Objects and Doors - Discourse on the Six Sixes I

If one has not cultivated insight, one does not clearly know which object presents itself through which doorway, one is confused as to objects and doors; thus one is confused about the world. The ariyan is not confused about the world ; he knows the ārammanas which appear through the six doors as nāma and rūpa, not self. 
The 'Discourse on the Six Sixes' (Middle Length Sayings III. No.148) is very helpful for the understanding of realities which present themselves through the six doors. When the Buddha ; was staying in the Jeta Grove in Anāthapindika's monastery, he explained to the monks about the six 'internal sense-fields' and the six 'external sense-fields' (in Pāli : āyatana). The six 'internal sense-fields' are the six doors through which objects are experienced. The six 'external sense-fields' are the objects, experienced through the six doors. The Buddha then explained about the six classes of consciousness which arise in dependence on the six doors and about the objects experienced through the six doors. He also explained about six kinds of contact (phassa), six kinds of feeling conditioned by the six kinds of contact, and six kinds of craving conditioned by the six kinds of feeling. Thus there are 'Six Sixes', six groups of six realities.
The Buddha then explained about the person who has attachments, aversion or ignorance with regard to what he experiences through the six doors. We read :

 

'Monks, visual consciousness arises because of eye and visible object,

the meeting of the three is contact;

an experience arises conditioned by contact

that is pleasant or painful or neither painful nor pleasant.

He, being impinged on by a pleasant feeling,

delights, rejoices and persists in cleaving to it;

a tendency to attachment is latent in him.

Being impinged on by a painful feeling,

he grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast and falls into disillusion;

a tendency to repugnance is latent in him.

Being impinged on by a feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant,

he does not comprehend the origin nor the going down nor the satisfaction

nor the peril of that feeling nor the escape from it as it really is;

a tendency to ignorance is latent in him...'

The same is said with regard to the other doorways.