Objects and Doors - See things as they really are

Citta knows or experiences something, it experiences an object. There cannot be any citta without an object. When an object presents itself through one of the five senses or through the mind-door, do we realize that it is citta which experiences that object? When we do not see things as they are, we think that a self experiences objects, and, moreover, we take objects for permanent and for self. For example, when we see a log of wood, we are used to thinking that the object which is seen at that moment is the log of wood ; we do not realize that only visible object is the object which can be seen. When we touch the log of wood, hardness or cold, for example, can be experienced through the body- sense. We take the log of wood for a thing which lasts, but what we call 'log of wood' are many different rūpas which arise and fall away. Only one characteristic of rūpa can be experienced at a time, when it presents itself. If we develop our understanding to see different characteristics which appear through different doorways we will be able to see things as they really are.
The ariyan sees life in a way which is different from the way the non-ariyan sees it. What the person who is not an ariyan takes for happiness (in Pāli : sukha), is for the ariyan sorrow (dukkha) ; what for the non-ariyan is sorrow, is for the ariyan happiness. In the 'Kindred Sayings' (IV, Salāyatana-vagga, Third Fifty, Ch. IV, par. 136) it is said in a verse :

Things seen and heard, tastes, odours, what we touch,

Perceive, - - all, everything desirable,

Pleasant and sweet, while one can say 'it is',

These are deemed 'sukha' by both gods and men.

And when they cease to be they hold it woe.

The dissolution of the body-self

To ariyans seems 'sukha'. Everything

The world holds good, sages see otherwise.

What other men call 'sukha', that the saints

Call 'dukkha' what the rest so name,

That do the Ariyans know as happiness.

Behold a Dhamma that's hard to apprehend.

Hereby are baffled they that are not wise.

Darkness is theirs, enmeshed by ignorance:

Blindness is theirs, who cannot see the light....