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Six Sense Bases, Contact, and Feeling

Canonical core

The six internal sense bases are eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Their corresponding objects are sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and mental objects.

For each domain, MN 148 analyzes:

sense base + object
→ corresponding consciousness
→ meeting of the three: contact (phassa)
→ feeling (vedanā)
→ craving may arise

SN 35.23 defines “the all” in terms of these six internal and external sense bases within the discourse's intended scope.

Why the mind is a sense base

In this framework, thoughts and ideas are known as mental objects through mind consciousness. This avoids treating “mind” as a single permanent observer outside experience. A mental event arises dependent on conditions just as visual consciousness depends on eye and form.

Feeling is not emotion

Vedanā is the immediate tone:

  • pleasant;
  • painful;
  • neither-painful-nor-pleasant.

Complex emotions involve additional perception, intention, memory, bodily activation, and proliferation.

Intervention point

Feeling does not have to become craving. Mindfulness can know pleasantness without grasping, pain without hostility, and neutrality without dullness.

Interpretive cautions

  • The sequence is a functional analysis, not necessarily a slow timeline.
  • “Mind as sixth sense” is not proof of an immaterial soul.
  • Contact does not mean physical touch alone.
  • Sense restraint means changing one's relationship to stimuli, not permanently eliminating sensory experience.

Primary readings