Guarding the Doors of the Senses
By Dr Elizabeth Ashby
“He
sees a material shape with the eye, and he comprehends the fetter that
arises through the eye. He hears a sound with the ear, and he
comprehends the fetter that arises through the ear” … and so on for the
other four senses—smell, taste, bodily feeling and consciousness. The
Pali Canon is full of similar statements, and it behoves us to examine
them carefully.
The
fetters most likely to arise through the eyes are sense desire and ill
will. We see a rose, a chocolate or a cigarette, and immediately would
like to satisfy our craving by reaching out and grasping them. The
process seems instantaneous, but it is not really as simple as that. It
depends on the 17 thought moments that are involved in any fresh arising
of consciousness. For instance, you are walking past a row of shops,
not thinking of anything in particular, your consciousness is in the
state of bhavaṅga (merely the “life continuum”), when a flash of colour
impinges on the eye-door. It is sufficiently vivid to disturb the
condition of bhavaṅga—so you pause and have a look (adverting the mind).
You then perceive a scarlet object lying on a fishmonger’s slab, it is
covered with a kind of armour, has two large claws in front and a thick
jointed tail. Your previous experience enables you to name it as a
lobster. Then by association of ideas the word “mayonnaise” springs into
your mind, and you think “How I’d like a lobster salad for supper
instead of bread and cheese!” If a few grains of dust have already been
removed from your eyes, there will ensue a kind of debate—“Shall I give
way to this sense desire? There is nothing intrinsically wrong about a
good meal. Indeed good food builds up what is called morale and is
conducive to calm. My poor little ego is all the better for an
occasional treat. And I could ask old So-and-so to come in for supper.
That would be practising dāna. Moreover a willingness to share good
things keeps the fetter of avarice in check.” And so forth, with a
mixture of kusala and akusala thoughts until the debate is settled one
way or the other, whereupon the original impression sinks back into
bhavaṅga where it lies latent until some fresh association calls it into
consciousness again.
For
hate arising through the eye you have only to see a wasp settling on
the breakfast marmalade. You automatically pick up a knife and crush it,
thereby breaking the first precept with a thoroughly akusala deed.
Minor hates arise when you see some recognised eye-sore, such as a
corporation dump defiling the landscape; you at once feel ill will
towards the people who are responsible for the thing. Similarly, the
sight of people we dislike strengthens our aversion and builds up ill
will for the future.
Sounds
entering the ear-door are not likely to induce greed, though one may be
tempted to sit up listening to the radio instead of going to bed or
attending to some job. Where sound is concerned, desire is usually due
to a pre-craving that impels one to buy a concert ticket or switch on
the radio. Many people are so afraid of solitude and silence that they
crave for any sort of a sound rather than sit in quietness. But for
better-educated people, aversion for sound is the more likely fetter.
The
howl of a jet plane can fill the inexperienced meditator with fury. One
becomes distracted and breaks out into un-Ariyan speech, cursing the
disturber loudly and volubly. A much better plan is to trace the
origination of the sound, knowing that having arisen it must inevitably
cease. Thus: “The noise is made by a plane piloted by a human being. It
came from such-and-such an aerodrome, and was built in a certain factory
by government order in response to the re-armament programme.
Re-armament is a symptom of the ‘Cold War’—[here one must beware of
nourishing ill will for the people who foment war]. War, whether cold or
hot, is due to greed, hate and delusion; these are the result of
ignorance.” By the time one has got back mentally to avijjā the
offending plane is many miles away and the sound is inaudible. One can
then calmly return to the original subject of meditation.
Where
minor disturbances are concerned, such as chirping birds or barking
dogs, one can follow the Buddha’s advice to Bāhiya: “Thus must you
train. In the heard there is only what is heard. There is no
substantiality in it, no self for you to hate.” This method is decidedly
helpful, and can be used for putting down irritating talk.
A
very present peril that enters through the ear door is gossip. Ninety
nine people out of a hundred, whatever they may say to the contrary,
thoroughly enjoy gossip. The harm done to the people discussed may be
negligible, but the real damage is done to ourselves. We always feel
superior to the people discussed and that is the fetter of Conceit—a
very heavy fetter indeed! It takes a lot of social tact not to listen,
or to change the conversation, without being uncivil to one’s vis-à-vis,
but we can at least refrain from adding our own comments.
The
fetter that arises through odours and the nose door is very subtle.
There is nothing so evocative as a scent. Who can smell, or even hear
the words “wood smoke” or “violets,” without some emotional
repercussion? If the memory is happy, one clings to the past, and
probably regrets—“departed joys, departed never to return”—as the old
song has it. If the remembered incident is unhappy then the old grief
comes to life. Grief (domanassa) belongs to the Hate group of mental
states, and is both wasteful and useless. When Dido asked Aeneas to tell
her about the fall of Troy, he replied: “Infandum, regina, jubes,
renovare dolorem.” It is beyond my capacity to render the drawn-out
misery of the Latin vowels, but roughly translated the meaning is: “You
ask a shameful thing of me, O Queen, to bring to life an old sorrow.”
The
Buddha’s advice was “Let be the past, let be the future.” He never
forbade pleasure, provided it was lawful. He said he knew both the
satisfaction and the peril that arose through the senses. He stressed
the peril because the satisfaction can only be temporary, leading to
renewed desire, and so productive of dukkha, and fresh becoming. The
HERE-NOW is the important place where past kamma is being worked out and
fresh kamma originates.
Aversion
entering the nose-door is very frequent. It is wise to remove the
source of the smell whenever possible for it is usually due to some
impurity which, in the interests of cleanliness, ought to be removed. If
this is impossible then one should remove one’s own “bundle of
khandhas,” for we are under no obligation to endure remediable ills.
