The practice of sense-base acuity

I have been using a form of meditation that I think is very effective in strengthening and maintaining focus while doing sitting meditation.  I have found it most useful when I seem to be in a period of excessive wandering, planning and ruminating.  The meditation employs focused awareness and open monitoring in a set sequence.  The procedure involves focusing exclusively in turn on each of the six sense bases (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking) and then opening up to all of them before cycling through them again.

Those familiar with the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction body scan or the Goenka method of scanning body sensations from head to toe will see some similarities to this practice.  Sense-base acuity practice is a variant of contemplation of the sense-bases (ayatana) described in the Satipatthana Sutta as a dhammanuppassana practice, one of the fourth foundation of mindfulness.

Begin by focusing on seeing, either with eyes open or closed.  You will be aware of sights before you if your eyes are open or, if your eyes are closed, variations of light and shadow.  Focus your energy on exercising the organ of sight or the "eye sensitivity" by trying to see whatever is before you without identifying or associating to what appears, all the time noting, "seeing, seeing, ...."  If no sight is particularly present, be aware of the eye sensitivity itself.  After a few minutes, switch to hearing.

Focusing your energy on exercising the "ear sensitivity" by detecting sounds that occur, all the time noting "hearing, hearing,...."  If no particular sound appears, be aware of the ear sensitivity.  Again, after a few minutes, switch to smelling.

The dominant senses during eyes closed sitting meditation are hearing and touching and, if your eyes are open, also seeing.  Smelling and tasting are not usually as evident and are best practiced during eating meditation.  However, focusing energy on smelling while doing sitting meditation may reveal subtle smells or the absence of smell, in which case, awareness of the sensitivity may be effective.  Focusing on tasting in sitting meditation is facilitated by briefly swallowing and moving the tongue around the mouth.  You may detect various tastes.  You can then move on to the next sense base.

Focusing on touching sensation opens up a range of bodily sensation.  Begin by noting the whole body and its contact with the surfaces it touches, go then to dominant sensations that are present and, if evident, to the rising and falling of the abdomen or to the sensations of the breath at the nostril.  Again,  after a few minutes, shift to noting thinking.

Putting energy into noting thinking may effectively dispel whatever thinking is occurring.  Try to detect nuances.  Is the thinking past or future focused?  Is it tinged with emotions?  How does it relate to physical sensations that may be occurring?

The final step is simply generalizing the energy you have developed through the exercise and opening up to whatever sensations occur.  You can also return to a breath focused practice.  You can do this as long as you do not drift off into excessive wandering or thinking that goes unnoticed for lengthening periods of time. When this occurs, you should begin cycling through the six senses again.  In my experience doing this practice only a few times during a period of sitting meditation generates enough energy to keep me focused throughout the remainder of the sitting and the effects of the practice sometimes even carry over to subsequent meditation sittings.

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The householder's path

In many religions, there is a distinction between the those who turn away from the world, the renunciate (monks and nuns), and the householder or layperson who remains very much in the world.  The renunciate is usually celibate and has few if any possessions, sometimes living in a community of fellow renunciates or living a solitary life in a hermitage or even a cave.  Often the renunciate depends on his community or laypeople for the necessities of life.  The householder typically has a family and possessions and works for a living.  Whereas the renunciate is devoted to praying, meditating and doing good works, the householder has many responsibilities for maintaining the "household" whatever it consists of.  In spiritual terms, the advantage of the life of the renunciate is the freedom to concentrate on reflection, study, meditation and other devotional activities.  The advantage of the life of the householder is having the opportunity to experience the simple pleasures of life, including the joys of family life, conjugal satisfaction and the enjoyment of other sensory pleasures (in moderation, of course).  The opportunity to practice meditation was open to the householder on a daily basis and during meditation retreats lasting a few days to months to years when they could practice in the manner of a renunciate.

The Buddha did not disparage the householder's path.  In fact, there are several examples in the scriptures of laypersons who achieved various stages of enlightenment including the full enlightenment of the arahant.  

Opening to insight: Dukkha and suffering

The Pali term dukkha is frequently translated as "suffering."  However, many translators prefer the term "unsatisfactory."  But it appears that context may be very relevant to which translation is most appropriate.

The three marks of existence are impermanence (anicca), suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and non-self (anatta).  Everything is impermanent, and this is unsatisfactory.  No matter what we do, no matter how enlightened we may become, this characteristic of the impermanence of conditioned existence does not disappear.  Suffering is another matter.  This is evident by an examination of the Four Noble Truths.

The first noble truth is as follows:
"This is the noble truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha."

