James M Corrigan:
I'm not exactly sure of the intended meaning of "blip," I'm taking it as a "fault in the matrix" kind of sudden disjointedness in direct experience.
Pretty much, yes. "Blip" is this forum's jargon for "cessation" or "fruition". I guess people like to use it because it sounds less dramatic - and it acknowledges the possibility of wrong self-diagnosis in the practical dharma, often teacher-less community. I like to read it as a shorthand for:
It certainly was some kind of "blip!", but was it really a Fruition? Let's talk about it!More technically, it is the "nibbana instant" in the chain of events that complete a cycle of insight according to the Visuddhimagga, the fast chain of nanas commonly numbered 12-15, 16 being review and 11 being [knowledge of] equanimity [about sankharas].
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5037f52d84ae1e87f694cfda/t/506fcc5c84aefb9a79a610b3/1349504092518/Pathways.jpgDaniel Ingram's description is probably the best one available around from the point of view of putting together traditional descriptions, personal experience and second-hand descriptions from fellow meditators; it even has a checklist for self-diagnosis.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+Was+that+Emptiness
I've ruminated at times about what I do actually experience at these moments and an expression used too frequently in phenomenology, which I studied at university, would always come to mind: "always already there," except in these cases it was of the "not there" variety, so "(something) already gone" or "(something) was never there, but I felt it was."
Not 100% sure what you mean there. But if you mean "was this thing I am seeing now all the time there and I am just noticing for the first time? Or is it an entirely new phenomenon / quality / perspective / experience?", yes, that is always one of the big questions --- and points of contention among practitioners. I am suspecting that it is not much more than semantics, though, and both things are true / false depending on what we are talking about exactly:
- If it wasn't noticed before, then for all practical purposes it didn't
exist before phenomenologically (so it must be new).
- Yet "reality" does not appear to be dramatically altered (or altered at all), it is just a shift in perspective, and it feels natural and spontaneous now (so it must always have been there).
The character is of noticing (duh) suddenly that some aspect that I understood to be (there/true/occuring) is suddenly noticed to be missing, but the content of the direct experience is coherent, without a gap, it's the understanding (maybe "standing under" is better, signifing the visceral aspect of the experience) suddenly "starts" at the noticing. It's the understanding that is blipping. I tried to describe this in that "Decisive Experience of Now" piece, this way:
Suddenly, I realized where I was. It arrived like a flash of intuition, only not as a thought, for this was different. It was not so much something added, as something suddenly no longer there. It was that bare perspective that normally abided, a characterless perspective which didn’t so much disappear, as clarified, no longer lost immanently within the sounds and light, but present clearly, and that clearing was remarkably familiar.
The Theravadin model supposes that just before the "flash of intuition" you are talking about there should be a drastic discontinuity in the perceptual / cognitive continuum which, with enough clarity, should be seen at the very least as a "missing frame". In most (if not all, potential point of contention) cases, the missing frame cannot be experienced directly, but only after the fact. Depending on one's disposition, curiosity and background, the attention can either go
1) to the flash of intuition in itself,
2) to how the flash of intuition compares to what was before it, and how it came about. The two mismatching pieces of the puzzle I was talking about before.
In the second case, the "blip" is realised, in the first case, it could be easily missed. Of course not knowing about this model is another reason one might just not notice the "missing frame" phenomenon. Either way, according to the Theravadins, the "blip" should be a repeatable experience, even after 4th path, as not all blips are created equal. The "big ones" are associated with Path moments:
regular dude -> big blip -> sotapanna -> big blip -> sakadagami -> big blip -> anagami -> big blip -> arahant
but in most cases from sotapanna on, and in all cases from sakadagami on, there will be repeatable "small blips" on or even off the cushion, at predictable places in the cycles of insight. So in theory you could look for yourself whether you do or can get those "small blips" while practicing.
More explicitly, on this map:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5037f52d84ae1e87f694cfda/t/506fcc5c84aefb9a79a610b3/1349504092518/Pathways.jpg
See the junction points that ask "Review?" and "Insight Mature?" A big blip passes through numbers 12 (conformity), 13 (change of lineage) and 14 (path). A small blip skips those stages and takes you directly to 15 (Fruition) through direct realisation of one or two of the Three Doors (no-self, impermanence, dukkha).
This is the theoretical model, and as such it is an abstraction, and not everyone will recognise every little bit of it in their practice.
Helpful? Any of this makes sense?
n