[Buddha-l] Tortoise mind?

[visuddhimati]

My understanding is that after Enlightenment experience continues, so  
we continue to sense,see, hear, taste, touch, smell and think.  What  
changes is our interpretation of our sense experience.  But why am I  
telling you all this?, I'm sure you know it.

Then there is our experience of withdrawal from the gross senses that  
happens in meditation, an experience of dropping into absorption,  
which I imagine is familiar to the meditators here.  But that  
experience is also subject to our interpretation of it. Presumably  
after enlightenment, our interpretation of meditative absorption  
takes on another meaning and is re-interpreted.

Joanna's original quote which started the thread:

When one is able to withdraw his senses from their objects under any
circumstance, just as a tortoise withdraws its limbs into the shell -  
his
wisdom is firmly established.

Following the line of reasoning I've indicated, wisdom in the  
Buddhist sense requires a dharmic perspective on the experience of  
sense withdrawal, i.e. sense withdrawal as described in the quote  
about the tortoise doesn't necessarily mean that wisdom is present  
(although it might be).

It might be interesting to explore what the word is that has been  
translated as wisdom.

Metta Visuddhimati.
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