Yes, I think that some of the things that the Abhidhamma extrapolates out aren’t useful and can hook a person’s attention on something that doesn’t lead towards liberation from dukkha.
Your confusion lies within an assumption that -
if we know, we must have known via senses.
This is the underlying belief which locks us in the kama loka.
Keep it under consideration that our senses are not positive factor in knowing, senses are not enabler nor enforcer of knowing.
Keep open minded about the possibility that Senses are in effect a reduction of knowing qualities on its clarity, its scope and its purity.
Hi Giovanni,
That’s a nice diagram, but in where would you put vedanā (feeling) which seems to usually be associated with contact, as in 12.44 quoted above: SuttaCentral?
Lets narrow down the scope of this topic from a science perspective to a kammic relevant scope. That is what sutta is implicitly about.
speculating.
A given moment, at most a single foreground and a single background in our perception. That implies at most one sense consciousness arising. This single consciousness is momentary with a distinct start and end. It comes with perception which arises together but a longer life span. It is perception’s nature to persist a while before disbanding.
The background of what we aware, is never kamma concerning. The foreground carries potential to create kamma.
The process to move a background to afore, or suddenly a foreground appear, it is contact.
Contact is a mental event, not physical or semi-physical, although it is not always deliberate intended neither. Because of the same reason, the mind can be cultivated to stop contact - i.e. meditation facilitate transient suspension of contact. Fruition facilitates cessation of contact. If it is physical, it can not be suspended or stopped.
From another angel saying the same thing -
Not each form eye meet creates sense consciousness and contact. Most sense impingement is being ignored by our mind.
I would put feeling where contact is, and also craving. Sometimes the stimulus is strong enough to attract our manasikāra and we become “aware” of it, sometimes it is not so, like for example scratching an itch. Sometimes we do so knowingly, sometimes it just happens in the background while we do other things. That’s why sati, born of directing our manasikāra to our various contacts, is so important in understanding how the process works and do something to prevent it, in my opinion.
I’m not sure this is the case. Many different things are happening in the background and our bodies are reacting to different stimuli without us needing to direct our attention to them in order to elicit a reaction. These reactions in my opinion imply contact, which implies sense consciousness, regardless of manasikāra.
I agree individual sense consciousnesses have a distinct start and an end, but they are not momentary (as in mind-moment that lasts only an instant). In my opinion the suttas don’t support this interpretation. Like I said above I think an individual sense consciousness lasts as long as a stimulus impinges on the corresponding sense organ, which could be anything from a moment to much longer.
I’m not sure this is the case. In my opinion and interpretation it is manasikāra that brings things to the foreground, not contact. Again, our body and minds subconsciously react to external stimuli all the time. Only a small part of those stimuli are strong enough to attract our manasikāra and bring them to the foreground. Or we can intentionally direct our manasikāra to these various contacts to bring stimuli to the foreground, which is what the practice of satipatthana is about in my opinion.
Again, think of subconsciously scratching an itch: contact gives rise to feeling which gives rise to craving for relief, so we subconsciously scratch the itch. Yet this all happens while our manasikāra is directed elsewhere.
The mind can be cultivated to stop contact through directing our manasikāra and giving rise to sati that when strong enough becomes established. This is what interrupts engagement with the senses and therefore stops contact. But it’s only when sati becomes firmly established that this happens.
If we only needed to simply direct our attention to our breath (for example) in order to stop contact then mediation would be so much easier. But then a sound appears and we lose our focus. How? Because the contact from the sound attracts our manasikāra and we lose our sati. Not the other way around.
If contact were always a “foreground experience” we would need to direct our attention to the sound in order to be bothered by it. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. The contact from the sound is “knocking at the door” of our manasikāra so to speak. It is only when our manasikāra is pulled by the contact that the sound comes to the foreground and we become aware of it, but the contact must have been happening before that, which to me implies that sense consciousness works in the background irrespective of where our manasikāra is directed to at the moment.
It is much more complex than that in my opinion.
Our mind “filters out” most unnecessary stimuli, but for this filtering out to happen our consciousness (viññāṇa) is engaging with the stimuli, and only then subsequent mental processes decide what to filter out.
