Guarding the Sense Doors
After one has established a solid practice of virtue imbued with renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness through the practice of right action, right speech, and right livelihood, based on Right View and Right Intention, one is ready to start practicing the next part of the gradual training: Guarding the Sense Doors.
And what more is to be done? We will guard our senses, not grasping at the form seen by the eye, not grasping at the sound heard by the ear. Having abandoned attachment and aversion, we will guard the eye faculty. While staying in seclusion, if unwholesome, unskillful thoughts of covetousness and discontent arise, we should practice restraint, protect our eye faculty, and establish restraint over the eye faculty. Having heard a sound with the ear... Having smelled an odor with the nose... Having tasted a flavor with the tongue... Having touched a tactile sensation with the body... Knowing a mental phenomenon with the mind, we should not grasp at its signs or features. If, while staying in seclusion, unguarded, uncontrolled thoughts of covetousness and discontent arise, we should practice restraint, protect our mind faculty, and establish restraint over the mind faculty. This is how you should train.
Like Virtue, guarding the sense doors is an essential skill that needs to be developed and continually practiced as one progresses in the gradual training. The important point to consider and the main skill to be developed when guarding the sense doors is understanding how our mind makes contact with objects in what the Tathagata calls "The World," the Five Aggregates, and its objects.
Guarding the sense doors is developing appropriate attention to make contact with objects of "The World" in a way that does not lead to clinging, aversion, or delusion.
Guarding the sense doors is the practice and intention not to get entangled or cling to our perceptions, feelings and thoughts. If we cling to or personalize events or objects in our experience, we get entangled with them, lost in their illusions, and become ignorant and delusional. What the Tathagata calls greed and aversion, clinging to the Five Aggregates.
Restraint of the Senses
Living in today's world is very different from the isolated existence of practitioners during the time of the Tathagata. We're constantly bombarded by Social Media, 24-hour News, Online Shopping, and an overwhelming influx of information.
To follow the Tathagata's gradual path, rooted in renunciation, one must take significant steps to eliminate harmful influences and information irrelevant to the practice.
Before beginning the practice of guarding the sense doors, it's crucial to assess all sources of contact in one's life, identifying those that fuel clinging, aversion, and delusion.
Some circumstances to consider:
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Consider your social circle; maintaining wholesome thoughts is challenging if friends engage in unwholesome activities or speech.
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Use social media purposefully, examining your usage for signs of craving, clinging, and attachment.
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Evaluate the impact of news on your life; if it doesn't directly affect you, question whether it's driven by greed or aversion.
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Question the necessity of purchases; avoid materialism.
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Limit TV and smartphone usage to predetermined, non-greed or aversion-rooted purposes.
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Be mindful of craving media, recognizing the stress it induces and pulling you towards unhealthy desires.
Stay aware of your urges for such media, and observe the cravings and stress that come with these desires, both before they are fulfilled and when they are unavailable.
Eventually as one progresses in the practice, one will come to realize that all the above are a source of stress and suffering and will be abandoned.
Distance Oneself and Be Alone
The places where modern people live are often filled with various comfortable and enticing colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. These five external conditions are referred to as the five desires.
An untamed heart has difficulty resisting the temptations of the five desires, therefore, when exposed to them, various forms of greed and attachment will continuously arise. In order to avoid these temptations and reduce the generation of greed, we should try to stay away from bustling and noisy places as much as possible.
Go to a quiet and undisturbed wilderness or vacant house, restrain the senses, moderate your diet, regulate your behavior and conduct, reduce tasks, and live a simple life. If conditions do not allow, you can arrange a quiet and simple room at home or nearby for solitude. When entering this room, you should restrain yourself as mentioned before.
Appropriate Attention
When the Tathagata says, "we will not grasp at any theme or variations," consider that a liberated person understands that nothing in this world is intrinsically beautiful or ugly, tasty or distasteful, and that all judgments are products of the Five Aggregates. Taken by themselves, these judgments are empty of any substance. His or her mind does not grasp or react to existence based on these illusions.
Appropriate attention at the conventional level is attention imbued with renunciation and, as such, naturally does not cling to what is good, bad, beautiful, or ugly. One is not interested in making judgments about anything in the world and understands that making judgments, instead of aiding in wisdom and liberation, entangles us in the stress and suffering of the world, which is clinging to the the Five Aggregates.
