Subtle clinging

When we pay attention to the shape and form of all the familiar things around us, such as a table, a flower or a cup, is there some clinging, even when we do not feel particularly glad? We want to see and we want to pay attention to the shape and form of things, even though we do not think about these things for a long time but just for a moment. We are so used to recognizing the things and people around us, and we do not know whether such moments are kusala or akusala. If the room would become pitch dark or we would become blind we would regret it not to be able to discern the things around us and that shows our clinging to all we experience. When we are reading a book there are moments of seeing and also moments of citta that think of the meaning of what is written, of the story, and such moments are different from seeing. We should investigate the nature of the different cittas which arise while we are reading. Seeing is vipaka, but thinking about what is written is either kusala or akusala. We think of the meanings of words mostly with clinging, we want to know the meaning of what we read.

As regards hearing, this experiences sound through the ears. Hearing is vipa-kacitta, the result of kamma; it is neither kusala citta nor akusala citta. Hearing hears, it does not know the origin of the sound, it does not think of the meaning of the sound. When we know that we perceive the sound of a bird or of the traffic, it is not hearing but thinking of concepts. As we have seen, the cittas which think of concepts are mostly akusala cittas with clinging. Thus, we have many more akusala cittas than kusala cittas. We had pondered over this before, but during this journey it all became clearer. We realized that we had not considered enough in daily life what has been taught in the Abhidhamma.