09.12.2025 Don’t Miss Out   “You can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and think… This is an incomparable gift,” writes Zen teacher Norman Fischer in his exploration of the four great reflections, urging us to contemplate the rare gift of human life. While an incomparable gift, indeed, we often overlook our senses — or even resist them altogether. Recently, I took a yoga class that was particularly challenging. As we moved through the dance of sun salutations, I grew tired, my body going through the motions as my mind wandered elsewhere. Holding a plank for much longer than I would have liked, arms shaking, my teacher said something that snapped me back to the moment: “Stay with the sensation,” she instructed. “Don’t miss out!” How much do we miss out on by trying to avoid discomfort? We tune out the pain of effort of while exercising and lose the chance to feel strength building. We stare at the TV, feeling trapped indoors while the rain falls outside, ignoring the calming drum of water on the roof. We drink our coffee quickly, treating it as a means to the end of energy, forgetting to savor the taste of the beans that travelled so far to our cup. Our senses can certainly distract us, as anyone who’s meditated through knee pain or their neighbor mowing the lawn knows, but they can also be a gateway to presence and awakening. As Francesca Fremantle writes below, spiritual practice is often thought of as being opposed to sensory experience, yet the senses themselves can ground us. In paying attention to sensation, we just might find the wisdom and presence we’ve been seeking. The three teachings below explore how to use the senses as an ally to practice and as a bridge between body, mind, and the present moment. May they lead you through the gateway of the senses this weekend. —Lilly Greenblatt, Digital Editor, Lion’s Roar Through the Gateway of the Senses Francesca Fremantle on sight, sound, touch, and other sensory miracles that occur when we cleanse our perceptions of grasping and attachment. We all experience moments of heightened perception, when it seems the universe has a message for us, one that is filled with profound but inexpressible meaning. suddenness, the sense of being taken by surprise, before ego has a chance to put up its barriers, is often important here. Any of the five bodily senses can open this door for us. The sense of smell, in particular, is well-known for arousing deep-buried memories, which, if we let go and do not grasp at them, can open up the dimension of timelessness. such experiences are often intensely emotional, and we should not forget that in Buddhism the mind too is a sense-organ, whose objects are thoughts, feelings, memories, and so forth. These too can act as symbols. ADVERTISEMENT How Listening Becomes a Spiritual Practice Everything and everyone are always teaching us the dharma, says Christian McEwen. We just have to know how to listen. A bell sounded, slow and sonorous, from a nearby church. It was early in November, the maples still ablaze against a cloudless sky. Such rusty reds and flaming golds, such a delicate, pale bright blue! It was as if the chimes swirled out around each separate tree, burnished and released each leaf, caressed the grass, entranced my watching eye. Such listening is at the heart of spiritual practice, opening (if one is fortunate) into a new clarity and serenity, a deeper knowing. “When you listen with your soul, you come into rhythm and unity with the music of the universe,” wrote the Irish writer John O’Donohue. Awareness, from the Moment You Wake Up We’re often encouraged to bring meditation “off the cushion” and into our everyday lives — Sayadaw U Tejaniya shows us what that really looks like. Every day we wake up, we open our eyes, and seeing begins to happen. But how often do we consciously notice this? When we do, that is awareness. It is the realization of our present moment experience. That’s all. Simple awareness isn’t tiring at all. Do you need to concentrate or focus to know that you are seeing? No. So long as you are aware of something in your being, you are aware. Whatever you know is fine. It can be any of the six sense perceptions — seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, or thinking. In the Buddha’s teaching, thinking is considered to be a sixth sense perception. Each time a sense is perceived, a “sense door,” which is an organ of perception (eye, ear, nose, body, tongue, mind), meets the object that is perceived (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, thought). Each meeting at a sense door gives rise to a moment of consciousness in which the object of perception is known.