👈🏼 previous note, 07.05. The Three Poisons
| growth | epistemic status |
|---|---|
| seed | ✅ confident ~ going around gawping at the sense realm is no way to be happy |
| Buddha taught that we should restrain our senses, guard the sense gates ~ or doors, as a means of taming oneself. It could be said that everything he taught was about taming. But also it is said that everything he taught is about dependent origination, about [[07. What the Buddha Taught#The Four Noble Truths | suffering and the end of suffering]], and I can get behind it on the grounds of its logic but also from [[empiricism 🎯 |
The result is one thing, but the skill of applying it was elusive for me ~ it and required a certain amount of conceptual scaffolding before I could take hold of it. More on that another time. It will do for now that indriya samvara sits on a par with saddha as indispensable, and reasonably defensible: guarding the sense doors allows the mind to quieten and concentrate, even on something as boring as the breath; and as this quiet deepens, the conditions arise for insight.