The
tongue and tastes may stimulate greed, as when we go on eating after
the body’s needs are satisfied. This behaviour induces the fetter of
sloth and torpor. One type of monk who is hard to instruct is he “who
having filled his belly full, thinks only of the ease and comfort of his
bed.”
Aversion
for food can occur when it is badly served or otherwise unappetising,
and some people have an inherent dislike of cloves or onions. It is
inadvisable to express this dislike when dining in company lest one’s
host or other guests should be embarrassed.
The
body itself constitutes another sense-door. There are two kinds of
sensation associated with it; superficial (touch) and deep. The latter
depends on joint and muscle movements, and on sensations arising in the
viscera; these last are usually unpleasant.
Skin
sensation (touch) is very important. Certain textures, such as silk and
fur, have a definitely sensuous appeal, and where the opposite sex is
concerned, skin texture itself comes into play.
Unpleasant
deep sensations may be due to disease or to dietary indiscretions such
as that produced by too much cucumber; in which case the appropriate
verdict is: “Serves me right!”
Shall
we attempt a short-cut to guarding the sense-doors by blocking them
entirely? Tie a bandage over our eyes or fill our ears with “honey-sweet
wax,” as the wily Ulysses stopped the ears of his sailors lest they
should hear the song of the sirens and be lured to their destruction? It
would be madness to try to cross Oxford Street in this condition—in
fact it is a kind of mutilation, and as foolish as the action of Origen
who castrated himself so that he would no longer be tempted by “the sins
of the flesh.“ To close the eyes and the ears completely would be to
cut out all beauty from our lives. As an aside, it may be remarked that
some Buddhists are afraid of beauty. This is a grave mistake, for beauty
encourages healthy thoughts and relaxes nervous tension. We can never
be aware of absolute beauty. In the Platonic sense, all we know is a
beautiful object, whether it be a material shape, a sound or a scent.
Provided we do not covet such things, beautiful objects are helpful and
inspiring. Indeed, we can get more pleasure from a picture in someone
else’s house than if it were in one’s own. The beauty of a thing seen
only occasionally strikes one afresh on each new inspection, but if
actually possessed familiarity detracts from its charm.
With
regard to pleasures the first principle to be applied is that of the
Middle Way: neither over-indulgence nor extreme asceticism. Violent
suppression of sense-desire can produce harmful psychological or even
physical results in either this or some future life.
Just
a few words more about guarding the eye-door. A monk in training is
told to keep his eyes on the ground about 12 or 15 feet ahead (the
length of the plough-yoke). This enables him to avoid hazards on the
path, such as sticks, stones and snakes, but prevents him from seeing
desirable objects, like pretty women or rich robes worn by other people.
Within the limits of commonsense this technique can be employed in the
West; it certainly cuts out the silly game of “window-shopping” so
popular with many women!
Where
problems of conduct are concerned Buddhism has one infallible answer.
This is right mindfulness. Mindfulness makes us aware of our mental
states whenever fetters arise, and we can then practise the first of
four Right Efforts, and send the fetter to its ceasing. This is far from
easy. Desires and aversions are so liable to become obsessions and
dominate the mind. In such cases the use of a mantram may banish the
intruder. Om mani padme hum or the Great Mantra from the Heart Sutra:
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi, Svaha! The invocation with
which pansil (the Five Precepts) opens—recited in Pali—is a fine
mantram. If we take refuge in the Triple Gem we cannot go far astray.
The
mind-door (consciousness being the sixth sense) is the most difficult
of all to guard. Likewise it is the most important. Consciousness is on
the run from morning to night, greedy for any new distraction, however
trivial; hence the constant warnings in the suttas about unskilled
(akusala) thoughts, the encouragement of which causes skilled thoughts
to decline. If we attend closely to things which should not be closely
attended to, trouble arises. If we constantly occupy our minds with
things like lobster salad, roast duck and caviar, we are training
ourselves to be gormandisers. This does not mean we should never think
of food—it is a very important subject. The cankers, āsava, “manias,”
“outflows,” are prone to arise in an ill-nourished or sickly body. In
the Far East food is regarded as medicinal—a medicine to prevent
disease. For this reason food requires just as much attention as a
chemist would give to making up a prescription. Good food is conducive
to calm, one of the limbs of enlightenment. Once more the Middle Way is
indicated.
Unwise
attention is particularly dangerous when thinking about other people.
If we keep remembering the faults of somebody we don’t like, our
aversion strikes deeper and deeper roots until a real hate arises,
productive of constant woe. It is just as much a mistake to reflect too
much about an attractive person, for unwise reflection can change a
friendship into an infatuation leading to unhappy results.
People
of the intellectual type have also to be on guard against constant
conceptualising. We become obsessed with ideas, possibly quite unworthy
ones, and prefer to sit down to write an article for a Buddhist magazine
rather than to practise the arising of mindfulness with regard to the
prosaic behaviour and unedifying conglomeration of parts that constitute
the “own body.”
This
business of guarding the doors of the senses sounds pretty tough, and
it certainly is so. The Buddha himself said: “This Dhamma is deep,
difficult to understand,” and he never gave the impression that the
Eightfold Path was edged with primroses. The loveliness of the Dhamma,
“lovely in its beginning, lovely in the middle, and lovely in its
ending,” is due to a quite different quality that derives from our
highest instincts and aspirations. Unless we are prepared to do
something about it in the way of mindfulness, we had better stop playing
at Buddhism; instead take up some easy-going cult that pretends to
expand or exalt what the intelligentsia calls the “human psyche”—the
in-dwelling self-conceit present in all of us.
Source: BPS, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Bodhi Leaves No. 44 (excerpt).
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