Episode Details

Another section of the wheel of life breaks things down into twelve steps, which illustrate how we perpetuate samsara  •  the first step is ignorance, which is represented by the image of a blind grandmother  •  the blind grandmother has put things in motion; she has produced grandchildren, but because she is blind she has no idea what their effect is going to be   •   today’s focus is on the progression of three of the twelve steps: sensing, feeling, and craving  •  our sense perceptions—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and thinking—are like little pinholes through which we look at our world  •  when our sense organs are stimulated, feelings of pleasure or displeasure arise  •  this is represented by an arrow in the eye—the experience is extremely vivid and intense, and so is our reaction to it  •  at that point we’re  susceptible to craving: we react instantaneously, before we even notice what is happening  •  the point is to interrupt those patterns so that we’re a little bit looser, a little bit less easily captured by the pleasures and pains that are simply part of life