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Guided Meditation: Home for the Holidays; Dharmette: Six Sense-Spheres (4 of 5): Touch and Related Senses - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 04, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Home for the Holidays

Welcome, everyone. Welcome back to those returning, and welcome to those signing in. From my part, welcome from Portland, Oregon, and Redwood City, California.

Today we will continue our series of talks exploring the teaching of the six sense bases. After the guided meditation, we will talk about touch and related senses: touch, proprioception, interoception, nociception, and the sense of balance (equilibrioception). We will take a look at this all-important sense. For many of us, this is possibly the dominant sense, although we may not find ourselves aware of that frequently.

In the holidays and in the winter, the sense of touch and these related senses are so important as we seek comfort, warmth, and simple pleasures.

I called this guided meditation "Home for the Holidays." It is here in the meditation that we can create this stable, useful home wherever we are—amongst the seasons, amongst the holidays, or wherever we are in life. The meditation, bringing our attention to the here and now, can be our home. In this sense, we always have available to us a way to be home, find home, get home, and return home.

Closing our eyes, let’s find our way into a meditation posture, whether it be sitting, standing, lying down, or walking. Find a way to find balance in your experience. Find a way to remain present and attentive to your experience without getting caught up in it, without getting tight or tense, and without getting too relaxed and dozing off. Maybe find some happiness and home right here in the posture.

The posture itself is an important aspect of practice. It reflects what we seek in practice: a way to be present and at ease, a way to be alert and relaxed, and a way to be equanimous in the midst of the currents and challenges of our lives.

Today, we can find our way to the breath. Make that the center of our meditation if that's your usual practice. If it's not, experiment with it. In a special way, we create a home in the practice with the breathing because bringing attention to the breath allows us to be in contact with the world through the sense of touch. We don't usually think of it this way, but when we bring attention to the sensations of the breathing, we're touching the world.

We can feel this when the air moves in through our bodies, through the tip of the nose. We can also feel the air inside the body. This is one of the aspects of touch, specifically interoception, where we know what's happening inside the body. So, attention to the breathing is a way to bring attention to a sense sphere, and it's a central part of this practice with the six sense spheres.

The beautiful thing about bringing attention to the breathing as a sense sphere is that we are involved in a sensory experience, but it is one that typically is free. Ironically and paradoxically, although we need the breath more than anything to sustain life, we don't cling to it. This is something that the Buddha points our attention to, in part because it's a way to be in the world—attending to the breath—without pushing it away, without clinging, and without wanting in a way that leads to attachment, stress, and suffering.

Every time we return to the breath, as we'll do over and over again even in this brief sit, we touch in through a sensory experience that leaves us free of knots, free of entanglements. Maybe when we return to the breath today, we can just keep noticing: here's a way to be in the world of the senses. Here's a way to be fully awake and aware without suffering—at ease, at home.

So today, and going forward over the next few weeks in the meditation, returning to the breath can simply be resting in this sense of being "home for the holidays," as it were. Creating a home, creating a place of rest for the mind, touching in, being aware of our sensory experience when we notice the breath happening. Doing so in a way that's free of attachment, free of clinging, and free of suffering.

In our meditation practice, we create a home. You might think of it as a place of rest for the busy mind. Maybe just a way of being at ease with experience—attentive, attuned, but also at ease and relaxed with whatever is coming up in our lives. A home for the holidays, perhaps, but a home that's always available. A home for any season of life.

As we move about in the world, maybe we can share some of the light and warmth that we create and find in the meditation practice. Some of the sense of rest, alertness, awakeness, and delight that can come from just returning to the breath over and over again, back to the here and now. We can take some of that out to the world and share it. When we share the benefits of the practice, it doesn't diminish it. In fact, sharing the benefits of our practice seems to cultivate it, seems to help it grow.

Dharmette: Six Sense-Spheres (4 of 5): Touch and Related Senses

Good morning again, good day, and welcome to everyone from me, David, at IMC Redwood City, California, and Portland, Oregon. Welcome and welcome back as we continue an exploration of the six sense bases practice, the six sense spheres. This is a rich practice, a lesser-known practice, but one that is full of possibilities. It encourages us to both be in the world and be in the world in a way that's free.

