PHASSA IS COGNITION: FORMING AN OBJECT FROM THE PROCESS OF EXPERIENCE - BHANTE PUNNAJI

The Pali term "Phassa" translated as "contact" gives a misleading understanding of what exactly the Buddha was referring to. In the MN148 Chachakka Sutta, for instance, it was stated translated "The six classes of contact should be understood." So it was said. And with reference to what was this said? "Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises; the meeting of the three is contact."

When we perceive an object through our eyes, is there any "contact" between the eyes and the object? If there was contact with the object, did the object enter our eyeball? What is perceived with the eye sense organ is simply light reflected from the object, entering the eyeball, striking the retina at the back of the eyeball, stimulating the millions of light sensitive nerve endings in the retina, which sends impulses to the brain via the optic nerves. These millions of impulses sent to the brain from moment to moment are processed by the brain, which constructs a mental image of the object - we call this the experience of "seeing". There is no "contact" of any kind.

The construction process in the brain is "Saṅkhāra", which produces the perception ("Viññāṇa') of the object in the form of a mental image ("Rūpa") that we identify by calling it a name ("Nāma").

Here Bhante Punnaji explains with reference to Paticca Samuppada, that, in experiencing the the environment, we donot rely on only one sense but all the five physical sense and the mind, so we really makes use of all the six sensual fields to produce the Objective Experience. "Phassa" therefore is becoming aware of the Objective Experience by application of the six sense fields leading to the awareness of the "world out there". Phassa is the the cognition of objects to produce the Objective Experience. Bhante calls this "forming an object", in reference to the formation of the Objective Experience.
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PUNNAJI