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of nonself is usually approached through the other two characteristics, as in Text IX,4(1)(d), it is sometimes disclosed directly. An example of the direct approach to nonself is Text IX,4(1)(e), the discourse on “the lump of foam,” which uses five memorable similes to reveal the empty nature of the five aggregates. According to the standard formula, insight into the five aggregates as impermanent, suffering, and nonself induces disenchantment (nibbidā), dispassion (virāga), and liberation (vimutti). One who attains liberation subsequently wins “the knowledge and vision of liberation,” the assurance that the round of rebirths has indeed been stopped and nothing more remains to be done.

Another pattern that the suttas often apply to the five aggregates, and to the other groups of phenomena, is the triad of gratification, danger, and escape. Texts VI,2(1)–(3), from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, apply this triad to the world as a whole. The Saṃyutta Nikāya applies the same scheme individually to the aggregates, sense bases, and elements. The pleasure and joy each aggregate, sense base, and element offers is its gratification; its impermanence, pervasion by suffering, and nature to change is its danger; and the abandoning of desire and lust for it is the escape from it.

IX,4(2) The Six Sense Bases. The Saḷāyatanasaṃyutta, the Connected Discourses on the Six Sense Bases (Saṃyutta Nikāya, chapter 35), contains over two hundred short suttas on the sense bases. The six internal and external sense bases provide a perspective on the totality of experience different from, but complementary to, the perspective provided by the aggregates. The six pairs of bases are the sense faculties and their corresponding objects, which support the arising of the respective type of consciousness. Because they mediate between consciousness and its objects, the internal sense bases are spoken of as the “bases for contact” (phassāyatana), “contact” (phassa) being the coming together of sense faculty, object, and consciousness.

The Six Internal and External Sense Bases

What the first five sense bases and their objects signify is obvious enough, but the sixth pair, mind (mano) and phenomena (dhammā), presents some difficulty. If we treat the two terms as parallel to the other internal and external bases, we would understand the mind base to be the support for the arising of mind-consciousness (manoviññāṇa) and the phenomena base to be the objective sphere of mind-consciousness. On this interpretation, “mind” might be taken as the passive flow of consciousness from which active conceptual consciousness emerges, and “phenomena” as purely mental objects such as those apprehended by introspection, imagination, and reflection. The Abhidhamma and the Pāli commentaries, however, interpret the two terms differently. They hold that the mind base comprises all classes of consciousness, that is, they include within it all six types of consciousness. They also hold that all actual entities not comprised in the other sense bases constitute the phenomena base. The phenomena base, then, includes the other three mental aggregates—feeling, perception, and volitional formations—as well as types of subtle material form not implicated in experience through the physical senses. Whether this interpretation conforms to the meaning intended in the oldest Buddhist texts is an open question.

Text IX,4(2)(a) testifies that for Early Buddhism, liberation requires direct knowledge and full understanding of the internal and external sense bases and all the phenomena that arise from them. This seems to establish an apparent correspondence between Buddhism and empirical science, but the type of knowledge sought by the two disciplines differs. Whereas the scientist seeks impersonal, “objective” information, the Buddhist practitioner seeks direct insight into the nature of these phenomena as components of lived experience.

The Nikāyas suggest an interesting difference between the treatment given to the aggregates and the sense bases. Both serve as the soil where clinging