Today I want to talk a little bit about the sense of touch. As I did yesterday, I'm going to begin with a story drawn from the Suttas¹. This is a great little story that I hope you'll enjoy. I will be quoting it, paraphrasing it, and adding a little color commentary here and there.

The discourse says: Suppose that a person were to trap six animals. Each one with its own habits and places of finding nutriment. That person were to tie them together with a strong rope with a knot in the middle. The person would trap a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey, and he would tie them all together with a strong knot in the middle. And then he'd let them loose.

These six animals—each with their own homes, territories, and places where they find nutriment—would pull the rope in the direction they wanted to go, toward their place of home. The snake would pull to one side saying, "I want to go to the termite hill." The crocodile would pull in another direction thinking, "I'm going to the water." The bird would pull another direction, thinking, "I want to fly up into the sky." The dog would pull in yet another direction, saying, "I want to go to the town." The jackal would pull, saying, "I want to go to the charnel grounds²." The monkey would pull in another direction, thinking, "I'm going to go back to the forest."

When these six animals finally got tired and wore themselves out, the strongest among them would impose their will, and all the rest would submit to the control of that strongest animal.

The discourse³ goes on to say: In the exact same way, when a practitioner like ourselves hasn't cultivated mindfulness, hasn't cultivated mindful attention to the six sense spheres, the eye will be attracted to agreeable forms and move away from disagreeable forms. The ears, the nose, the taste, the body, and the mind will each incline toward their own direction, toward agreeable objects, and they will move away from the less agreeable. This is how it is for a practitioner that doesn't restrain the senses, that doesn't have mindfulness well-developed.

Then there's a contrast made. What is it like with someone who has developed a practice of restraint and mindful attention to the six sense bases?

Then, when a practitioner sees a form with the eyes, whether it's agreeable or not agreeable, they don't cling to it. They don't get attached to it. They don't push it away. They don't pull it close. When they see something, hear a sound, perceive a scent, taste a taste, feel contact, or know something with the mind, if it's agreeable, they don't get attached to it. If it's disagreeable, they don't reject it.

It's like this, says the Sutta: Suppose a person were to trap six animals—a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey. Each one with its home and different feeding places. He ties them together with a strong rope, but instead of putting a knot in the middle, he ties all six to a strong column or post in the middle.

Then each animal would pull in its direction. The snake toward the termite hill, the crocodile to the water, the bird to the sky, the dog to the town, the jackal to the charnel grounds, and the monkey back to the woods. But in this case, when the six animals tired and wore themselves out, they would all remain sitting comfortably around the column or post in the middle.

In the same fashion, when a practitioner has developed well mindful attention to the six sense bases, the eye may incline, the nose may incline, the mind, the body, and the tongue may incline toward things that are agreeable, but the practitioner won't get attached nor reject them.

It's a little unusual, but this Sutta actually tells us what at least one part of the simile means. It says the strong column or post is an expression that represents mindfulness—mindfulness directed to the body, mindfulness directed to the six sense bases. And it says at the very end: so for this reason, we cultivate, maintain, consolidate, and apply correctly mindful attention. This is how one trains oneself in this practice.

I love this little story for many reasons. It's a wonderful story about how mindfulness works, but it's also a story about how we can be with the six senses. There are people who have tried to assign a sense to each of these animals. We sometimes think of the monkey as "monkey mind," though I think some of these assignments are a little far out. But it is an interesting question: without mindfulness, which one predominates? Which one is the strongest? Different people may find different experiences, but sometimes it seems to me that maybe the sense of touch, which we move to today, is the strongest among these six senses.

You might think this is because the attraction of sensual pleasure is so strong, something that's talked about a lot in these discourses. But it doesn't have to be such an extreme thing as physical pleasure. It can be something as seemingly un-poetic as the constant search for comfort that we are aware of. The body wants to be comfortable. It's through the sense of touch that things like hunger and thirst are known, cold and hot, pain, and even emotions are sometimes felt internally.

We turn to touch today in part because it has this central place in our awareness. These things—cold and hot, hunger and thirst—are useful things to bring attention to during the holiday season because they in many ways guide a lot of our activities, including our enjoyment of the holidays.

