By Eknath Easwaran

To enjoy life in freedom – to “live intentionally” – we have to train the senses to listen to us, for the simple reason that attention follows the senses. To do this, it is not necessary to deprive ourselves of good food or good entertainment, but simply to enjoy what is beneficial and ignore indulgences we will regret later. Training the senses does not mean denying them. It means educating them not to demand things that will cost us in health, security, or freedom.

In the food we eat, the books and magazines we read, the movies we see, all of us are subject to the dictatorship of rigid likes and dislikes. To free ourselves from this conditioning, we need to learn to change our likes and dislikes freely when it is in the best interests of those around us or ourselves.

We can have rigid likes and dislikes about anything from clothes to opinions, but the most practical place to start loosening them is with the senses: our likes and dislikes in what we taste, smell, watch, listen to, and touch. Freedom from the tyranny of likes and dislikes begins with training our senses to want what we approve of, and to follow our better judgment when it says no.

We can begin by saying no when our senses are urging us to indulge in something that is not good for our body or mind. The senses are the secretaries of the mind; to get the mind to listen to us, we need to bring them over to our side. We should choose what we eat by what our body needs, for example, rather than what the taste buds demand.

Similarly, the mind eats too, through the senses. In this age of mass media, we need to be particularly discriminating in what we read and what we go to see for entertainment, for we become in part what our senses take in.

Often rigid likes and dislikes are merely a matter of attention getting stuck. We get caught in a groove of what we have been conditioned to like or dislike, and we canít imagine getting free. And when we find that others have their attention stuck in their groove, friction results. Usually, without thinking, we react negatively and move away. But we can learn to play with those likes and dislikes instead, and once we taste the freedom this brings, we really find it enjoyable.

For a full discussion of training the senses, read this chapter from Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation.