While most beginning meditation books stress basic mindfulness or being "in the moment", Rob Burbea in his book Seeing That Frees goes beyond that, describing how to develop a view of emptiness around specific aspects of the five skandhas, which is basically the sravaka emptiness of the individual person, and a view of emptiness of phenomenon, which is the Mahayana emptiness of the world. He also describes how to do analytical meditation, something I've encountered in my readings of Tibetan texts but which receives almost no attention at all in the Zen and Theravadan texts I've mostly been exposed to in the past. As I tend to be of an analytical mindset (being an engineer) I've been curious to see just exactly what was involved in analytical meditation on emptiness.
One of the nonanalytical meditative techniques Burbea recommends is to perform anatta (not-self) meditation on various perceptions. So rather than cognitively noting the sensations as in the Mahasi technique, or noting the three characteristics around them, you instead note how they are empty of any essence or core, because they are dependent on causes and conditions to arise and pass away. While he says you can go into the causes and conditions, he recommends that you not dwell on them, but just briefly note their empty nature.
The exercise is intended to develop the same insight as the Buddha had into dependent origination. After a while, the nature of how the mind fabricates reality by clinging to particular perceptions becomes apparent. This clinging doesn't involve any cognitive labeling (i.e. the thought "this is a flower") but rather is built into the basic mechanism of how we perceive, which is why it is so difficult to tease out. In order for us to perceive a flower in front of us or a sensation in our body, there must be an object, the flower or the body with something going on, and the mind must grab onto it and have a particular view about it.
The intent of this meditation is to reduce craving, or reactivity around perceptions, and thereby loosen up the mind to treat perception in a different way. Burbea notes that after a while, perceptions in meditation should be come lighter, and that they should then fade away. The classical texts speak of this in many places, for example this quote from Nagarjuna:
One who sees the absence of 'mine' and I-making does not see.*In the classical texts, this is called "the pacification of perception (sarvopalambhopasmah in Sanskrit).
I've been noticing something like this in my daily meditation off and on for the last year and a half or so. Basically, I'll sit down and after I make sure my meditation timer is advancing properly (sometimes, if I don't hit the on button just right, it sticks and doesn't advance so I end up sitting for an hour or more instead of 40 minutes), I'll settle in and take note of what sensations happen to be arising in my body. Like this knee has a particular feeling of twisting, or my body is off center. If I need to actually make any physical changes in my posture, I'll make them. Then I will continue to note the sensations and usually tune into the breath at my abdomen. I use that because my Mahamudra teacher likes to have us start with what he calls the "origin point" at the base of the spine as the meditation object. My mental stance or view towards these objects (body sensations and the breath) is quite neutral, that they are just arising and falling as such things do, so more or less like Burbea's emptiness meditation. After a while, the sensations will fade. As the Heart Sutra says: no sound, no taste, no touch, no objects of mind. Shortly before the 40 minutes is up, hearing comes back on line and I hear the meditation timer chime.
Of course, not every daily meditation goes like that, sometimes I have stuff come up from work or in my life, and then need to notice it and return to the breath. I rarely get extreme papancia in my daily meditations though. About the most extreme is some light planning about what I'll do the next day at work, if it's an evening meditation, or during the day, if it's morning.
The funny thing about this fading of perception is that it is pretty easy to see the difference between sarvopalambhopasmah and when I'm drifting off to sleep. Basically, I am able to hold my posture fine and I don't think I am snoring either. Sometimes I do drift off to sleep and slump forward if it's an evening meditation and I've had a particularly long day, so I can tell the difference. And finally, perception begins to return just before the meditation timer rings for the end of the session, as would be expected. I don't wake up suddenly with that: "Huh? I've just been sleeping for 40 minutes?" feeling. Since I'm going into the session with an intention to sit for 40 minutes, my mind has formulated some clinging around the end of the session; therefore, when the session is about to end, perception returns. The difference in the quality of mind of sleep and sarvopalambhopasmah is pretty obvious, but until I encountered Burbea's book, I was kind of wondering what was going on.
The other interesting point is that the fading is not like the path or fruit moment. These types of disappearance of perception are (or were for me) quite sudden, and twice the disappearance happened when I was doing something other than meditating. In those cases, perception simply stopped then rebooted a few moments later. In another, which occurred during a meditation retreat, the moment was preceded by a kind of strobing of perception which then ceased quite suddenly. And afterwards when the mind comes back on line after path and fruit moments, there is an enormous amount of energy and a feeling of well-being, as if something profound has occurred. So these experiences are quite intense. With the fading of perception in daily meditation, it's kind of like a feeling of comfort and ease, refreshing, not a great deal of energy, so it is more like the term in the classical texts, a pacification.
Later in the book, Burbea's goes into the relationship between intention, perception, and craving, basically unpacking the relationship between my intention to sit for 40 minutes and the return of hearing just before the meditation timer chimes. Any kind of perception involves a very subtle clinging (tanha in Sanskrit) beyond the feeling of pleasant/unpleasant (vedana in Sanskrit) associated with the bare sensation, links seven and eight in the chain of dependent origination. He also talks a bit about karma, but spends most of that chapter discussing "purification" and catharsis, which many mediators believe and experience as an important part of their practice, but which he emphasizes is ultimately empty. One needs to approach this emptiness with the right mindset, of course, and he talks about that.
Anyway, I highly recommend Burbea's book if you want to check out some interesting approaches to meditation on emptiness. I would, however, be a bit careful about going around and claiming sarvopalambhopasmah as an "attainment" especially if you are on a Bodhisattva Path. Like the Heart Sutra says: "With no attainment, a Bodhisattva dwells in prajnaparimita (the Perfection of Wisdom)". Prajnaparimita is the understanding and perception of the fundamental emptiness under the phenomenal world.
* Mulamadhyamakakarika
Image source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-optical-illusion-insight-world.html
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