Interaction with the senses
How we perceive
Sensing: Information comes in through one of the senses, like for instance hearing. This is the closest representation you can experience in consciousness without overlaying any unnecessary information. Some might claim that this is raw input, but this is doubtful, there is always some form of pre-processing before it ends up in consciousness.
Symbolic representation: The sensory experience gets structured into something more stable. In the case of hearing the sounds gets structured with information like loud or quiet, sounds often have an approximate location attached and get a label like "A barking dog."
Reactivity: An automatic reaction appears in response to the symbolic representation. You have an opinion about it. You might like it or dislike it. This reaction can come up in thought like "That stupid dog is barking again," or might be a felt experience something like repulsion or joy.
Entrancement: The reaction is a symbolic representation as well, which can cause even more reactivity. When there is a cascade of reactions, there is entrancement—mind-wandering has started. At this point, there is a total loss of mindfulness.
During the day we spend most of our time either reactive or entranced, but with meditation we can learn to shift this towards actually experiencing what is there. We stop being a slave to our automatic reactions, which can be an incredible relief.
Sam Harris uses the following example:
When you go to the gym, you have physical discomfort in the body, especially during a hard workout, you can really feel the burn. But the pain doesn't cause you any suffering, in fact, the opposite might be the case, the pain might bring you joy. It signals that you're doing the work. But if you had the same physical experience while you were sitting on the couch, then the same pain would be horrible.
The exact same physical sensations can give joy in one context but can cause you suffering in another. These experiences are the result of reactivity and entrancement. Through meditation, we learn to experience what is actually there, without adding anything to it. Whenever we wander off, we go back to the actual sensation in this present moment.
Initial sense -> acquired sense
At the beginning of your meditation career, you think you are with the physical sensations that come with the breath, but often you aren't. It usually takes some time to find the actual sensations with something as subtle as the breath at the nose. Often people are imagining the breath, thinking about the "in-breath" and "out-breath" or they are visualizing the breath moving in an out the body.
In daily life, we usually only experience the symbolic representation of experiences—that seems to come more natural and happens basically automatically. This kind of experience is called the "initial sense."
After a while, you start noticing some actual sensations at the nose—sometimes it's a mix with the symbolic representation. It requires a lot of curiosity to actually sense what is there—experiencing it is called the "acquired sense."
A tiny demonstration
When you start describing the picture above, you're making a symbolic representation: "Some cranes and water, a new building is being build, a bridge on the left, etc". No matter how well you describe it, you're losing an incredible amount of detail.
Just noticing this goes to the core of learning to be with sensing. Sensing might miss the structure of concepts, but in exchange we get a high resolution version of the world.
Practicing this with sight seems to be easiest. Look at something, anything, and notice that when you start describing it, you're moving towards a low resolution representation.
You could also try it the other way around, starting with a concept—it's a boat—and then letting go of that concept and start noticing all the shapes and colors. Noticing how the world increases in resolution.
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