Question: Teacher, I have a question. I have always loved flowers very much. When I saw flowers, my chest would flutter, attachment to their beauty would arise, and there was a tingling sensation in my chest. But recently, when I see flowers, I simply think, “Ah, how beautiful,” and the feeling seems to stop at the eyes without connecting to that fluttering sensation in the chest. It feels as if some attachment has fallen away. Could this be one of the signs that lust, hatred, and delusion are settling down? The experience of feeling only “Wow, that’s beautiful” at the level of seeing feels unfamiliar.
Answer: Yes, this may reflect lust no longer developing further and instead settling down. When you see a beautiful flower, contact occurs at the sense door of the eye, and the perception “beautiful” arises together with a pleasant feeling. This in itself is a natural process and is the normal functioning of contact, perception, and feeling.
Previously, that pleasant feeling extended into the chest, expanding into fluttering sensations and attachment. Now, however, mindfulness may be functioning at that point, so the mental process does not continue beyond it and stops there. In other words, the flower is recognized as beautiful, but that recognition and feeling no longer develop into lust or connect to attachment.
This change does not necessarily mean that your sensitivity to sense objects has diminished or that you have become numb. It may reflect that the chain of reactions leading into lust, hatred, and delusion has weakened. As a result, the experience of feeling beauty “only at the eyes,” without the strong fluttering sensation in the chest, may feel unfamiliar. However, rather than judging progress by the absence of a particular bodily sensation alone, also look at whether craving and clinging are actually weakening in daily life.