Har-Prakash Khalsa

Shinzen Young – my mindfulness meditation teacher for the last decade – has reworked the common western categorization of the sensory system into a simplified and elegant model. This TSSFIT chart, particularly when combined with the triple skill-set of mindfulness – concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity –  is eminently practical and effective in helping us to understand how the various constellations of the human sensory system, and our relationship to that sensory system, affects identity and behaviour.

In the west we usually conceive of the sensory system as seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling. External sights and sounds are usually identified as other – other people, other beings, or the world in general as something existing separate in relation to our conventional sense of self. Now when we consider how our conventional sense of self arises, what we most identify as who we are is composed of a combination of our body’s touches (for a simple working model smell and taste will be considered special categories of touch or body space – see chart below) and emotional feelings, and thoughts that have internal visual and auditory components, or T-F-I-T for short. Individually we often refer to this as “my” body and mind. Deeper within the self-referential body/mind system are the feelings and thought combinations arising in F-I-T, or feel, image, and talk space. Our reactivity arises most personally as F-I-T activity – shame, embarrassment, rage, terror, grief, happiness, joy, compassion, etc., accompanied and reinforced through thought. “You’re making fun of me!” “I love you.” “That’s mine!” These sensory components of body and mind are self-referentially reflected and reinforced in the “I”, “me”, “mine” of our language. There’s nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but as we’ll see later, if that’s all we identify with we stay limited within our conventional fixed identity.

Now let’s look at the chart below. Notice how in the right side of the TSSFIT chart the FEEL-IMAGE-TALK, or F-I-T sensory spaces, represent the more subjective “I, me, mine” conventional sense of self. On the left side of our chart the T-S-S sensory spaces represent a more “not I, me, mine”, or a more objective “other” or “world” space.

HUMAN SENSORY SYSTEM – Conventional Sense of Self and World

More Objective “T-S-S” Space             More Subjective “F-I-T” Space

& More Other/World                            & More Self – I, Me, Mine

Now this isn’t a perfect chart from a precise perspective. Let me explain. From an absolutely precise perspective, what’s touch doing on the “Other/World” side of our chart? Isn’t touch a part of “my” body? Well, it’s there because the touches of the body are generally less deeply entrenched in our core sense of self. For example. I can run “my” finger nail along the desk next to my computer keyboard. In a conventional sense that’s “my” finger nail, on “my” body, that’s making physical or bodily contact (which is a touch) with the desk. But what happens when I trim the end of my fingernail off my body. Well, it seems a little less “mine” now, sitting there all by it’s lonesome on my desk. It’s making contact with the surface of the desk, but “I” am no longer touching the desk through “that” fingernail. So we can think of what makes up the body and the body’s touches at times more conventionally “us”, and at other times less so. So any quibbling I might have with the placement of touch on this chart is something I can live with as a trade-off for the simplified, symmetrical, and user-friendly benefits I find it has as a sensory model. So let’s agree to leave it as is and explore TSSFIT further.

Our sense of self is constantly changing depending on sensory activity (more restful or active, more solid-like or more flowing), our depth and breadth of concentration, how fixated or not our relationship to that activity is, and our skill in being aware of the sense spaces themselves. Basically, the more unaware we are, the more our perception is distorted, and the more perception is distorted the more unconsciousness will drive our behaviour, leading to more suffering and less happiness for ourselves and others.

One approach to get a handle on perceptual distortion and unconscious behaviour is the Focus In strategy taught by Shinzen in his Basic Mindfulness system. When we are unable to recognize, keep track of and separate the F-I-T strands, we are being programmed by whatever unconscious impulses, sub-personalities, and drivenness that’s currently operating our body/mind system. In contrast, when we can separate the more subjective sense strands of feel-image-talk continuously and keep track of what’s going on in those sensory spaces we will not be hooked into overwhelm, and therefore will be less likely to have behaviour driven unconsciously. We can use the knowledge that when we’re overwhelmed we have temporarily lost the ability to track the individual sense strands to our advantage. Try remembering this after your next F-I-T overwhelm, and think back to the enmeshed tangling together of the F-I-T sense strands. If we can remember to separate out and distinctly keep the F-I-T strands that way during an experience of overwhelm, the overwhelm will decrease and perhaps even disappear. Now it is true that separating out the sense strands as the overwhelm is occurring may take more training in concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity, but this is a do-able skill-set that opens up many practical applications such as: working with issues of pain, deconstructing negative urges (which fuel addictions) leading to an improvement of behaviour in the world, and increasing satisfaction in everyday activities.

TSSFIT and Some Traditional Spiritual Techniques

At the deepest level, separating out the feel-image-talk sense strands can eventually lead to a deconstruction of the limited conventional identity. This was the Buddha’s discovery and gift to the world, and is associated in early Buddhism with the Theravada and Vipassana traditions.

