for feeling. Herbert Guenther explains: It is an awareness in which a pleasant [or unpleasant or neutral] feeling is felt when the object, sensory capacity, and cognitive process have come together and which is restricted to the appropriate object. Transformation in the controlling power means that when the visual sense meets a pleasant object [for example] and the feeling becomes the cause of adhering to this pleasure, rapport [sparsha] restricts the pleasant color-form and the feeling becomes the cause of pleasure. Six classes The Theravada and Mahayana traditions both identify six "classes" of contact: eye-contact ear-contact nose-contact tongue-contact body-contact mind-contact For example, when the ear sense and a sound object are present, the associated auditory consciousness (Pali: viññāṇa) arises. The arising of these three elements (dhātu) – ear-sense, sound and auditory consciousness – lead to "contact" (phassa). Within the twelve nidanas Sparśa is the sixth of the Twelve Nidānas. It is conditioned by the presence of the six sense-openings (), and in turn is a condition for the arising of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral 'sensations' or 'feelings' (vedanā). Dan Lusthaus explains: sparśa (P. phassa) - Literally 'touch' or 'sensory contact'. This term accrued varied usages in later Indian thought, but here it simply means that the sense organs are 'in contact with' sensory objects. The circuit of intentionality, or to borrow Merleau-Ponty's term intentional arc, is operational. This term could be translated as 'sensation' as long as this is qualified as a constitutional, active process that is invariably contextualized within its psycho-cognitive dimensions. For Buddhists, sensation can neither be passive nor purely a physical or neurological matter. When the proper sensorial conditions aggregate, i.e., come into contact with each other, sensation occurs. These proper conditions include a properly functioning sense organ and a cognitive-sensory object, which already presuppose a linguistically-complex conscious body (nāma-rūpa). Jeffrey Hopkins explains: Roughly speaking, [sparsha refers to] the coming together of an object, a sense organ, and a moment of consciousness. Hence contact, in the twelve links, refers to contact with a sense-object and the subsequent discrimination of the object as attractive, unattractive, or neutral. Sense objects are always present, and thus when a sense organ—the subtle matter that allows you to see, hear, and so forth—develops, an eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, or body consciousness will be produced. Alexander Berzin provides an explanation of the sixth link in the context of the