While talking in class about the 1st meditation, I thought about phantom pains. It shows that we cannot trust our senses. When an amputee suddenly feels pain in his long-lost leg, or when he gets the feeling of 'telescoping' (when an amputee feels that his amputated limb is gradually shortening), his phantom pains are confusing him. Biolgically, this makes sense; the limb is gone, but the nerves still exist.
Things like phantom pains show how much our senses deceive us. Basic principles are called into doubt and our senses, even though that is all we are used to, should not be trusted.
In this analogy, we should be freed from our sense of pain, which is simply a 'preconceived notion' in order to "lead our mind away from the senses".
No comments:
Post a Comment