By separating out the sense strands, clarifying the activity of the phenomena within them, and penetrating that activity to it’s source, we can directly uproot the clinging that holds the I, Me, Mine story-making operating system as our sole identity. If we had a complete experience of this and the sensory spaces themselves dissolved into the Source, we could call this an experience (or non-experience as you wish) of absolute “no-self as thing”, to use a Buddhist term.

Tantra

Another approach used by many schools of tantra replaces the usual activity that occurs in these sensory spaces with the components of the meditation or kriya (for a detailed explanation of how this might look using Kundalini Yoga, click here). This interrupts the dominance of the usual Feel-Image-Talk activity comprising the core sense of self, and depending on the technique can also replace elements of Touch-Sight-Sound, or the more “other” or “world” space. Constantly attending to the particular elements of the meditation and keeping them in place requires deep concentration and sensory clarity. Equanimity occurs as we let competing or challenging sensations arise in the background without fighting the dance that they’re doing. Merging with the elements of the meditation we have temporarily replaced the usual sense of self (and perhaps world) with the ideal or archetypalattributes of a new identity. Shinzen’s Focus on Positive strategy is related to this way of working. As with any sensory strategy used, merging with the energetic or vibrational qualities of what we are attending to helps break down the solidity of the body-mind identity and the conventional fixed identity (see Shinzen’s Focus on Change).

Posture, mudra, breath, mantra, visual focus on a mandala, yantra, or other intentional imagining, listening, rhythm, movement, devotion, gratitude, and other positive feel may all come into play depending on the technique used. Let’s say our strategy is to sit chanting out loud while listening carefully, eyes closed, while holding a specific mudra (hand position) and imagining the Sri Yantra (see photo above) with devotion. The TSSFIT chart below shows how the components of our technique might look regarding their sensory placement.

Tantric Practice - T-S-F-I-T Space

Touch, Sight, Sound Space

One of many strategies that is used in Zen and Sufism is to focus away from the more subjective elements and into the touch, sight, and sounds of the world. This is the activity of “When washing the dishes, just wash the dishes”, or the whirling of the Sufi dervishes. This is related to Shinzen’s Focus Out strategy.

When this is used successfully T-S-S predominates awareness resulting in F-I-T being “backgrounded”. Because F-I-T makes up our strongest core sense of self, our core “self” has diminished temporarily. We could consider this a relative state of “no-self as thing”. If F-I-T completely dissolves and awareness fully occupies any of the elements or combinations of the T-S-S of whatever activity is occurring, we become that activity for awhile. As the subject dissolves into the object, we could call this an even deeper state of no-self as thing. Deeper still would be subject merger into object, and the sensory vibrations and sensory spaces themselves dissolving into Zero or the Source, which we might call the non-experience of absolute no-self as thing or world.

Zen – Just Washing Dishes - T-S-S Space

Sufi Dervish Whirling - T-S-S Space

Jhana – Concentrative Absorption and Calm Abiding

In India it was the yogic sadhus that first developed and refined concentrative power into what is known as the jhanas, or jhanic states. As the concentrated states deepen in ever more subtle states our sense of self thins out. Due to the undisturbed clarity of mind that results from this concentrative calm abiding (shamata), Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism often use this as a platform to which they add the investigative or sensory clarity of vipassana. Shinzen combines shamata and vipassana in his Standard Focus on Rest technique. In Shinzen’s Advanced Focus on Rest, or “Do-Nothing”, any doing, including even the intention to do something is let go of. This “thinning out” can further dissolve into the Source. Shinzen talks about the Do-Nothing approach as being related to the Tibetan Dzochen tradition, among others.

Whenever we are focusing on Feel-Image-Talk and FIT is in a state of rest, because the sense of self is attenuated (at that moment) we could consider that an experience of relative no-self. Likewise for TSS. Furthermore, whenever this relative rest dissolves into the Source, this could be called absolute rest, or absolute no-self.

Restful States as a Relative No-Self as Thing - F-I-T Space

At the conceptual level this TSSFIT sensory model acts as a kind of contemporary Rosetta Stone for understanding the elasticity of our sense of self and world, including how various spiritual practices might be thought of in relation to the human sensory system. As our spiritual practice deepens and we begin to experience changes in our identity at the experiential level, the TSSFIT model combined with concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity is one way to help make sense of those peak experiencesthat can occur, as well as the permanent plateaus that are integrated in awareness.

Although any spiritual system I know of can be thought of in relation to this TSSFIT model, Shinzen has formulated his Five Ways meditation training system (see his Basic Mindfulness Program) in conjunction with it. So should you be looking for a well-balanced meditation system that develops the triple skill-set of concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity, that uses a simple model of the human sensory system that is “trackable and therefore tractable”, and that talks about all of this using secular language, you might consider giving it a try.