Working With Perception by a Jahn Sucitto

7/29/2019 Working With Perception by a Jahn Sucitto

1/511WINTER 2009Insight Journal

What is perception? Its the most

immediate derived sense of an object:Its a flower, its a car, its a person.

eres a mild impact, contact, a sense of, ahsomething strikes the eye. eres an immediateflurrying or movement around what that is.

is becomes more apparent when youmeditate and slow the mind down, so that youfind some space between the rush of ideas andmoods. en as youre abiding in a fairly spaciousstate you feel how things strike you. It could bepleasant, like a bouncing chipmunk runningacross the path in front of you, boing. erewas stillness, then you get the touch of contact,maybe a brief mental movement of alarm. en,Oh, its a little chipmunk. eres contact, thenperception (sa, the moment of recognition),then a conceptual label that tells you what it is though really this is what the thingmeans toyou.

Varieties of perception

Perceptions are meanings, so they aresubjective and depend upon, first of all,

functioning sense faculties which are limited andconditioned. ey cant give us truth; they canonly give us pieces that work for us. For example,whats the world like to a bat? Humans mostlyoperate through visual and mental activity. Batsdont do visuals; they squeak thousands of timesa second, so they create this huge sound net,reaching out. Flittering around at night, theydont hit things; they form perceptions basedon sound, and through that they can detect andcatch all kinds of bugs.

Whats New York like to a dog? I betskyscrapers dont mean anything to dogs, butwho peed on that fire hydrant is probably reallyheadline news. Dogs check out the scents of whoor what passed through an hour or more ago.eyre able to track this to a fine degree.

So the first level of subjectivity, of it alldepends, is one of the sense system of eachspecific being. What is color to a color-blindperson? In some cases people suffer from

neurological damage. Some people cant perceive

movement because the nerve endings in the littlebit of the brain that register and understandmovement have been damaged. So for example,they cant track and interpret the range of visualchange that tells most of us that a car is comingtowards them; first its a small car, then a slightlybigger car, another bigger car, a fender and thenblackness. e brain cant get a sense of thesynchronized movement coming out of that.

Another example is synesthesia, a mix up ofsenses whereby people associate one sense withanother. ey might see music, or associate anumber with a colornumber five is blue, orTuesdays are green. ey dont know why, thatsjust what comes up. Most of us to some degreeare synesthetic.

ats what onomatopoeia is about: Certainsounds give you an impression of something. Sayyou have a kind of very soft, spongy amoeboidobject on the one hand, and you have somethingthats made out of shards of broken glass on theother. A Martian comes down and says, isones a bobble-wobble, which one do you think

hes talking about? Youll say its the amoebicthing, because we associate that kind of soundwith that particular form. If the Martian said,is is a kiki-kiki, youd think of the brokenglass as being sharp, narrow sounds. Soundstransfer into visual memories and metaphors.

Some perceptions depend on karmicmeaning, on onesown history, evensometimes fromuterine experiences.

If your mother isin a state of anxietyor depressionwhen youre inthe womb, allthose neuro-hormones are going to affect yourneurology, so you can have an unsafe feelingwith regard to what youre in that has no specificobject; its because of what youve been dousedin. In this case it might set your neurological

Ajahn Sucitto

Working with Perception

Kiki?

Bobble?


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barometer to whats around me is not comfortable.Some people get extremely afflicted with mentalperceptions: Say youre claustrophobicyoualways feel oppressed by being in something;

or agoraphobicyou feel frightened if youcome out of something. You cant be rationallyconvinced because it cant be rationally processed.Its perceptual.

Reflex perceptions

Dependent upon mental perceptions, or feltmeanings, our reflex actions and programs comeup. e sankhras(dispositions programsor activities) start operating, dependent uponthese meanings. So for example, we come to ameditation retreat with the sense: I chose tocome on retreat, I wanted to come on retreat, Ireally needed to come on retreat. en we sitdownand the perception arises of lonely, orlost, or estrangement, and, I dont want to behere with this. What happened? We maybe feelcontrolled by the structure, or we dont feel safewith so many strange people. All that reflexivestuff kicks in because often when we meditate, wecome underneath the surface to the felt meaningsof things that have defined me, at a very basiclevel. And then reflexes start kicking in.