Unlike disciples in the Tathagata’s time, who were mostly solitary and primarily concerned with guarding the sense doors when interacting with lay people, for example when going for alms, people in the modern world have a much greater amount of distractions and disturbances to deal with.
The initial objective of appropriate attention when guarding the sense doors is to become aware of the things we habitually pay attention to and the power they have to affect us, and cause disturbances in our lives.
Guarding the sense doors includes identifying and abandoning all unnecessary unwholesome contacts in one’s environment, unwholesome habits, and any circumstances that lead to the unwholesome propagation of thoughts.
For the circumstances that one cannot avoid, one needs to learn how to make contact with them without increasing disturbances in one’s life, in order to avoid getting entangled in greed, aversion, or delusion.
As one advances in the practice, the focus will change from guarding the sense doors from the objects of the “World" to guarding from the danger of the sense doors themselves. In other words, clinging to the Five Aggregates as me, myself or mine.
The Simile of the Six Animals
The Tathagata gives the simile of the six animals. If you catch six different animals - a dog, a bird, a snake, a wolf, a fish, and a monkey - and tie them all to the same pillar in the square. Dogs want to enter the village, birds want to fly into the sky, snakes want to crawl into holes, wolves want to go to the wilderness, fish want to jump into the water, and monkeys want to enter the forest. Each has its own desired destination.
But because each animal is tied up and kept struggling, it eventually becomes exhausted and can only rely on the pillar for support. The six constrained senses are like these six animals, constantly wanting to climb and explore their favorite phenomena. To tame these senses, we also need to tie them to a pillar, and this pillar is the body.
Attention on the body is the rope that keeps the senses attached to the post and prevents them from grasping and getting entangled in the environment or in our thoughts.
Guarding the Sense Doors, Eating Mindfully, Practicing Wakefulness, and Right Mindfulness all require one to establish attention on the body to protect oneself from any greed and aversion.
Depending on the situation, one might need to tighten the rope, bring attention closer to the body, for example, when faced with challenging situations like delightful sights. At other times, we may loosen the rope and allow the senses more freedom, making attention wider, for example, when performing tasks like crossing the street.
Eventually as the six senses no longer grasp or feed on their respective objects, for example sights, sounds and tastes, they settle down and are content resting in place.
Practicing Guarding the Sense Doors
Guarding the Sense Doors should be practiced throughout the day, in all tasks.
Before beginning any task, one contemplates the causes and conditions relevant to the task to first establish “Right View” and “Right Intention”—that is, how to effectively accomplish the task without becoming entangled with anything in "The World”.
As one performs a task, one is mindful of the task while at the same time being aware of one’s mind and body to identify any tension or scattering of attention.
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If there is tension or tightness anywhere in the mind or body, we “loosen the rope” and widen attention in that part of the mind or body to release tension or tightness. If the mind starts to get scattered, we tighten the rope, bringing attention back to the body or task at hand.
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If the mind is lost in delusion or thoughts and has escaped, no longer tied to the post, we bring it back and tie it to the post again, re-establishing Right View and Right Intention, and bringing mindfulness and attention on the body or task at hand.
Mindfulness involves balancing between too tight and too loose of attention, ensuring there is no clinging, aversion, or delusion. It also requires spreading awareness throughout the body to counteract unawareness, which can lead to unwholesome mental states.
Even when engaged in tasks that demand full attention, it's beneficial to maintain a small amount of attention on the mind and body. When there is no tension or tightness in the body and the mind is not scattered, the result is enhanced efficiency and lower stress levels.
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In the initial phase of guarding the sense doors, one should only make contact with their environment when necessary. For example, when walking, pay full attention to the walking, abiding in renunciation, resist paying attention to distractions, similar to how a disciple would walk, paying attention only to the path in front of them.
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As one progresses, one will learn how to see things using peripheral vision and not "grasp at any theme or variations."
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When Right View and Right Intention are established and mindfulness is established in the body, one naturally does not want to get entangled in anything. One just stays with the intention to do the task without getting entangled in thoughts or distractions, keeping the mind clear and peaceful.
