This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video GM: Is There a Fetter?; The Six Sense Spheres - Our World (4 of 5): The Body and Tactile Sensations. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by an unknown speaker at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Welcome and good day, good morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you are. I welcome you to this fourth day of a brief exploration of the six sense spheres, the avenues for our experience of everything that happens in our lives. I’m hoping that looking at each of them in turn this week will emphasize how important it is to be aware of our mind’s relationship to each of the physical senses and to investigate that relationship as part of our path. It’s really useful.
Are we tied to the experiences of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and sensing in ways that limit us, in ways that keep us stuck and bound? Is the sixth sense, the mind, relating to physical sense contact in a wholesome, helpful way, or is it reactive? Is it grasping? Is it pushing away? It’s in the relationship of the mind to what happens that goals arise in our lives, in our minds, in our practice, and in our relationship to the world. When that relationship is free of greed, aversion, and delusion, that’s where freedom is found.
So it’s essential, and today the focus is going to be on the sense of touch, what we call the tactile sense—the way the whole body and all its individual parts sense touch, from the most subtle sense of air moving against the skin to the strongest sensations of pleasure and pain. This includes sensation on the surface of the body and also sensation generated from within the body. We often just use the shorthand “sensation” for this kind of sensing, although all the senses experience some kind of sensation literally. I think the fact that we use the word “sensation” for the tactile sense maybe points to how much space it takes up in the world of the senses.
I have the sense—meaning a view here—that the sensations of the body and the activities of the mind are probably also the area of physical experience where we’re most likely to attach a sense of self. I think it’s probably easier to recognize seeing, hearing, taste, and smell as processes that go on automatically, to see the ways that the mind takes possession of them, and then to parse it out, to separate the appearances from the recognition—the nama from the rupa1—in those other four physical senses.
Maybe it’s just my own perception, but it seems like the mind is more likely to take the tactile sensations in the body personally. They belong to me. They’re my sensations. We don’t usually speak about “my sights” or “my sounds” or “tastes” or “smells,” and what we see and hear we don’t think of as defining us in some way. But the relationship between the body and the sensations that occur in it and to it—they’re kind of harder to separate. I think it’s really easy to conflate a pain in our back with a sense of self. “I am a person with back pain. I’m a person whose back hurts. It’s me. It’s about me.”
If that’s the case, it makes sense to make a significant effort to recognize the distinction between what’s happening in the physical body—the actual sensations—and the body that it arises in. Noticing the sensations, knowing it’s the body that’s feeling the sensations. And then maybe we can see the fetters, the knots, the attachments that arise in dependence on the two, including that sense of possession and identification with both the pains and the pleasures of the body. Sensations arise in the body; they are not the body itself, and the body is not me.
In our meditation today, I’ll invite you to attend to sensations in the body as they arise, noticing how they appear and after a while, they disappear. In meditation, with our eyes closed and our focus inward, we can tune in to bodily sensations more closely than when we’re in the midst of daily interaction with other people. This river of experience, the flow of experience that is our lives, can become quite simple: a flow of sensation, often accompanied by mental activity, of course.
Let’s begin the meditation by, as always, taking a comfortable meditation posture with that balance of alertness, uprightness, and ease. No straining. Awake and at ease, ready to receive what arises in the body and in the mind. Ready to be present.
Just feeling into what it’s like to be sitting or lying down right now. The sense of the shape that the body is taking, how the limbs are arrayed in space. A kind of global sense of what it feels like to be in the posture that you’re in right now. The contact with whatever your body is resting on, whether it’s a chair or a couch or a bed or a floor cushion. You’re probably in a familiar posture, maybe the same posture you take every time you meditate. Just kind of settling into that and being aware of how it feels, what the sensations are, the overall gestalt, the overall feeling of what it is like to be in this posture.
And as usual, if there’s tension somewhere in the body, you might take a few deep breaths and just let the in-breath move into the area of tightness or tension, and let the out-breath just calm the body. Just let the tension flow out with the breath. Just a few breaths like that, finding some ease in the body. Just being here in a very, very simple way.
Spend a little bit of time with the sensations of breathing. I invite you to follow the sensations from where the cool air enters the nostrils, right down through the soft palate, the back of the throat, down the windpipe into the lungs, inflating the lungs, expanding them, pushing the rib cage out a little bit. As the breath goes all the way down to the bottom of the lungs and the belly expands, feel that. And then the sensations of the breath as it leaves the body, noticing how the belly contracts and the chest falls. And that sense of warmth as the air that’s been warmed by the body comes up the windpipe and back out the nostrils. It’s a cycle. It happens so many times every day, and there are sensations all along the pathway.
And now, I just invite you to open your awareness to receive all the other sensations that are arising in the body as we sit here. Maybe sensations on the outside of the body: coolness of the skin or warmth, depending on what the temperature of the air is. The sense of clothing touching the skin in different places. Maybe tingling or pulsation in your hands or other areas—your arms, your face, your lips. Maybe there’s discomfort somewhere. Maybe there’s pleasant sensation arising just due to being in meditation.
