First, look at this triangle:
△Now, seen in a normal “non-meditative” way, the triangle is a bit of content. It has some sort of meaning within the visual and intellectual sphere, connecting naturally with other images and ideas. You might associate it with the number three, with the Trinity if you’re Christian, with any number of organizations that use it in their logo, with Euclidian geometry, and so on. The key thing is that this content/meaning level perception of the triangle rests partially on it’s sensory appearance, partially on it’s form (i.e., what your mind “knows” the sensory inscription is supposed to be instantiating), and partially on it’s associations with other images, objects, and ideas. These are the sorts of observations about meaning made by Western phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.
Suppose you take a jpeg image file of this little triangle and zoom into it in Photoshop. If you zoom a little bit, the pixels will start to show and become jagged. You’ll start to see that the triangle is made up of little particles, but you’ll still see the overall shape of the triangle as well. Zoom in even further and the object’s content disappears altogether and you’re left with nothing by little black dots on the screen. If you were using a monitor with a slower refresh rate, you could also see the dots appearing and disappearing continually. This is something like what happens in vipassana, when we see the three characteristics of objects.
Note, however, that it is only our experience of the triangle that changed. The triangle still means what it meant even if we choose to view it at such a fine-grained level that we cannot see that meaning. Merleau-Ponty has a great quote about this in
Phenomenology of Perception. To paraphrase, “Just like there is a proper distance from which to stand from each painting in a galley in order to see that painting’s artistic meaning, similarly, every object has a precise distance and manner in which it must be observed in order to see it’s meaning as an object.” Thus, I assert that it’s false to claim that the chaotic flux of particles one perceives during vipassana meditation is somehow “ultimate reality” or the real truth. That’s like saying that you get a truer perspective on your morning newspaper by viewing it through an electron microscope. In philosophy we’d call this the reductionist fallacy, the fallacy of assuming that knowledge of the parts gives the truth about the whole.
Rather, I’d like to say that the 3 Characteristics view of reality shows us one truth about reality, but not the ultimate truth. It shows us the truth of what raw unstructured sensation really looks like. That’s highly significant, because Western philosophers have argued for centuries about whether raw unstructured sensation even exists (and continue to do so even today!). What’s even more significant is the fact that spending a lot of time viewing reality at the level of unstructured sensation seems to have profoundly healing effects on our perceptual systems. Yet, in my view, the Buddhist religion makes a little too much of this startling discovery by generalizing it into an ultimate path to salvation. In contrast, we might choose to view sensate meditation as one useful tool among many for engaging with our lived experience.
Okay, so that’s content in relation to vipassana. What about samadhi/jhana practice?
Let’s go back to our triangle:
△Now, rather than viewing the triangle as a set of pixels, as in a jpeg file, let’s view it as a vector graphics unicode character (which it actually is). The thing about vector graphics files is that they are mathematically perfect. No matter how large you increase the font size of the triangle character, it will always be perfectly smooth, within the limits of the monitor you are using to display it. This is something like the point Plato made, in talking about the Forms versus sensory particulars. He argued that all sensory particulars are imperfect (read, display the 3 Characteristics). However, he also recognized that somehow we can perceive a perfect non-sensory reality that lies within/beyond the sensory particulars.
I assert, that in jhana practice we are attempting to perceive something as close to the perfect Form that lies behind the sensory particular as we possibly can. For every jhana object we start out with some imperfect simple sensory object (breath, a coloured circle, a circle of earth, etc), and by focusing on it and refining our perception of it toward perfection, we experience something that comes closer and closer to the Form of the object. The nimmita is a sensory image that appears spontaneously in jhana practice once the object has been sufficiently perfected and stabilized. When the nimmita is perceived visually, it is very often seen as a yantra-like geometric form that somehow seems to embody the essence of the perfected object. There is no obvious conceptual link between the way the nimmita looks and the nature of the object being meditated on. Rather, the nimmita is the mental image that approximates the mind's direct, non-sensory perception of the Form itself. It is striking to me that Plato always compared the Forms first and foremost to geometric shapes, and I seriously wonder whether he was inspired by perceiving nimmitas himself. However, even the nimmita, which is our mind’s best sensory representation of the perfected Form, is still not the Form, but only a sensory approximation of it. The Form itself is super-sensible, much like Nibbana...
Which leads me to the last, and perhaps most controversial piece of this essay. Buddhist doctrine asserts that Nibbana can only be experienced through insight practice and not through jhana practice. This is true, as far as it goes, but it may not be the whole truth. Since in Jhana practice we are always focused some sensory object, however subtle, we will never experience Nibbana through it. However, since I started cycling through fruition on a regular basis, I’ve been actively exploring different methods of triggering cessation. Tonight, in order to test this theory about the Form being a super-sensible reality, I began with fairly light concentration on a complex polyhedron shape (a stellated icosahedron nested inside a dodecahedron). Once the image of the shape became clear in my mind, I did not increase concentration to the point of absorption, nor did I focus on the particulate nature of the mental sensations that made up the mental image. Rather, I simply asked myself, “what is the true Form of this shape that is more perfect than anything that could be perceived through sensation.” A few moments of lightly holding this intention together with the shape, triggered a clear cessation. I repeated the experiment an hour later with the same result.
Of course, I’ll have to try doing it lots more times to be sure that I’m not fooling myself, but this at least strongly suggests that there are more gateways to the void than the Three Doors. If you’re passed stream entry, try it yourself and let me know the results.
These findings fit with the toroidal model of reality (the axis mundi, world tree, etc). If you go down far enough into the chaotic flux of sensation, you can slip through the cracks to enter the void, sometimes coming back around through the top into bliss and energy. On the other hand, if you go up high enough toward orderly and perfected perceptions, and then seek to go beyond even that, you enter the very same void through the top, sometimes coming back around through the bottom into dissolution. Both ends of the torus wrap around the outside and meet.
The life-world, the world of ordinary human meaning, is the thin hollow tube that runs through the center of the torus. Within this tube, human life unfolds as the unending dance of dissolution and crystallization. Meaning, purpose, myth, narrative, transformation, and growth, can only occur when dissolution (vipassana) and crystallization (samadhi) are in balance and we when we allow ourselves the freedom and flexibility to weave our perceptions into a rich tapestry of associations.
I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Avi
Toronto Spiritual Direction
