Senses are what enable us to experience life. The well-known five senses are sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. And there is one more: the mind.
These senses come into contact with their objects throughout our lives. For example, the sense of sight perceives colors, shapes, and other visible objects. However, we can only see when three elements are present: a functioning sense organ (like the eye), the mind (awareness or consciousness), and the object itself. If there is no awareness, even if a movie is playing in front of us, but the mind wanders elsewhere, we will have no idea what the movie is about. The same applies to all other senses.
Most of the time, we can choose what we want to see to fulfill our desires. However, there are also moments when we see things we wish we hadn’t. These interactions occur constantly throughout our lives via our senses.
These contacts, regardless of whether the object is pleasant or unpleasant, are neutral. But the mechanism within our consciousness interprets them into pleasant and unpleasant objects.
The five senses and the mind operate independently, each creating its respective awareness. The sense of sight and its contact with objects produce visual awareness, the sense of smell produces olfactory awareness, and so on.
When we reflect on this, we see that humans—this body—are nothing more than mind/consciousness and physical form continuously in process. An untrained mind and consciousness lead to the concept of “self.” It is from this that the idea arises: “I truly exist as an individual.”
In reality, we can train the mind to recognize contact and remain neutral. Most of the time, pleasant objects tend to trigger greed and a desire to experience them again, while unpleasant objects provoke aversion or rejection of the object and the contact that occurred.
Since the senses result in contact, and contact leads to feelings (pleasant or unpleasant), these feelings in turn result in craving or rejection. As long as this process remains unnoticed and continues unregulated, it will be difficult to see things clearly, which means holding onto wrong views.
Albert Einstein once said, “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Now I understand that its purpose is to free us from this transient world, to be liberated from craving and aversion, and to attain a higher freedom.
Photo credit: Aaron taken from https://freedomandfulfilment.com/
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