I remember when one of the sisters [nuns]went on a long-distance walk out in the moors.She had to walk ten, twelve miles in the rain, inthe cold, and carry her bulky bag and tent, andlive pretty rough. But it felt blissful because shewas choosing to do it. Whereas to walk up thehill from the nuns cottage 300 yards from themain house every day just felt like a real pain,and unfair. Because its something she had to do.at feeling of oppression touched a reflex.

e Honeyball Sutta (Madhupindika Sutta,

Majjhima Nikya 18) has a beautiful description:Dependent on the eye and forms, eye

consciousness arises. Eye consciousness arisesfrom a sense base, an object. e meeting of thethree is contact. So, bong, something strikes.

With contact as a requisite condition, thereis feeling. What one feels, one perceives.What one perceives, one thinks about. Whatone thinks about, one complicates. Based onwhat a person complicates, the perceptions in

categories of complication assail him or heras regards the past, present or future formscognizable via the eye.

So theres a process whereby something starts

off as involuntary: Weve got an eye, and theform arises, and bang, eye consciousness happens.eres no action in that, something just occurs.e meeting of the three is contact, so againthats completely passive. With contact there is arequisite condition, there is feeling.

Suddenly a subject has crept in there. Beforeit was all impersonal, now its become one feels.Its not sketched in at this moment as him or her,its just one. When feeling arises the first thingthat happens is, Ah, I am feeling. But its an

impersonal sense of self, Im feeling this, this ishappening to me. So the perception rises up andlabels the feeling and with it arises the sense ofone who feels.

en what one perceives, one thinks about.Now a little more action starts occurring,thinking. is is much more to do with personalhistory, adding the narrative of Im always withthis, Im the victim, He is, She never does etc.So what one thinks about one complicates.eres this word complicate orpapaca, which

also translates as proliferates or projects ordiversifies. Suddenly it becomes all kinds ofmanifestations: its this, its that, it shouldnt be,could be, ought to be, reminds me of this, whatam I going to do about that? Sound familiar?

I call it thepapacafairy. She waves a wandand then suddenly all this stuff comes rising up.You can drop one or two words, like currentpresident, and bong, all this stuff comes risingup. Cascades of emotionally charged thoughtperceptions of he, she, it, he cant and shouldntand how dare they, and so on. You feel drenchedin gobs of past, present and future. ats theflooding based on what perception brings up.

Somebody gave an example of twilight: Yousee this object on the path and the first thing isa shock, its a snake and then, alright its a rope.e first perception isnt necessarily accurate, buttheres an emotional tone; it could be fear, joy,desire, aversion. Something wants to retract, orsomething wants to go out and meet it.

Perception rises up and labels the feeling

and with it arises the sense of one who feels.



You notice it when its unexpected; you walkaround a corner and theres somebody standingthere you werent expecting, and theres animmediate shock, Its somebody in a uniform,oh dear. Whereas if it was a small person in ajumpsuit you wouldnt feel the same way. Its notjust a visual object thats arisen, but a meaning

has arisen. ats the perception.So from an immediate external sensesight,

sound or touchcomes a recognition thatsomething is impacted; thats contact. And theresa naming. With naming, feeling and perceptionarrive and trigger off an act of conceiving. atname may not stay very long. You may in factgo back to that visual object in a split second andcheck it out: Oh its not Jack, its Fred. Ohhes not angry, hes just got a headache. oseperceptions shift, but they all refer to mood toneswhich can be fundamental things such as safety,pleasure or pain, control or freedom.

Some of these perceptual meanings get builtup through history. If its your house and you seethings and theres a feeling, Oh I should do thisbecause the carpets untidy, or the paints comingoff the wall, or something like that: I should doit. Somebody elses house, you think, Oh look atthat, you dont get the same feeling. You mightthink Why dont they do something about it?e sense of self also comes in with namingthings as this is mine or not mine.

ese are the kind of root meanings thatget established, and they dont necessarily startrunning as thoughts. eyre just emotionalpositions. As we first perceive an objectgreen,red, black, white, car, dog, whatever it isthatsthe first way in which its named. en itsreferred to the mind, which adds its ownmeanings. So you get this interplay betweendifferent levels of perception. e conceptarises, its to be protected, its to be cherished,or whatever it is. It wouldnt be the case if it was

a different concept, such as its somebody elses,or its a wreck. e mind also has its own sensebase, which is concepts, which also generate thesame kind of meanings, essentially: safe, warm,comfortable, mine, not mine.

