This last week in June as summer deepens in an uncertain climate, I have been reflecting further on the our physical senses and the relationship of our sense nature to spirituality. Many religious teachings throughout world history have shunned our natural senses in a belief that love of the sensuous distracts us from the true depths of spirituality. Still today, we have ideas that meditation requires us to turn away from external sights, sounds and movement that distract the mind's focus from turning inward. While meditation does move us from outer activity to inner stillness, it really isn't necessary to run from sense input. Rather, I propose considering meditation as a process that moves our awareness to more and more subtle expressions of vision, scent, sound, touch and taste. The idea that we have to turn from the physical input of an external world to experience intuition and/or the true nature of the self, sets in motion a polarized belief that our sense nature and the natural world around us, is somehow at odds with our inner life, making it spiritually necessary to be detached from our physical form.
Ancient religions in an attempt to access and connect to spiritual realms with little understanding of the neurophysiology of the human body, drew a dividing line between our outer senses and our inner longing for understanding. Buddha taught in terms of the problem of attachment to the things of the world, which themselves are in motion. In other words, those attachments are inevitably subject to change. Wanting more of whatever pleasurable experiences we have, or emotional reliance on those aspects of life which we grow to crave at the expense of other ways of seeing and being, ultimately brings suffering. These are indeed potential pitfalls in life--not allowing life to change or develop--or even age, which is the nature of life. My focus today is about opening to the wondrous beauty of that which allows us to perceive and relate to the Allness. I am encouraging you to bring your physical senses to the table as it were, to more and more subtle forms of awareness.
I began reflecting on the more subtle aspects of sense this week at the grocery store. As I eyed the snack shelves, I was struck by a growing pitch for "intense" snack experiences--labels like intense "heat" or "flavor", and intense beverages -from soda to alcohol to caffeine! With the obvious exception of pure hot chili peppers, this marketing trend brings a variety of lab generated additives. It is not just food and the sense of taste here that is exploited, but a push for intense stories, news, films, music, the sharp and demanding push of our bodies in sports and fitness calling you to feel the burn. But, do we need increasingly intense experiences? Evidently, intensity is good for marketing. And clever marketing feeds a cultural pressure that offers bonding through both sensory challenges and competition, especially among the young who have yet to develop caution.
My reflection on the subtle senses brought to mind French philosopher François Julien's book: In Praise of Blandness (2007), which explores the early Chinese Taoist practice of cultivating sensory experiences of blandness. Blandness was perceived as a way to move toward sameness, and through that, understand the "undifferentiated foundation of all things". In other words, the Tao, the undifferentiated energy of life, brings the 10,000 things into form. I invite you to experiment with your senses on subtler levels. Inner hearing is not disconnected from the outer sounds of the world; the same is true with taste, vision, touch (the touch of spirit, the touch of God, the angelic touch), with scent (the air that brings a mysterious whiff of perfume), a song arising and awakening, and sound that echos the past--or future... This is not to cultivate the "extra sensory", but to discover the larger frame of guidance and relatedness of a larger world. (Susan Nettleton)
for poetry: https://allpoetry.com/Five-Senses
https://ortizpoetry.blogspot.com/.../12/my-fathers-song.html https://www.best-poems.net/mary.../at_blackwater_pond.html https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.../hearing-56d221d141610