Goenka: FINDING SENSE IN SENSATION [1 Attachment]

yick kenghang [Attachment(s) from yick kenghang included below] FINDING SENSE IN SENSATION – The Crucial role of the body in meditation By S.N. Goenka The Buddha was the foremost scientist of mind and matter. Wha

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FINDING SENSE IN SENSATION – The Crucial role of the body in meditation

By S.N. Goenka

The Buddha was the foremost scientist of mind and matter. What makes him a peerless scientist is his discovery that craving (tanha) or, by extension, aversion arises from sensation on the body.

Before the Buddha’s time, little if any importance was given to bodily sensation. Spiritual masters would dissuade people to turn away from sensory objects and to ignore their tactile sensations. However, the bodily sensation is central to the Buddha’s discovery in determining the root cause of suffering and the means to cessation. The Buddha said that when we examine the bodily sensation more closely, we will realise that when we come into contact with a sense-object through our six sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) we cling to the sensation it creates, giving rise to wanting and delight, or aversion (rejecting it or wanting it to cease). These sensations are the material we will have to work with.

The first step is to train the mind to become so sharp and sensitive that it will learn to detect even the subtlest sensations. That job is done by awareness of the breath (anapana) on the small area under the nostrils, above the upper lip. If we concentrate on this area, the mind becomes sharper and sharper, subtler and subtler. This is the way we begin to become aware of every sort of sensation on the body.

Next , we feel the sensations but don’t react to them. We can learn to maintain this equanimity toward sensation by understanding their transitory nature. Every sensation shares the same characteristic of its arising and passing away, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, gross or subtle. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux and learn not to react to it. This is the practice we have to experience by ourselves.

As we reach deeper states of awareness, we will be able to detect subtler and subtler sensations or vibrations of greater rapidity, arising and passing with greater speed. In these deep states, our mind will become so calm, so tranquil, so pure that we will immediately recognise any impurity accompanying the agitated state and make the choice to refrain from reacting adversely. It becomes clear to us that we can’t harm anybody without first defiling ourselves with emotions like hate, anger or lust. If we do this, we will come to an experiential understanding of the deep truth of impermanence (anicca). As we observe sensations without reacting to them, the impurities in our minds lose their strength and cannot overpower us.

The Buddha was not merely giving sermons, he was offering a technique to help people reach a state in which they could feel the harm they do to themselves. Once we see this, ethics (sila) follows naturally. Just as we pull our hand from a flame, we step back from harming ourselves and others.

It is a wonderful discovery that by observing physical sensations on the body, we can eradicate the roots of mental defilement. As we practice more, negative emotions will become far more conspicuous to us much earlier; as soon as they arise, we will become aware of sensations and have the opportunity to make ethical choices. But first we need to begin with what is present to us deeply in our minds at the levels of sensation. Otherwise, we will keep ourselves and others miserable for a very long time.

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