I will always be grateful to Shinzen Young for pointing out the various different types of sensory experience.
Why is it important to do this? Well, we need to find out just what the heck is going on in our minds and bodies. We aren't always aware. It's all right knowing in a vague way that we are full of chaos. But to get somewhere, we really need to start unravelling and examining that chaos.
Shinzen divides sensory experience into 6 strands. Three are external; Touch, Sight, Sound. These are pretty self explanatory. We've all heard a sound, viewed an object, felt something physical touching us. The other three are internal counterparts; Feel (Emotional feelings in the body that arise from mental phenomena), Image (Visual images that arise in your mind), and Talk (Speech or sound that arises in the mind).
When there is nothing occurring in any of those fields - Touch Sight, Sound, Feel, Image, Talk - then we can say that they are 'at rest', or empty. They have a kind of binary operation; there is either information at the sense point, or not. Zero, or One. Learning to notice when each, any and/or all of these individual points are engaged or not is a good starting point for Vipassana practice. That might sound trivial, but I can find it quite difficult even after several weeks of practice!
In Shinzen's system, those restful states are used as meditation objects in concentration meditation.
If none of that makes a lick of sense, go see Shinzen explain it (you tube).
Shinzen classifies smell and taste as specialised versions of Touch. I don't know how he classifies internal smell and taste, or how I would. I've never experienced either, but maybe it is possible?
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