How Practitioners Can Reduce Attachment to Worldly Dharmas

Question: A scientist was reading a book with great concentration and diligence; while eating a steamed bun, he dipped it in ink and ate it without noticing. His consciousness was entirely focused on the book. Did he have tongue consciousness at that time? If he had tongue consciousness, he would certainly have known that the ink did not taste good. Why did he not know?

Answer: Eating always involves the participation of tongue consciousness; the mind consciousness cannot taste food on its own. When he was absorbed in reading, he ate the steamed bun dipped in ink without noticing. In this situation, his mind consciousness was focused on reading and paid no attention to what he was eating. There was still discrimination, only the discrimination was rather vague. Tongue consciousness existed and was still discriminating the food, but only the coarse aspects of the food; the subtle aspects were discriminated by the mind consciousness, such as what kind of food it was and what its specific taste and texture were like—tongue consciousness cannot discriminate in such detail. Since the mind consciousness was focused on reading, and tongue consciousness could not discriminate very finely, the scientist did not notice, was not aware, that he had eaten ink. This example also proves that as long as a practitioner does not care for the enjoyments of worldly dharmas, he can reduce his attachment to worldly phenomena.