If, however, what you mean is that most stimuli don’t reach our “foreground” (by attracting our manasikāra), I agree, but they are still being registered by our viññāṇa.
According to SN 35.23 that @stu quoted above it is impossible to know anything if not through the interaction between the six senses and their correspondent stimuli.
Please everyone, understand that I’m not insisting I’m right and only my interpretation is correct. I would love to be corrected if my interpretation is wrong. I have no interest in sticking with a potentially incorrect view. For the moment I’m not convinced by other interpretations, which seem to contradict our experience in my opinion.
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That’s interesting. I find that the natural inclination of the unmindful mind is to wander around looking for things. (If it can’t find anything, it makes it up. 
) It’s when this inclination of the mind to ‘go out looking’ is suppressed through things like nibbida that sound doesn’t penetrate meditation.
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The Buddha definitely had a lot of nibbida yet in Ud 3.3 he seems to have been distracted by Ananda’s voice during meditation:
For a third time, as the night was getting late, in the last watch of the night, Ānanda got up from his seat, arranged his robe over one shoulder, raised his joined palms toward the Buddha and said, “Sir, the night is getting late. It is the last watch of the night; dawn stirs, bringing joy to the night, and the visiting mendicants have been sitting long. Sir, please greet the visiting mendicants.”
Then the Buddha emerged from that immersion and addressed Ānanda, “If you’d known, Ānanda, you wouldn’t have said so much. Both I and these five hundred mendicants have been sitting in imperturbable meditation.”
Don’t know 
Also in SN 12.23 “nibbida” seems to come as a result of samadhi and “truly knowing and seeing”, not as a prerequisite for samadhi.
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Maybe. Though I don’t read it that way. The sutta just says: ‘Then the Buddha emerged from that immersion and addressed Ānanda’…
You might be interested in this book by Anālayo (starting around pg 137).
Well yes. For nibbida to be fully established that’s right. But of course nibbida is not a binary thing and the path becomes further established as it is trodden - just like real paths. I’m not sure that there would be much meditation for me without a reasonable dose of nibbida
Yes I agree with Analayo’s analysis.
But I also think Ud 3.3 doesn’t seem to leave much room for interpretation. I don’t really know what to make of it. A comparative study might be interesting.
I agree that a sort of “preliminary” nibbida can help one let go of outside distractions, but personally I find the notion that this is what stops sound from interrupting meditation a bit extreme maybe.
AN 6.73 specifies that one needs to give up the 5 hindrances plus clearly see the drawbacks of sensual pleasures (which we could classify as a sort of nibbida) in order to enter jhana.
So it would seem that should be enough.
However in AN 10.72 that Analayo treats we find “well-known senior mendicants” (Arahants?) looking for a quiet place to meditate because “sound is a thorn to jhana”.
If nibbida and giving up the hindrances were enough to enter samadhi there wouldn’t really be a need to separate oneself from loud noises. One would simply “let go” of the outside world no matter the circumstances through the power of nibbida.
So it seems to me to be a normal way of operation for the mind to be immediately directed towards strong stimuli (it seems even for senior mendicants) regardless of nibbida, and that this changes only after sati becomes well established, hence the need for seclusion.
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Agreed. That’s why I only suggested:
And of course that is exactly what we find as students progress in meditation, isn’t it? The student becomes more resilient to external distractions having first practiced in locations without those distractions.
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Yes, but that’s why I pointed out that AN 10.72 speaks of “well-known senior mendicants”. If they were only trainees I could see how the idea would apply. But from this sutta it seems there is a limit to how much one can be free from distractions without actually seeking seclusion.
Even the Buddha would from time to time seek seclusion:
Brahmin, you might think: ‘Perhaps the Master Gotama is not free of greed, hate, and delusion even today, and that is why he still frequents remote lodgings in the wilderness and the forest.’ But you should not see it like this. I see two reasons to frequent remote lodgings in the wilderness and the forest. I see a happy life for myself in the present, and I have compassion for future generations.”
(MN 4)
So the need for a quiet place doesn’t seem to be something that applies only to trainees.
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Yes indeed. And ‘lodgings’ (for the enjoyment of seclusion) is one of the four requisites.
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