"Insensitivity" Training

Prior to the group meditation practice tonight, I was anticipating that the room would be cold. I told the young lady in the t-shirt that the towels we provide our participants can be used to cover not just the legs but also the arms, chest, or anywhere else that feels cold. But I also reassured the participant that people forget the temperature once they really start to meditate.
   Of course, sometimes, it can go the other way: most people report heightened sensitivity to sensory inputs after they meditate. I have heard of one meditation practitioner who becomes acutely sensitive to sound when she meditates in a deep samadhi. Many even regard it as a special power to gain additional sensory abilities after meditating for long periods of time. Is it true that Buddhists would value greater sensitivity to perceptions?
    From my reading of Santideva, I would have to say perhaps "no" to the question of whether Buddhists value acute sensitivity from meditative practices. After all, sensitivity could be a kind of attachment to sounds, smells, tastes, or touch, and the aim of many Buddhist practices is to lessen attachment rather than heighten it. Along these lines, Santideva uses many natural metaphors to illustrate the dangers of heightened sensory awareness, particularly when it comes to registering pain. He remarks, "Cold, heat, rain, wind, traveling, illness, captivity, and beatings should not induce a sense of fragility. Otherwise, the distress becomes greater." (Line 16, p.63)
   Santideva's point is to say that the 'sense of fragility' only increases one's feeling of distress over commonplace events. But where does this sense of fragility arise, exactly? Throughout this text, Santideva challenges his audience not to narrow their awareness to predefined categories, like "suffering" and "happiness", "good" and "bad", etc. If, for instance, I anticipate that something like temperature will be problematic, I already categorize the experience in terms of pre-existing categories, which only serve to judge the experience itself. The sense of fragility that Santideva describes typically comes from a person who is finicky about almost everything, and I imagine that Santideva may even be describing a pampered situation. When a person is living in extreme comfort, they sometimes become very protective of that comfort by rejecting anything that is just a little bit uncomfortable. But on the other hand, Santideva forces his audience to put things in perspective. Are the inconveniences of life really that bad? He remarks:

15. Do you not consider the pain of bugs, gadflies, and mosquitoes, of thirst and hunger, and the irritation of a serious rash and the like as insignificant? (ibid)

Here, Santideva is posing an interesting question: if one traces one's discomfort back to the original sources, do those discomforts really seem so terrible? Most of the problems one experiences seem large to the senses, but then again are only the coming together of temporary conditions. Waiting in long line-ups is one good example of something that can be emotionally difficult, but in itself would not be anything more than a bit inconvenient.
   Is Santideva suggesting that practitioners become like 'rocks with no senses'? From what I can see, Santideva is suggesting that people should never throw problems out of proportion, but can use their practice to see things from a greater context of cause and condition. After all, a 'fly' is only considered a problem in isolation. When I consider it in the greater context of other beings, without a self-reference, I stop personalizing the problems and start to see that they are conditions, none of which are directed at "me".

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva (selected chapters only). Translated by V. Wallace and A. Wallace. Snow Lion, 1997.  .