The "Linked Discourses on the Six Sense Bases" contains discourses focusing on the six sense bases and their corresponding objects. These teachings explore the nature of sensory experience, the arising of contact, and the role of consciousness in the process of perception. By examining the interplay between the senses and their objects, these discourses offer insights into the nature of reality and the conditions for suffering and liberation.
Saḷāyatanasaṁyutta - Linked Discourses on the Six Sense Bases
The Buddha teaches the Dhamma for the giving up of everything based on the six sense bases and the process leading up to the arising of feeling and perception.
Everything, when not directly known, not completely comprehended, not detached from, and not let go of, is incapable of resulting in the wearing away of suffering.
The Buddha explains how the six sense bases and their objects are burning with the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion, and how to become disenchanted, dispassionate, and liberated.
The Buddha teaches on how to know and see the impermanence of the six sense bases and the process leading up to the arising of feeling and perception for the abandoning of ignorance and the arising of wisdom.
The Buddha teaches the Dhamma for the complete comprehension of all clinging through seeing the dependent co-arising of feeling through the six sense bases.
The Buddha explains how the Dhamma is directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, applicable, and to be personally experienced by the wise through the six sense bases.
The world is empty of self and what belongs to a self.
The Buddha teaches the duality of the six sense bases and their respective objects.
Consciousness arises in dependence on the duality of the six sense bases and their respective objects. Contact arises through the meeting of these three things. Contacted, one feels, intends, and perceives.
The way of practice suitable for realizing Nibbāna is to see the impermanence of the six sense bases and their objects.
The way of practice suitable for realizing Nibbāna is to see the six sense bases and their objects as sources of discontentment.
The way of practice suitable for realizing Nibbāna is to see the six sense bases and their objects as not-self.
The Buddha uses the simile of an ocean to describe the six sense bases and their respective objects.
The Buddha likens the six types of desirable sense objects to baited hooks, set in the world for the misfortune of beings—those who cling to them fall under Māra’s power.
The venerable Udāyī asks the venerable Ānanda about how to see the not-self nature of consciousness.
The Buddha uses the simile of a log of wood carried by a river to explain the eight obstacles to reaching Nibbāna.
The Buddha uses a simile of a kiṁsuka tree to explain the different perspectives of the bhikkhus on the purification of vision. He then shares a simile of a lord of the city to share the importance of the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Buddha explains how to rein in the mind when desire, passion, aversion, illusion, or repulsion arises in regard to the six sense bases using the simile of a watchman and an ox and the simile of a lute.
The Buddha explains how there is non-restraint and restraint with a simile of six animals with different domains and feeding grounds. He uses strong post or pillar as a designation for mindfulness directed to the body.