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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2013-06-18
Dependent Origination: Contact
59:34
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Rodney Smith
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Think of the senses as six channels that are constantly flooding the brain with raw data while the brain attempts to coordinate this barrage of input into a meaningful presentation of events. The brain selects what data it will focus upon and leaves the rest out. When the particular sense data is allowed to make its way into consciousness, we call that, "contact," which is the sixth link in Dependent Origination. After contact is made various formations of mind encircle the contacted sense impression with perception, recognition, and memory. Now the contact becomes connected to all the other data, and actions are taken in relationship to the definition the contact (now the focus of experience) is given. Is this significant or not, how does this fit within my worldview, and shall I approach or avoid? If there is unconscious contact, we will likely see unconscious action, and if there is conscious contact then the action will not come from the past conditioning of the mind but spontaneously from what is.
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Seattle Insight Meditation Society
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In
collection:
Dependent Origination
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2013-06-04
Dependent Origination: The Six Senses
56:57
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Rodney Smith
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One of the questions answered by Dependent Origination is where our information about the world comes from, and what it is based upon. As we have seen, much of what we know is what the past allows us to know. By reflecting on the moment and commenting continually about it, we use past memories as our pathway to move forward. This imagined response (meaning these ideas we hold about reality are not based upon what is true here and now)is being organized by the brain. To show conclusively the difference, the Buddha in his famous Sabba Sutta (SN 35.23), stated that formed reality holds the six senses only: the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect and ideas. "That is all (there is in form)," he said, "there is nothing that can be added or subtracted from this." The Buddha is specifically showing us that all our added responses from the past about the present are actually one of the six senses arising, as all the senses do, in the present moment. This arising of ideas in the present also includes the person who seems to be receiving those very sensations. Not spoken about in this sutta is the unformed, commonly referred to as sati or awareness. Awareness holds a direct wordless knowing, which does notrefer to the mental way we usually know something by giving it a name. There is space between this wordless knowing and the formation of words in the mind. Thoughts from the mind encircle this wordless knowing when, under the veil of ignorance, the two forms of knowing are perceived as one and the same. Ignorance enmeshes form with the formless, confusing the sacred with the mundane. Once this occurs we have only the sense data and our accompanying commentary to give us the information needed to navigate the world, the wordless discernment of awareness is no longer perceived.
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Seattle Insight Meditation Society
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In
collection:
Dependent Origination
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