The Dharma is a gateway onto the universe of nirvana, which leaves the experiencer with the impression that life might be meaningful.

Why does the sensation of existing outside time lead one to believe life might be meaningful? Does one gain perspective by stepping outside the norm? Would this sense of meaningfulness then be merely aesthetic? Putting aside questions of value for now, what is the price the meditation practitioner pays for his glimpse of nirvana? Does it come easily or with difficulty? Well, both actually, but most importantly, it comes with grace. It’s always worth the effort and has to be because it’s the only thing we’ve got for getting on.

So there’s this sense of it having arrived easily, or lightly. But we know that without the effort of sitting and taking time, without the discipline, we would have remained submerged in quotidian randomness.

It feels as if this nothingness must be lived through in order that this clarity, this brightness, be made perceptible. All the unconsciousness, or as Daniel Kahneman characterizes it in Thinking, Fast and Slow, all the data of System 1 must be gotten through so that a burst of System 2’s clarity might brighten the horizon.

Which brings me to the issue of frequency.

Arriving at that point of nirvana has the quality of having tuned in. As if there’s some wavelength the mind seeks, some global positioning the human animal finds most deeply resonant—and once you’ve got it, it can only be had briefly, as if it won’t let itself be caught for too long because then the human animal would come to devalue it.