All (Sabba Sutta)
First published: February 26, 2026
What you learn
This sutta presents the Buddha's complete definition of 'all' (sabba) as the six sense doors and their corresponding objects - eye and sights, ear and sounds, nose and smells, tongue and tastes, body and touches, mind and ideas. You'll discover how the Buddha establishes the boundaries of experiential reality and warns against speculating beyond these empirically accessible phenomena.
Where it sits
This is the third sutta in the Salayatana Samyutta (Connected Discourses on the Six Sense Bases) within the Samyutta Nikaya. It follows foundational teachings on the sense bases and provides a crucial philosophical framework that underpins much of Buddhist phenomenology and meditation practice throughout the Canon.
Suggested use
Read this as a foundational text that defines the scope of Buddhist inquiry and practice. Consider how this teaching grounds all spiritual development in direct, sense-based experience rather than metaphysical speculation. Reflect on how your own meditation and daily awareness can be understood through this framework of the six sense doors.
Guidance
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SN 35.23 — All (Sabba Sutta)
sn35.23:gu:0001Guidance (not part of the sutta)
sn35.23:gu:0002This discourse establishes the complete scope of knowable reality through the six sense doors. The texts present the Buddha defining "the all" (sabba) as the six sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) paired with their respective objects (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, ideas). This framework encompasses everything that can be experienced or known by conscious beings.
sn35.23:gu:0004This teaching defines the complete interface between consciousness and reality. We can only know reality through these six channels of experience. The Buddha according to the texts isn't making claims about what exists "out there" independently—he's identifying the total territory of what can be meaningfully investigated in spiritual practice.
sn35.23:gu:0005The teaching emphasizes that this definition is comprehensive and final. Any attempt to propose an alternative definition of "the all" would fail because it would necessarily fall outside the realm of possible experience. This isn't philosophical dogma but practical wisdom: if something can't be experienced through these six doors, it can't be verified, investigated, or transformed through practice.
sn35.23:gu:0006This framework becomes the foundation for understanding how suffering arises (through attachment at the sense doors) and how liberation occurs (through understanding the impermanent, unsatisfactory nature of sense experience). This is presented as the Buddha's complete system for spiritual development.
sn35.23:gu:0007- Complete experiential framework: The six sense organs and their objects constitute the totality of knowable reality—everything that can be experienced falls within this framework.
- Mind as sixth sense: The mind functions as a sense organ with mental objects (thoughts, memories, concepts) as its domain, making psychological and conceptual experience part of the sensory framework.
- Boundaries of meaningful inquiry: Speculation about realities beyond the six sense spheres is futile because such things cannot be experienced, verified, or worked with practically.
- Foundation for liberation: Understanding these six spheres as impermanent and unsatisfactory becomes the basis for developing non-attachment and achieving freedom from suffering.
- Practical approach: This teaching focuses on what can be directly investigated rather than making claims about ultimate reality or existence independent of experience.
- Universal applicability: Every moment of consciousness involves at least one of these six types of sense contact, making this framework relevant to all human experience.
- Materialist reductionism: Some think this reduces everything to mere sensory data, missing that the framework includes mental objects and serves liberation rather than philosophical materialism.
- Transcendent reality claims: The Buddha according to the texts isn't claiming that existence beyond the senses is impossible, but rather that spiritual practice must work with what can be directly experienced and investigated.
- Overlooking practical purpose: This isn't abstract philosophy but a practical framework for understanding how suffering arises and ceases through sense contact and mental response.
- Six-door check-ins: Set three random phone alarms and when they ring, simply notice which sense door is most active—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or thinking.
- Mental object recognition: When you notice your mind wandering, recognize that thoughts, memories, and mental images are "mental objects" arising at the mind-door, just as sounds arise at the ear.
- Boundary practice: When you catch yourself speculating about unknowable things (what others think, future scenarios, metaphysical questions), gently redirect attention to what's actually arising through your six senses right now.
- SN 35.28 (The All is Burning) - Shows how attachment and suffering arise through these same six sense doors
- MN 148 (The Six Sets of Six) - Detailed analysis of consciousness, contact, and feeling at each sense door
- SN 35.116 (Consciousness) - Explores how consciousness arises dependently at each sense door
- SN 35.85 (Empty is the World) - Uses this framework to explain the meaning of emptiness