0.1. About the Course
Intention
My intention in preparing this course is very simple. I have benefited enormously from understanding both the theoretical and practical aspects of the Buddha's teaching on saḷāyatana—the six fields of sense experience. I would like to share what I have learned with you, so that you too may get the same benefit.
Compared to other frameworks found in the suttas, saḷāyatana is a way of entering into the Buddha's teaching that is understandable for modern rational humans, it is free from overt religious overtones, it requires no belief in anything unseen or supernatural, and can be experienced directly through introspection.
Saḷāyatana is also uniquely relevant to the modern human condition. It reveals in vivid detail how we produce our own suffering from reactions to sense experience. Although we are surrounded by material luxury and convenience unimaginable for the average person a few centuries ago, there's no associated decrease in psychological dis-ease. In fact, the opposite is true, we live in an age of unprecedented mental stress and psychological suffering.
This only makes the Buddha more relevant than ever before, a unique historical spiritual master who didn't teach for the ultimate goal of a pleasant afterlife, or fellowship with God Almighty in heaven, or to realise some abstract concept like the True Self. He taught that the highest goal is a practical one, to understand the causes of suffering and to end suffering in this very life.
pubbe cāhaṃ bhikkhave, etarahi ca dukkhañceva paññāpemi, dukkhassa ca nirodhaṃ.
Previously and now at present, monks, I merely teach suffering and its cessation.
-- MN22 alagaddūpamasuttaṃ
Through understanding the theory of saḷāyatana and putting it into practice, may you effectively reduce your psychological stress and ultimately eradicate it entirely.
Structure of the course
The course develops incrementally, taking us step-by-step through progressively subtler aspects of meditation.
We will start with establishing mindfulness on the experience of the six senses.
Then we will examine how sense experience gets constructed, how each experience is a composite of multiple components, and the necessary conditions for any experience to arise.
Then we will investigate how each and every experience has a certain pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling tone, and how we are reacting to those, forming intentions, generating craving, aversion and delusion, and acting out the responses in thought, word and deed.
Finally, we will look deeply into how each part of this process is stamped with the three marks of existence: impermanence, discomfort, and the fact of being completely impersonal.
Recognising each part of the process, it is possible to slowly change habitual unskilful responses into more skilful ones.
For each step along the way, there will be
- Theory: Some written words on the topic, discussing ideas found in suttas, and how to apply them in practice.
- Practice: Guided meditation instructions to get you started on the path of introspection into the topic.
- Sutta Reading: early Buddhist source material for a broader view of the topic
How to do this course
This course is designed for self-retreat and can be completed at your own pace. It can be finished in 10 days, a month or a year. More important than rushing to complete the course is correctly grasping each level of the successive instructions, and being able to put them into practice for yourself.
Don't move on to the next section until you:
- have understood the written theory,
- have listened to the guided meditation to get an idea of how to put the theory into practice,
- and are able to meditate on the current theme by yourself, under your own guidance.
Distractions
It is highly recommended that you minimise external distractions while you are doing this course. If possible, disconnect from communication and the internet. If that is not possible, then set aside a small fixed time for communication and online activity.
If you are addicted to some website, an app on your phone, or some form of social media, then please disable that with some kind of app blocker. Most modern people are psychologically dependent on their devices, so in the beginning it's helpful to physically remove the temptation, later on you can go back to it and face your digital addiction mindfully.
A digital data fast is recommended so that you can effectively learn a new skill and see exactly how the mind behaves. It's too easy to lose the benefit of meditation by breaking the continuity with digital distractions.
To get the full benefit of this course, drastically limit the input to the sense. This way, you can get the maximum return from the time you have to invest in this.
In short, live as a monastic should.
"If your phone is not in aeroplane mode, how do you expect your meditation to take off!?"
Subjective Experience
This course focuses entirely on subjective experience—the raw, first-person 'what it feels like' to be alive and conscious—rather than what is considered objective material reality. We all have a rich inner world of experience, from the taste of fruit juice to the feelings of joy and anguish. These experiential phenomena are private, accessible only to you, the individual experiencing them.
Science can observe correlates of conscious experience, such as EEG patterns, the output of fMRI scans, or physiological markers like heart rate and pupil dilation. However, these are only physical processes associated with consciousness, not consciousness itself. Fortunately, we do not need to solve the 'hard problem of consciousness'—why and how brain activity gives rise to subjective experiences—in order to be aware of our own subjective experiences. We merely need to pay attention to them.
The Buddha's focus on saḷāyatana is not for abstract knowledge or scientific understanding, but for seeing clearly how subjective experience gives rise to suffering, and how to get free from that. While neuroscience provides fascinating insights into the mechanisms of conscious experience from the 'outside', it has little to say about—and offers little relief—from psychological suffering happening on the 'inside'.
Throughout this course, we will talk much about 'mind' and hardly ever mention the word 'brain'. The reason for this is simple: the mind and mental processes are available to experience, whereas as the brain and its processes are invisible, even completely absent from subjective experience.
Even if it is outside the scope of scientific measurement, there is nothing more fundamental to being than subjective experience. For two and a half millennia, the Buddhist tradition has preserved a wealth of teachings and practical methods for working with this inner reality, mindfulness being just the tip of the iceberg. Through an open-minded engagement with these ideas and techniques, we can deepen our understanding of subjective experience and transform our relationship with it. The results of this are nothing less than life-changing.
The miracle of instruction
When questioned about what is the most miraculous power, the Buddha rejected psychic abilities and mind reading, and instead said that the ability to instruct another is truly the most miraculous power.
katamañca, kevaṭṭa, anusāsanīpāṭihāriyaṃ? idha, kevaṭṭa, bhikkhu evamanusāsati – ‘evaṃ vitakketha, mā evaṃ vitakkayittha, evaṃ manasikarotha, mā evaṃ manasākattha, idaṃ pajahatha, idaṃ upasampajja viharathā’ti.
And what, Kevaṭṭa, is the miracle of instruction? Here, a monk instructs in such a way, "Think like this, don't think like that. Pay attention in this way, don't pay attention in that way. Abandon this, undertake and continue that."
-- DN11 kevaṭṭasuttaṃ
It's good to remember that the early discourses of the Buddha are not presenting some philosophy or religion, a fixed idea of how the world is, or should be. The discourses are giving instructions for practice, a ñāya or method, how to think beneficially, how to avoid unskilful thought patterns, what to pay attention to, what to ignore, what to abandon and what to undertake and continue doing. When followed, these instructions lead one successively to a new understanding of reality that's not possible to reach by mere theoretical thinking, only through experiential understanding.
So what we're attempting to do in this course is grasp the theory being taught, and, in a spirit of discovery, apply it within, and see where it leads. This is not some religion to believe in. What is required is for us to put our metaphorical boots on and start walking.
Choice of Suttas
While it is possible to include hundreds of suttas on a topic such as saḷāyatana, when it comes to a meditation retreat, I have learned from personal experience that it's best to pick a small handful of related discourses and meditate on those; otherwise there is the danger of overwhelming the mind with concepts—we already have enough of those!—which cannot easily be put into practice. In the case of academic study of Buddhism, more is better. In the case of meditation practice, less is more.
Similarly, the simpler, more practical statements are best suited for a retreat environment, rather than the wordy, conceptually profound statements found in some discourses.
Apart from these two guidelines, the choice of discourses is purely personal, and this topic could easily be explored in as much detail with an entirely different set of suttas.
Q&A
Q: Do you have any questions or doubts at this point?