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SAMAYASĀRA
COMMENTARY
Here is a beautiful picture of an individual perceiving agent situated in the midst of an environment abounding in sense-stimuli of various kinds. The environment is always full of sense-stimuli pertaining to sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch. These stimuli proceed from physical object situated in the environment and hence they are also of physical nature. These stimuli of physical nature may reach the appropriate sense-organs of the individual person. Sound-stimulus may reach the ear, light may reach the eyes, odour may reach the nose, taste stimulus may reach the tongue, contact stimulus the skin of the body. The mere presence of the stimuli in the environment and even their coming into contact with the respective sense-organs may not be effective enough to produce the psychic reaction in the consciousness of the individual. Many sound stimuli may not even cross the threshold of consciousness. One or two may appear in the field of consciousness and yet may flit away without being noticed. The same in the case with the other sense-stimuli. That particular sense stimulus which is capable of producing the corresponding psychic reaction does so because of the selective attention on the part of the individual. This selective attention on the part of the individual is prompted and directed by his own interest in the thing. It is this interest that he takes in the particular thing towards which his selective attention is directed that is mainly responsible for that particular sense-perception. Whether the sense perception is auditory or visual or of any other kind in each case the individual chooses a particular stimulus, attends to it because of his personal relation to it. Thus the immediate causal condition of the psychic fact of perception is the individual himself. Whatever interests him will be perceived by him and others which are of no interest to him will pass away unnoticed. When one the psychic fact of perception is thus brought about by the selective attention on the part of the individual consciousness, the perception further brings about the hedonic reaction in the individual consciousness of pleasantness or unpleasantness. This feeling of pleasure or
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