Bhikkhus, these six bases for contact—if untamed, unguarded, unprotected, unrestrained—are bringers of suffering.

A series of verses encouraging us to guard well our senses.

Mendicants, the eye of the past and future is impermanent, let alone the present.

It’s a mendicant who, when they see a sight with their eyes, is neither happy nor sad. They remain equanimous, mindful and aware.

Wood duck
I feel for you
You never had hands to stroke
Your own wings

A collection of poems originally written in Braille, ASL, and Protactile by a deafblind poet.

The blurriness associated with myopia is caused by eyeballs that have grown too long; in a stretched-out shape, eyes aren’t able to properly focus images onto the retina. Researchers believe two culprits are to blame: the lack of outdoor play, and prolonged time doing up-close activities like using digital devices.

What, bhikkhus, is old kamma? The eye is old kamma, to be seen as generated and fashioned by volition…

Mendicants, meditate in retreat. A mendicant in retreat truly understands.

… but if you were to move your hand slowly over a fly it would perceive your hand much like we would perceive grass growing or ice melting or paint drying: it would be too slow to be visible. So here is a good life hack if you ever want to catch a fly with your bare hands: take your time.

The fleshly eye, the divine eye, and the wisdom eye. These, bhikkhus, are the three eyes.

A moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song, a zebra finch will never feel the electric buzz of a black ghost knifefish, a knifefish will never see through the eyes of a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can try.

Our Umwelt is still limited; it just doesn’t feel that way. To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion—one that every animal shares.

Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.

There exists in the Blessed One the eye, the Blessed One sees a form with the eye, yet there is no desire and lust in the Blessed One; the Blessed One is well liberated in mind.

Mahākoṭṭhita asks Sāriputta whether the interior and exterior sense fields are the fetters of each other. No; it is desire that is the fetter, like the yoke that binds two oxen. One with no desire still experiences the senses but without being fettered.

I too have had my hands full of what keeps me
contained…

… by depending and relying on the six kinds of joy based on renunciation, abandon and surmount the six kinds of joy based on the household life

The Buddha gives a discourse on the six sense bases, culminating in a unique statement of the Buddha’s own basis of equanimity while teaching.

In this article I translate the first half of the ninth fascicle of the Saṃyukta-āgama, which contains discourses 230 to 249.

This article translates the eighth fascicle of the Saṃyukta-āgama, which contains discourses 188 to 229.

In this article I translate the second half of the ninth fascicle of the Saṃyukta-āgama, which contains discourses 250 to 255.

This article contains annotated translations of canonical quotations in the Tibetan Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā that parallel discourses nos. 231, 238, 240, 245, 252 and 255 in the chapter on the six sense-bases of the Chinese translation of the Saṃyukta-āgama