The "Book of the Six Sense Bases" is the fourth book in the Saṁyutta Nikāya. It is named after the first and longest saṁyutta, which focuses on the Buddha's core teaching concerning the six sense bases. The second saṁyutta on Feelings also addresses a significant doctrinal topic. The remaining eight saṁyuttas cover various secondary themes, with some organized by subject matter and others by the individuals involved in the teachings. This book offers deep insights into the interaction of senses, perception, and the experience of reality.
The Group of 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.
The Buddha explains the difference between an uninstructed ordinary person and a learned noble disciple in how they experience pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings.
The Noble Eightfold Path is the path and the way for the realization of Nibbāna.
The Noble Eightfold Path is the path and the way of practice for the realization of enlightenment.
Ven. Sāriputta answers the question of what is difficult to do in the teaching and discipline, and what is difficult for one who has gone forth.
The unconditioned is the ending of desire, aversion, and delusion. The 37 factors leading to the unconditioned are described in brief.
The uninclined is the ending of desire, aversion, and delusion. The 37 factors leading to the uninclined are described in brief.
Several synonyms for Nibbāna are described - such as, the taintless, the truth, the far shore, the subtle, the hard to see, the unaging, the stable, the non-disintegrating, the signless, the non-proliferation, the peaceful, the deathless, the excellent, the auspicious, the safe, the wearing away of craving, the wonderful, the marvelous, the freedom from calamity, the state free from calamity, Nibbāna, the blameless, dispassion, purity, freedom, the non-clinging, the island, the security, the protection, and the shelter.
The Buddha describes the ultimate goal and the way of practice leading to the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is a synonym for Nibbāna.