We can develop interesting and useful practices with these senses. Before talking about a couple of specific practices, let me just mention some other touch-related senses. Some schools of thought consider these additional senses; some scientists who study the senses identify as many as thirty-three. So, the six we're talking about this week plus others, but many of the others are ones that integrate.

• Proprioception: This is the way we can be aware of our body in space. Anytime we are walking around in the world, there's a way in which the body registers where it is and what's around it. Much of this happens through the sense of proprioception.
• Interoception: Scholars speak of this as the way that we can be aware of what's going on inside the body.
• Thermoception: The awareness of warmth and cold in the body. Again, this involves specialized sensors—a species of touch, and yet something that can be separated out and thought about separately.
• Equilibrioception: The sense of balance, which of course is related to fluids and things happening in the realm of touch in the inner ear and elsewhere.
• Nociception: The sense of pain. There are specialized nerve systems and routes to track pain. Such an important signal in our lives.

I mention all of these as related to touch because they provide a set of practices that can be very powerful in bringing to our practice of mindfulness.

The first one I brought attention to in the guided meditation is simply the touch with the breath. We don't usually conceive of this as being involved in a sensory sphere, but it is in fact part of this fifth of six senses because we're making contact both in the external body and internally with the outside world through the sense of touch. Maybe particularly this sense of interoception, where we're aware of things like the chest moving, the abdomen moving out, and the shoulders lifting and falling.

As we make contact through the breath with the outside world, the beautiful thing is it brings us into touch with a sensory experience that usually doesn't have clinging in it. I want to be careful to say that for those with asthma, COPD, or trauma related to the breath, the breath may not have that sense of easy flow. But for most people, most of the time, the breath can be a place to rest attention that is free of a sense of clinging or pushing away.

If the breath doesn't work, there can usually be other places in the body where we can find some place of ease, where we're making contact through the experience of touch. Maybe just the feeling of cool or warm air on the hands. We're involved in a sensory experience, touching something without grasping or pushing it away.

Sometimes we can bring this right into play in the meditation or in life by putting a hand over the heart, using touch to bring ourselves home, back to the here and now. Famously, on the night of his awakening, the Buddha touched the ground. You can touch the ground next to where you're sitting as a way of touching something that's supportive. The touch itself can be done in a way that is free.

Of course, you can take this into daily life: washing the hands, feeling the water and the soap, putting on clothes and feeling the texture of things. There are a lot of ways that touch can be brought in.

I particularly love a practice that I'm going to call in English "touching and letting go." In Spanish, the phrase is tocar y soltar⁴. I like this because it rhymes, but also because soltar means to let go, but it also can mean to free, to release. So, to touch something and then let it go; to touch something and free it.

Sometimes it's really sweet in our lives when we're touching something—maybe it's a holiday cookie or a meal. We touch it and then we let it go. We don't want more. We don't push it away. We simply take it and then we free it. Freeing the things of the world, our world of experience—freeing things from our projections, from our wanting, from our pushing away—can be just such a lovely sense of release and relief.

So I encourage you to touch and let go a little bit. Touch and free experience. Experience it, but then let go so that we can be free and the things we touch in the world, the things we grab onto, can also be free.

Particularly in this holiday season, be very aware of the search for comfort. The body wants to be comfortable. A lot of what we do in eating, seeking warmth, or being with people has to do with this ancient, primordial, completely natural seeking of the body for comfort. The challenge is to do that with ease, to do that with equanimity, to be aware of it when it arises, and to neither push it away nor to overindulge in it. Just be aware: "Oh, here's the body seeking comfort. This is what this feels like. And there's some wanting coming along with it. Can I touch this experience that provides comfort and then let it go? Can I touch it and then free it?"

I hope this is useful and enjoyable. Practice should be enjoyable. So enjoy letting things go. Enjoy setting things free.

We'll reconnect tomorrow morning to take up the final sense, which is the sense of the mind—the mind and the objects that the mind takes. I'm going to suggest not only that the mind attaches to certain objects of mind in ways that are complicating, but also that the mind can know freedom. This is, in a way, one of the great promises of our practice: the same mind that knows suffering can know freedom.

On that note, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care, everyone.