Sensations are arising in the body all the time, and we can know them. They can be known receptively, very simply. Very simply. And of course, there can be mental activity accompanying the sensations. Maybe there’s just a simple knowing: “This is tingling. This is warmth. This is an aching. This is the breath. This is an itch.” Just simple. Or maybe there is some kind of hook, a fetter: wanting the breath to be more even, pushing away an ache, wanting the mind to be quiet, wanting something to happen, some deepening, some samadhi2 to develop.
Just notice how the mind relates to the sensations. Does it try to make them my sensations? Sensations that say something about me? Just notice, and see if you can just let that go. Just let it go.
Whatever is arising in the body and whatever the mental relationship is to it, just know it for now, as simply as possible. If there’s a hook, just know it. You don’t need to try to let go of it. Just know it. This simple sensing of what’s arising—sensations, mental activity—knowing them directly.
So now, take any ease and sense of peace and calm that has developed, that you’ve cultivated during this period of meditation, and offer it outward to others. All the others who are joining the sit today, and all the others who aren’t, everywhere throughout the world. With a wish that all beings everywhere have the strength and balance to meet their lives in a wise way. That they be safe. That they be happy and healthy. And that one day, all beings, all beings everywhere, may be free.
So, welcome again. This week we’re looking at all the ways that our relationship to the six sense spheres, our world, can either get in the way of the deep, clear seeing that’s needed for insight or can actually support the cultivation of that deep, clear seeing. Today I’m going to talk about the fifth sense in this list: the body itself and the tactile sense, the sense of touch.
The body has so many complex processes going on constantly, all the time. The body is a vast field of sensations arising all the time. We can have an itch in an arm, a pain in the knee, and a delightful, tingly sensation in our chest all at the same time. Sensations can be vague or precise. They can be easy to locate or they can feel diffuse, hard to pin down. There are the subtle sensations of breathing that many of us spend a lot of time attending to in our practice, and then the many grosser sensations of movement that we feel as we move through the world, as we act.
All the ways that we receive tactile sensations give rise to slightly different sensations in different areas, and they’re all accompanied by some kind of mental activity: recognizing, defining, approving, enjoying, resenting, ignoring, wanting more of, wishing would stop, etc., etc. It goes on. The instruction in the texts is to notice: Is there a fetter here? Is there something in the relationship between the sensation and the sensing that is pulling us toward more craving and clinging, or in the opposite direction toward more wholesome states? A fetter isn’t a fetter if it’s pulling us in the wholesome direction; it’s just an activity of mind that’s not fettering us, not tying us down.
The fetters that arise are just as varied and numerous as the possible kinds of sensations. There are so many flavors of aversion, ill will, greed, and desire. And there is that sense of taking possession of a self. Which kinds of sensations that we experience are most likely to lead to that kind of attachment, to taking a self? I think pain is definitely one. Physical pain, especially if it’s constant or chronic. We can question the sense of “my pain” that can arise when we feel pain, especially ongoing pain. What if it is instead just pain? Just pain, simply what’s arising, in the same way as the touch of our clothing or the touch of wind on our skin. There’s no meaning attached to it, no taking possession of it.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)3 was really initially invented for just this kind of situation: to learn a new relationship to physical pain. When we’re able to sense different sensations, whether they’re painful or pleasurable, without reactivity, without creating stories about what they mean, without making them mine, we can find more balance with them. We can be present with them without adding any kind of unnecessary stress, without giving rise to dukkha4.
Of course, at the opposite end of the sensation spectrum, there is pleasure. Maybe the kind of pleasure that comes from the exhilaration of physical exercise, or the texture of a food we really like, or the touch of someone we love. Sexual pleasure. Strong pleasure is also an area where the mind likes to create meaning and to take possession, where the attachment to the pleasure as mine—as something that defines me—can show up really easily. Craving for pleasure is one of the most powerful fetters that arise in us. Can pleasure just be pleasure? Something enjoyed, recognized as transient, coming due to conditions and passing away when conditions change? Even the desire for simple comfort can be a fetter. It can keep our choices narrow and confined, making us overcautious. It’s good to explore and inquire.
There are, of course, sensations both difficult and pleasurable that ask us to act, especially on the difficult side. Sensations that tell us that we’re too close to a fire or a hot stove, or that our nose is in danger of freezing if we’re somewhere really cold. We act to protect the body’s integrity. Sensations that are symptomatic of some kind of illness, health change, or injury. We need to use our minds to discern: is this something that needs further exploration, or is it just a passing experience?
But we can also relate to these kinds of sensations in unskillful ways. Of course, even if there is something we need to take action about, we can catastrophize. We can move into paralysis, unrealistic fear, or denial. All those things are fetters. They add mental stress to what is already difficult and painful.