Perception and truth

Interestingly enough, in Buddhadharma theaim is not really to find truth, per se. All truth isconsidered to be contingent, relative. e main

thing is notultimate truth, butpeace, realization. Truths areof a relative nature, the relative truths of sufferingand cessation of suffering, which are contingentupon the experience of suffering and notsuffering. ey dont exist in abstract. eyre notultimate truths; whereas the Western mind oftenbelieves there is such a thing as ultimate truths.

In any action the important thing is theperceptual meaning, because that tells yousomething about where your own angle is. Soyou walk through the kitchen here, and yoursleeve catches a cup and knocks it onto the floorand smashes the cup. You might get the feeling,Oh goodness me, Ive done something wrong.Or it might be, What idiot put that cup there,right in the way? So which is the truth?

Or you could get philosophical about itand say the cup is of a nature to break, its justfulfilling its purpose. Or you could be Zen

theres no cup, no breaking, everything isjust in a neither broken nor unbroken state. Or,its my karma to break a cup. It had to happenbecause of something I did in a previous life. Orif youre a politician you can say We managed togo through the kitchen with no damage at all toteapots and saucers. It was successful, there wasa little collateral, but we dont think its in thepublic interest to let you know about that. Andyou could say thats true also.

When you touch into the meanings of what

actually happens, theyre not concepts that floataround as abstract realities of an undying nature.eyre actually momentary and subjectiveand intimate experiences that keep rising up.eyre not true in an ultimate sense, but theyreactual. All we want to know about is not whatsultimately true, but how do we release ourselvesfrom suffering and stress.

e problem of truth is that concepts andideas are abstract. By themselves they have no

Whats the world like to a bat?


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Perceptions dont give you an ultimate reality;

they give you a subjective readout of where youre coming from.

explicit felt meaning until theyre introducedto each individuals mind. So if you were inthe Second World War, the words Germanyor Japan would have triggered off different

meanings in the minds of people who wereon the other side of that conflict. Nowadaysit would trigger off different sets of meanings.In terms of music, Germany means Bach,Beethoven and so forth. If you thought of it interms of the Second World War, you thought ofHitler and Nazis.

rough examining and contemplatingperceptions, we begin to see the relative truthsof the angles or biases that we have, the blaming,self-blaming or justifying, or ignoring. So if

you knock a cup over, that touches the thingof wrong, done wrong and then you get thiswhole flurry of, I hope I dont get found out,or What an idiot I am or Im always doingthis kind of thing. Or Why cant I be moremindful? All of which have some truth inthem, a truth about who we are, or the kind ofkamma thats running.

Perceptions dont give you an ultimate reality;they give you a subjective readout of where yourecoming from. We begin to see obsessions and

latent tendencies that flare up. e more youcontemplate this, the more you get a profile ofthe kind of tendencies that cause one suffering,stress, imbalance, agitation, defensiveness, anger,greed and so forth.

Widening the field

Perceptions are what you have to bring yourdharma practice to bear on, along with the reflexdispositions and programs of self. So there maybe the tendency to find fault with yourself orwith others, or justify yourself, or to basically

space out and forget the whole thing altogether.Its also the case that practice entails

deliberately inducing perceptions throughconcepts. Meditation itself starts withestablishing skillful perception through selectivethinking (otherwise known as wise reflection).e first reflection is of Refuge. We check inwith the reality of being here and how we canbe with that. is means taking Refuge. Andwe do that by establishing the felt meaning, the

perception of Buddha, Dhamma, Sanghathatwhich is compassionate, clear and wise, the wayand the teachings, the exemplars. We bring thoseinto our lives by bringing them into our minds.

And along with those reflections comes the senseof belonging to something good and wise andtrustworthy shared by many people throughouttime and place.

