| | Dear Hala,
Well, good to hear from you again.
You ask a zillion very good questions, but I will give my best shot at this in summary form:
Basically, there are sensations, and sensations arise and vanish. All things that can be experienced are formed of transient sensations from the point of view of vipassana, and that includes anything you think could know anything, any sensations that imply knowing, and every and all of the many fresh sensations that imply space and awareness, all of which change and are utterly impermanent.
Emptiness as a word can imply many things, so in that context you should ask, but I can think of a few: Sensations are empty of a self, which is what emptiness is usually shorthand for when used to describe phenomena: all sensations are manifest where they are, are utterly transient, are known by nothing, arise from nothing and return to nothing, except this is not a nothing you can find or know or experience, it really is the utterly gone nothing, the nothing without any time or experience, such that it is utterly not known at all as there would be nothing there to know it and nothing there to know and no time during which knowing could occur, this is the other way emptiness is sometimes meant, and refers to Fruitions.
You sound like you are really, really good at the 5th and 6th samatha jhanas, and, as you like and are impressed by those experiences, continue to cultivate those in your practice, and even if you cultivate some vipassana practice within them, if you don't really go for those jhanas themselves, they will just stick around, meaning you will cultivate the illusion of a stable space and not violate it by seeing the individual sensations that make up the broad, wide background as they are, while doing vipassana on your central objects. Without seeing both the background (everything that seems to be space, awareness, subject, self) and the foreground (your central objects) arise and vanish, stream entry will not arise, as for it to arise, awareness of the Three Characteristics must encompass the full field simultaneously, including all of space and awareness within its comprehension.
That's my best guess, anyway.
Other possibility: anagamis can describe stuff like this, where everything seems panoramic, aware, etc., and they can have their own problems fixating on not completely penetrating this more refined, complete, and compelling sense of space/awareness as something that is the ultimate thing and stable and some sort of a self.
Thoughts?
Daniel |