The craving for bodily pleasure is something that human beings have been driven by for as long as we’ve existed. There’s a biological imperative behind some of our sense desires related to the body. And we know that the mental states that arise in dependence on desire for bodily pleasure can really get us into trouble. They can cloud our vision. I think every human being who is older than 20 has been a teenager, by definition, dragged around often by sense desires related to the body. Many people have experienced the dukkha of addiction: a physical craving for pleasure so strong that we seem powerless in its presence, often based on some particular sensations that we want to have arise, as well as cravings for tastes and aromas, which I spoke of yesterday.
The Buddha gave teachings that can help us get more clarity when we’re in the grip of some desire that has arisen along with bodily sensation, or with the desire for some particular bodily sensation to arise. He described his own practice with the six sense bases. When he experienced pleasure as a result of any sense contact—seeing, hearing, feeling, whatever it was—he investigated it in terms of its gratification, danger, and escape. Maybe you’ve heard this teaching before.
The gratification, of course, can be the pleasantness of the sensation itself, or it can be the mental activity that arises in dependence on the sensations. The danger is what the pleasure can lead to: clinging to this pleasure, clinging to something that is impermanent and cannot provide lasting satisfaction. Knowing, “Okay, this is the danger of this. This is not going to last. Craving to bring it back again when it goes.” That’s a fetter. And the escape comes with letting go of the attachment to the pleasure. The Buddha stated that he had to be really clear about the gratification and the danger in order to have the escape. It’s really important to keep that in mind. It takes time to get clear about what it is we are actually feeling gratification in, and what’s the danger. It takes time, but when we use our discernment to see what it is that hooks us in the realm of the senses, then we are gaining wisdom. We’re moving in the direction of the escape.
I’m going to share a story about myself here. As a teenager, I began smoking cigarettes. My parents both smoked. I’m not blaming them, but the fact that they did was a condition for curiosity in me, for the desire to experiment. It was a familiar thing. It wasn’t too long after I started before I was addicted to smoking. I smoked for about 10 years, quitting a couple of times during that period, but always pulled back by the desire to feel a particular kind of pleasure in the back of my throat as I inhaled the smoke. I can still remember the feeling of that pleasure.
Then I saw this little paperback book—I can’t remember the title—but it was about giving up bad habits in general. The technique it described was right in line with the Buddhist teachings about gratification, danger, and escape, though of course, I didn’t know that at the time. The idea was to make a list of all the things that you didn’t like about your bad habit—the danger. I made a very long list of things that I didn’t like about smoking. The instruction was to read that list every day, every time you were tempted to engage in the bad habit. And I did that. I noticed that if I just hung with the desire for a cigarette without giving in to it, it would pass. That was a revelation. The craving was impermanent, not that I defined it in that way then. As time went on, the sense of danger grew in me, and the desire gradually ebbed. I never smoked again after going through that practice, except sometimes in my dreams, and I would wake up feeling guilty. But I had made a final escape from the craving to smoke.
I think that technique can be a really useful way of working with strong desires that we know are obstructing our ease and getting in the way of seeing clearly. Listing all the ways the desire doesn’t serve us, all the dangers that are in the habit, all the ways that it disturbs our peace and gives rise to dukkha. When the obstacles in our minds and hearts to moving in a healthy direction are strong, then we need to remind ourselves, often again and again, of the danger before we’re really going to believe it and take it on. But when it’s very clear, I really believe escape will come. And first, we have to know the gratification.
In our practice of meditation, as samadhi develops, there can be really beautiful, delightful sensations filling the entire body. They’re a really beautiful part of the path, a lovely part, wholesome, arising due to the practice itself. We can enjoy those; we can encourage their continuation, their onward leading. But if we begin to cling to them, that clinging becomes a fetter. It is a fetter. As meditation deepens further, as samadhi really deepens, the equanimity that arises isn’t characterized by pleasant bodily feeling. It’s sublimely peaceful, but the bodily experience is neutral. So clinging to the pleasure of samadhi can actually create a kind of roadblock, obstructing our progress towards the deep equanimity that leads to insight.
These five physical senses are ways that we perceive the world. The final sense, the mind and its activity, is where the conceiving happens, and that’s the biggie. Remember, in any moment, there are only two things happening: there is what is happening, and there’s how we relate to what’s happening. The activities of the mind are how we relate to what’s happening. So, that will be our topic for tomorrow—the place where the fetters really get going.
I hope you have a lovely day, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you for your attention.
Nama-rupa: A Pali term referring to “name and form” or “mind and matter.” Rupa refers to the physical form or material aspect of existence, while nama refers to the mental aspect, including feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention. Together, they constitute the sentient being. ↩
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of deep meditative concentration or absorption. It is a key component of the Buddhist path, leading to tranquility and insight. ↩
MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction): A secular, evidence-based program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn that uses mindfulness meditation to help people cope with stress, pain, and illness. ↩
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism, referring to the inherent stress and discontent in life due to craving and attachment. ↩