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If you do make contact, notice any tension or sense of self that results from that contact. For example, when walking, notice any push and pull towards or away from the object, which will be felt as tension or feeling. Do not get entangled with any feelings, perceptions or thoughts, bring your attention right back on your task.
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Finally, when sense guard is mastered, attention is at the Five Aggregates themselves, which leads to Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
The important thing to keep in mind is that appropriate attention and guarding the sense-doors are rooted in renunciation, meaning one is not trying to avoid or prevent anything from reaching the senses. Instead, it comes from the deep understanding that nothing is worth grasping, is not-self, and will only get in the way of true seeing. One sets Right Intention to do the task, without any micro-managing or unnecessary judgment.
Any desire-passion with regard to the eye is a defilement of the mind. Any desire-passion with regard to the ear… the nose… the tongue… the body… the intellect is a defilement of the mind. When, with regard to these six bases, the defilements of awareness are abandoned, then the mind is inclined to renunciation. The mind fostered by renunciation feels malleable for the direct knowing of those qualities worth realizing.
Understanding Contact
Understanding "contact" is essential for developing one's practice. Contact refers to the coming together of three factors:
The Sense Organ: Such as the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or the mind.
The Sense Object: What is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, or cognized.
Sense Consciousness: The awareness and process of cognition of the sense object.
Eye Contact is when light waves representing a visible form, the sense object, encounter the eye, the sense organ, and visual consciousness arises, resulting in the sensation of seeing.
Visual consciousness involves several processes: the reconstruction of the sensed object from the light waves perceived by the eye, this is imbued with contextual elements like time, 3D space and distance, previously stored perceptions and feelings are recalled from memory, and a sense of self is injected into the experience as one existing apart from the object being seen among other cognitive processes.
Although there may be objects present; there must be a cognitive, self-referencing process, "a meeting of the three" for contact to occur.
When there is no contact, there is no greed, aversion, or clinging.
When there is self-referencing, your sense of self is "in" the looking, your sense of self is "in" the object itself, this is clinging.
Contact is the start of the chain of cognition that makes things personal. Memory is accessed to create feelings and perceptions, which include the perception of one being separate from the object of perception and a self that needs to interact with the object. This then propagates into thoughts, views, and actions.
Experiencing Contact
Contact can be discerned because when contact is made, there is self-referencing occurring.
To experience contact, choose an object in peripheral vision, slowly turn your head towards it, but do not look directly at it. At some point, you will notice that when you make contact with the object, it feels as if attention momentarily shifts back to the mind while the cognition process takes place. This is self-referencing or contact.
When practicing guarding the sense doors and trying not to get entangled with an object in the environment, there is a pull or push (greed or aversion) towards the object. When contact is made, it is experienced as self-referencing.
Becoming aware of the push and pull and self-referencing or contact is crucial for recognizing subtle forms of greed, aversion, and clinging.
Moderation in Eating
“And how, monks, should you train yourselves? You should think: We will be content with the bare minimum, taking food in moderation. We will reflect wisely on the purpose of eating, not indulging in sensual pleasures or beautifying ourselves, but only to sustain this body, to avoid harm, and to support the holy life. We will abandon old feelings and not generate new feelings. We will maintain our well-being and live blamelessly.
Because eating is a significant source of pleasure for humans, practicing mindfulness when eating is a good way to understand how we become absorbed in flavors, get entangled in the passion of eating, and sometimes get lost in delusion even though there is no longer any hunger or need to eat.
By practicing Renunciation when eating, we can observe how our minds create flavors and tastes. When we let go of seeking pleasure, these mental enhancements no longer influence us. Since we no longer depend on tastes for our happiness, we are free to stop eating when the body is satisfied.
Being mindful and practicing renunciation in eating is beneficial because overeating can be a major obstacle on the path. It's also a way to assess our levels of clinging, aversion, and delusion, attachment to our body."
When physical food is comprehended, passion for the five strings of sensuality is comprehended. When passion for the five strings of sensuality is comprehended, there is no fetter bound by which a disciple of the noble ones would come back again to this world.
The perception of repulsiveness in food, when developed and frequently practiced leads to the deathless: