arising of a fetter, this stage of sign making is especially relevant. It is this stage, therefore, and the possibilities of influencing it, to which I will now turn in more detail.
According to the discourses, a penetrative understanding of the nature of cognition (saññā) is a prominent cause for realization.38 Cognitions under the influence of sensuality or aversion lead to cognitive distortions and thereby cause the arising of unwholesome thoughts and intentions.39 Distorted or biased cognitions include significant misapprehensions of reality that affect the fundamental structure of ordinary experience, such as when one wrongly perceives permanence, satisfaction, substantiality, and beauty in what in fact is the opposite.40 The presence of such unrealistic elements within cognition is due to the habitual projection of one’s own mistaken notions onto cognized sense data, a process of which one is usually unaware. These habitual projections underlying the perceptual process are responsible for unrealistic expectations and thereby for frustration and conflict.41
As a countermeasure to these unrealistic cognitive appraisals, the discourses recommend cultivating beneficial cognitions.42 Such beneficial cognitions direct awareness to the impermanence or unsatisfactoriness of all aspects of experience. Others are concerned with more specific issues, such as the unattractive features of the body or food. Regarding the nature of these cognitions, an important point to bear in mind is that to cognize something as beautiful or as impermanent does not refer to a process of reflection or consideration, but only to being aware of a particular feature of an object, in other words, to experience it from a particular point of view. In the case of ordinary cognitive appraisal, this point of view or act of selection is usually not at all conscious. Cognizing someone or something as beautiful often takes place as the combined outcome of past conditioning and one’s present mental inclinations. These tend to determine which aspect of an object becomes prominent during cognition. Reflective thought only subsequently enters into the scene, influenced by the kind of cognition that has led to its arising.43
The crucial point, from a meditative perspective, is that cognitions are amenable to a process of training.44 The ability to train cognitions is related to the fact that cognitions are the outcome of mental habits. By way of cognitive training, one can establish new and different habits and thereby gradually alter one’s cognitions. The basic procedure for such cognitive training is related to the same habit-forming mechanism, namely to becoming accustomed to, and familiar with, a certain way of viewing experience.45 By directing awareness again and again to the true characteristics of conditioned existence, these will become more and more familiar, imprint themselves onto one’s way of viewing experience, and thereby lead to the arising of similar ways of cognizing on future occasions.
The method through which cognition is trained can be conveniently exemplified with a set of terms occurring in the Girimānanda Sutta, where reflection (paṭisañcikkhati) and contemplation (anupassanā) are mentioned alongside cognition (saññā).46 Although this is not spelled out in the discourse, this passage lists those two activities that are related to training cognition: a preliminary degree of wise reflection as a basis for the sustained practice of contemplation (anupassanā). Skilfully combined, these two can gradually transform the way the world is cognized.
To give a practical example: if, on the basis of an intellectual appreciation of impermanence, one regularly contemplates the arising and passing away of phenomena, the result will be the arising of aniccasaññā, of cognitions apprehending phenomena from the viewpoint of impermanence. With continued practice, awareness of impermanence will become increasingly spontaneous and have an increasing influence on one’s daily experiences, outside of actual contemplation. In this way, sustained contemplation can lead to a gradual change in the operational mechanics of cognition, and in one’s outlook on the world.
According to the discourses, such cognitive training can lead to a stage at which one is able at will to cognize phenomena as agreeable (appaṭikkūla) or as disagreeable (paṭikkūla).47 The culmination of training one’s cognitions in this way is reached when one completely transcends such evaluations and becomes firmly established in perceptual equanimity. The discourses go so far as to consider such mastery over one’s cognitions to be superior even to supernatural powers like walking on water or flying through the air.48
The basis for developing such intriguing kinds of mastery is satipaṭṭhāna contemplation.49 The presence of sati directly counteracts automatic and unconscious ways of reacting that are so typical of habits. By directing sati to the early stages of the perceptual process, one can train cognition and thereby reshape habitual patterns. Of central importance in this context is the receptive quality of mindfulness, which gives full attention to the cognized data. Of equal significance is sati’s detached quality, which avoids immediate reactions.
In this way, receptive and detached sati applied to the early stages of the perceptual process can make habitual reactions conscious and enable an assessment of the extent to which one is reacting automatically and without conscious deliberation. This also reveals the selective and filtering mechanisms of perception, highlighting the extent to which subjective experience mirrors one’s hitherto unconscious assumptions. In this manner, through satipaṭṭhāna contemplation, it becomes possible to access and redress a central cause of the arising of unwholesome cognitions, and thereby for the activation of influxes (āsava), underlying tendencies (anusaya), and fetters (saṃyojana), by de-automatizing or deconditioning habits and subconscious evaluations.
A practical application of this skill is the subject of the final section of my exploration of the contemplation of the sense-spheres.
XI.4 THE INSTRUCTION TO BĀHIYA
“Bāhiya of the Bark-Garment” was a non-Buddhist ascetic who once approached the Buddha for instructions while the latter was collecting almsfood. Still out on the roads of the city, the Buddha gave him a short instruction concerned with cognitive training, with the result that Bāhiya immediately gained full awakening.50 The Buddha’s cryptic instruction was:
When in the seen will be only what is seen, in the heard only what is heard, in the sensed only what is sensed, in the known only what is known, you will not be by that; when you are not by that, you will not be therein; when you are not therein, you will be neither here, nor there, nor in between. This is the end of dukkha.51
This instruction directs bare awareness to whatever is seen, heard, sensed, or cognized. Maintaining bare awareness in this way prevents the mind evaluating and proliferating the raw data of sense perception. This corresponds to an interception of the first stages in the sequence of the perceptual process, through mindful attention. Here, bare awareness simply registers whatever arises at a sense door without giving rise to biased forms of cognition and to unwholesome thoughts and associations.52 In terms of sense-restraint, the stage of making a “sign” (nimitta) is thereby brought into conscious awareness.53 Establishing bare awareness at this stage of the perceptual process prevents the latent tendencies (anusaya), influxes (āsava), and fetters (saṃyojana) from arising.
The activities of seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing mentioned in the Bāhiya instruction occur also in the Mūlapariyāya Sutta.54 This discourse contrasts the arahant’s direct comprehension of phenomena with the ordinary way of perception through misconceiving the cognized data in various ways. The Chabbisodhana Sutta relates the elaborations absent from what is seen, heard, sensed, and known by an arahant to freedom from attraction and rejection.55 Other passages discuss the same set of activities with an additional emphasis on avoiding any form of identification.56 This injunction is particularly pertinent, since according to the Alagaddūpama Sutta the activities of seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing can lead to wrongly developing a sense of self.57 Passages in the Upaniṣads indeed take these activities as evidence for the perceiving activity of a self.58
According to the Bāhiya instruction, by maintaining bare sati at all sense doors one will not be “by that”, which suggests not being carried away by the conditioned sequence of the perceptual process, thereby not modifying experience through subjective biases and distorted cognitions.59 Not being carried away, one is not “therein” by way of subjective participation and identification.60 Such absence of being “therein” draws attention to a key aspect of the instruction to Bāhiya, to the realization of anattā as the absence of a perceiving self.
Neither being “by that” nor “therein” also constitutes a comparatively advanced stage of satipaṭṭhāna practice, when the meditator has become able to continuously maintain bare awareness at all sense doors, thereby not being “by that” by remaining free from “clinging to anything in the world”, nor being “therein” by continuing to “abide independently”, as stipulated in the satipaṭṭhāna “refrain”.
According to the final part of the Bāhiya instruction, by maintaining awareness in the above manner one will not be established “here” or “there” or “in between”. A way of understanding “here” and “there” is to take them as representing the subject (senses) and the respective objects, with “in between” standing for the conditioned arising of consciousness.61 According to a discourse from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, it is the “seamstress” craving (taṇhā) which “stitches” consciousness (“the middle”) to the senses and their objects (the two opposite ends).62 Applying this imagery to the Bāhiya instruction, in the absence of craving these three conditions for perceptual contact do not get sufficiently “tied” together, so to speak, for further proliferations to occur. Such absence of unnecessary proliferation is characteristic of the cognitions of arahants, who are no longer influenced by subjective biases and who cognize phenomena without self-reference. Free from craving and proliferations, they are not identified with either “here” (senses), or “there” (objects), or “in between” (consciousness), resulting in freedom from any type of becoming, whether it be “here”, or “there”, or “in between”.