"Suffering" as a translation for dukkha seems to work here.  The second noble truth indicates that craving is the origin of dukkha.  Again, "suffering" as a translation for dukkha works.  We suffer in so far as we have craving for essentially anything that has to do with conditioned existence.  The third noble truths tell us that there is the possibility of the cessation of dukkha.  The fourth noble truth tells us that the path to the cessation of dukkha is the Noble Eightfold Path.  "Suffering" as a translation works well in these contexts.  However, while the suffering of an arahant, an enlightened one, may cease, the unsatisfactory characteristic of conditioned existence does not.  The difference is that the arahant, who is no longer subject to craving, need not suffer because of it.

I am not a Pali scholar and so must rely on the expertise of others.  As many Pali scholar's have argued, there is no satisfactory English equivalent for the word dukkha.  Translating it as "suffering" works in some contexts but not in others as does translating it as "unsatisfactory."

This is not a semantic quibble but affects how we think of what we are doing when we are meditating and following a spiritual path.  It is pessimistic and not reflective of the Buddhist view to say that suffering is a mark of existence and, by implication, inescapable.  It is more accurate to say that conditioned existence is unsatisfactory but that we need not cling to what is impermanent and be subject to craving; by following the path, we can escape suffering.

Opening to insight: The Foundations of Mindfulness

The Satipathana Sutta (translated as The Foundations of Mindfulness) provides instructions on different ways to meditate.  There are four references for establishing mindfulness:  body, feeling, consciousness and mental objects.  The most often quoted portion of the sutta is as follows:

"Here, bhikkhus [monks] , a bhikkhu lives contemplating the body in the body, ardent, clearly comprehending (it) and mindful (of it), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating the feelings in the feelings, ardent, clearly comprehending (them) and mindful (of them), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating consciousness in consciousness, ardent, clearly comprehending (it) and mindful (of it), having overcome in this world covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects, ardent, clearly comprehending (them) and mindful (of them), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief."

A focus on breathing while meditating is a form of body contemplation.  The Mahasi technique is body focused.  One observes the rising and falling of the abdomen, noting other objects as they arise, and then returning to the rising and falling as the default object.  A focus on feeling involves being mindful of feeling tones associated with sensations: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings.  Contemplating consciousness involves being mindful of various mental states such as greed or lust, hate or aversion and delusion or ignorance.  The focus of meditation in contemplation of mental objects can be essentially anything but as seen through categories associated with Buddhist teachings such as the five hindrances, five aggregates and the six sense-bases.

Opening to insight: The five hindrances

The five hindrances are obstacles in meditation and in life.  They are manifestations of the three root defilements--greed, hate and delusion.


The five hindrances are sense desire, ill will; sloth and topor; restlessness, worry and remorse; and doubt.  The first two hindrances, sense desire and ill will, represent the forces of attraction and aversion that we can have towards sense objects and are manifestations of the defilements of greed and anger.  They are the strongest of the hindrances.  The other three hindrances are manifestations of delusion, usually in association with other defilements (Bodhi, 2010).  Although less toxic than the first two hindrances, they too obstruct meditative progress.  Restlessness, worry and remorse disquiet the mind and distract us.  Sloth and topor drain our energy and doubts saps our confidence in what we are doing.

In traditional explanations of these hindrances, the simile is employed of the mind being like water.  When sense desire dominates, the mind is like water that is dyed with many bright and alluring colors.  When ill will dominates, the mind is like boiling water.  When restlessness, worry and remorse dominate, the mind is like water churned up by the wind.  When sloth and torpor dominate, the mind is like a stagnant pond choked with weeds and algae.  When doubt dominates, the mind is like muddy water.  For each of the hindrances, the water is disturbed and it is not possible to see clearly through it.

Opening to insight-- conditioned existence

In Buddhist doctrine, everything other than nibbana is conditioned and, as such, subject to arising and passing away and bound up in a causal network that has no beginning or end.  When analysed, all conditioned things are seen as collections (aggregates, khandhas in Pali) rather than independently existing things each of which has a self or essence.  Humans are no exception.  Our psycho-physical being is composed of five aggregates: form or matter, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness.  All our experiences can be understood in terms of these aggregates and their interaction.  We misunderstand our own nature when we identify ourselves with any one of them, for instance, by seeing the body as one’s self.  The basis for suffering is to be found in these aggregates:  “Whatever we cling to can be found amongst the five aggregates” (Bodhi, 2013).  As such they are called the five aggregates of clinging.

The doctrine of dependent origination (paticcasamuppada in Pali) provides the framework for understanding conditioned existence.  The doctrine has a general and a specific meaning.  The general meaning is that all things are interdependent and arise by virtue of multiple causes and conditions.  The specific meaning has to do with the cycle of existence (see chart below) often depicted as a wheel of life with 12 links from ignorance (nescience in the chart) to old age and death.

(Source: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/DBLM/resource/ebooks/102946/102946-223.gif)