I’ve just finished preparing and eating a fruit salad. I had cut the fruit into sizeable chunks, so that I could taste one piece at a time. As I ate, I was reminded of an analogy made by a Buddhist meditation teacher.
In Buddhism, thinking is regarded as a sixth sense, along with the usual five: tasting, touching, smelling, hearing and seeing. Our awareness moves between these senses, resting on one at a time. For most of us, thinking tends to capture our attention much more than the others. The teacher I referred to compared the mind to the process of eating a fruit salad which is dominated by one particular fruit. In my case, I had cut rather a lot of papaya, which was accompanied by segments of an orange, a sliced banana and some grapes. So I would have a brief taste of banana, say, then several chunks of papaya; then a grape and more papaya; and so on. This is how our mind tends to move: a brief awareness of what we are seeing, say, then we are thinking about it; a brief awareness of hearing, then back to thinking again.
Unfortunately, my papaya was disappointing, being rather tasteless. This made me smile, as so many of our thoughts are also rather tasteless. Perhaps we should spend less time thinking and more time with our awareness on our other fruity senses, which are so much more juicy and tasty!