Another reflection brings up the perceptionof impermanence: You acknowledge that thischanges and that changes. And bringing thatinto practice is more than an idea: We experiencethrough direct perception that sensations change,and feelings come and go. So the reflex reactionto feeling gets checked.

is is not really making a comment onthe nature of what passes, whether youre gladit passed. It just helps to shift your way ofperceiving to a wider frame of reference, notfocusing so much on the topic itself but uponits changing nature. is lightens a lot of theconceptual intensities that can occur aroundtopics such as a thought sensed as a feeling.Where a thought comes up we may think,Terrible thought, hideous thought, uglythought, shouldnt have this thought, wow, where

did I ever get this thought from? Or we cannotice that it is a changing energy. You can widenthe perceptual field in terms of time, just holdingthat space of perception for a few moments inwhich the thought comes, flies around, and fadesout. en theres a different emotional sense thatcomes with that, detachment and dispassionarises, which is calming and steadying andsupports clarity of response. is is what peopleoften call vipassana, developing non-attachmentthrough experiencing change.

is perception allows you to address a verywide field of phenomena, one which includesthe liked and the disliked, the urgent, theunimportant, the trivial, the nonsensical, theconfused, which fall into that same pattern.Whereas if one wanted to focus purely onthe liked, then some objects wouldnt fit intothat category. So you grow broader and yourconfidence in being at peace with the unwelcomeand the weird develops accordingly.



Widening the perceptual field also meanswe include what it is that self and other havein common: such as that we all dislike pain, weall appreciate pleasure, we all want safety, we all

like friendlinesssimple things. We widen tothe we sense. is helps to generate sensitivityto ethics and compassion. Generally speaking,the wider the perceptual field, the more skillful,because the more beings you can fit into that,the less conflict, division, and bias there is.

is widening also helps us recognize whatwe leave outparts of ourselves, perhaps, thatwe dont really like to attend to, the grubbier, orthe less pleasing aspects of the body, or our deathor sickness. But with detachment its just a body

and it changes and all bodies do this. We canwiden and be with that and the mind becomesmore peaceful, less defensive and less obsessive inthose respects.

Non-conflict

e Honeyball Sutta makes a related pointabout views.

Dandapani (Stick-in-hand) outroaming and rambling around forexercise went to the Great Wood, went to

the Blessed One, who was under the bilvasapling, exchanged courteous greetingswith him and stood to one side. As he wasstanding there he said to the Blessed One,Whats the contemplatives doctrine?What does he proclaim?

In other words, whats your statement aboutultimate reality? And the Buddha says, well, mystatement is that any kind of doctrine,

the sort of doctrine where one doesnot keep quarreling with anyone in thecosmos that sort of doctrine whereperceptions no longer obsess the brahmanwho remains dissociated from sensualpleasures Such is my doctrine.

So he doesnt give him a concept of what itis. He just says basically, its anything that fitswithin his sense of non-quarreling, non-conflict,non-obsession.

So Dandipani shakes his head, wags histongue which is an interesting gesture,

wagging the tongue raises his eyebrows sohis forehead was wrinkled in three furrowsand Left, leaning on his stick. In other words,it went over his head. He was looking for some

concept that he could quarrel with, and theBuddha didnt give him anything.

You also find this freedom from views inthe first Sutta in the Dgha Nikya, in theBrahmajla Sutta, (e Great Brahma Net)which describes 62 different views of the selfin the cosmos that people were arguing aboutat the time. e Buddha, when asked aboutthis himself, said, well, every one of these viewsI know. Ive been there, and I realize that thisview arises dependent upon contact. In other

words, something happens, you try to figure itout, and you come up with one of these viewsand you hold onto it. e Buddha says, I knowall that and I know how to release the mindfrom holding onto that. Because of this, Im notsnared in any of these views or opinions.

So its interesting isnt it? It sounds socounter-intuitive, but hes actually seen all thepositions that you could take, and hes saying,all that action, all that effort, where does it takeyou? Another place, another position, arguing

with other people. Why dont you just come outof needing to have a position?

You realize everything and anything that isheld onto cant be an ultimate truth, its just anaming, based upon a position. So, because ofthat, ...this is the end of taking up of rods andbladed weapons or arguments, quarrels, disputes,accusations, divisive tale-bearing and falsespeech. is is where these unskillful things ceasewithout remainder. And that is what I teach.

So what is it that Buddhas do know?

Everything that arises is dependently arisen, isimpermanent and not-self, and it passes. Andso what? What does that mean? Well, theres noperception for that, because through insight intoperception the mind has given up on namingand has realized peace. If you do the practicethat takes you to that, youll know it for yourself.

Abbot of Cittaviveka (Chithurst) in England, Ajahn Sucittobecame a bhikkhu in Tailand in 1976 in the lineage of

Ajahn Chah. Tis article is based on a BCBS course he taughtin 2008.

Through insight into perception, the mind has given up on naming

and has realized peace.

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Working With Perception by a Jahn Sucitto