The Motivation for Knowing – TSK weeks 5-7

Posted on Dec 3rd, 2009 by

The Knowing Moment

These many weeks we've been focused on a continued investigation of the self in our experience, by looking for the 'I' in operation. We were given a couple more practices to experiment with as we go about our lives:

1. Do you find ways to know what you are experiencing without relying so strongly on the structure of perceiver and perceived?
2. What happens if you let sense experience unfold, but deliberately try to dissociate from the sense that you are the one having the experience?
3. When polar knowledge arises, try to cut it off before it leads to identification (descriptive knowledge) For instance, a stuffy nose and congestion in the chest may confirm that you now have a cold. But they may also just be the experience of a stuffy nose and congestion in the chest.

My Practice Notes on exercise 2 above:
I love a dramatic sky -- undulating, dark-metal clouds that seem supported by white billows, like white smoke hugging the horizon; rain hissing, leafless branches scratching and scraping, pines a waving -- warm and cozy observer, observing a gray day world.

I ask, "Where's the self?" Suddenly, I'm self-conscious, aware of a cozy, warm feeling at odds with what's out there. I'm aware of a flurry of action from nowhere, separate from what's felt here and seen their, as I catch myself narrating what's being observed as moments pass. I'm naming and ordering the words, evaluating their order and position, testing what is felt, determining if the feeling experienced is good and comforting, if it engenders the desire to prolong and continue, and so I'm writing it in my head, to attempt to capture.

So the answer to my question seems to be, "I don't know where the self is, but I am sensing things." I recognized a process going on, but see no one orchestrating this unfolding, yet I feel sensory input. I notice that input, (sound, visual, tactile, etc.) is not fixed, it can't be held. It's there for a fraction of an instant and wiped or replaced with different input, different emphasis, that seems, at first not connected, then connected along a line, like the sound of a broken record, there's a gap or discontinuity between the next continuous parts, as I recall what I can of the previous instant. I know the readings say the memory provides the continuity for our conventional understanding, but watching closely like this, I also see gaps, the self activity and moments fade in and out, incomplete in there formations, there are shadows in my depth, even in the midst of this beautiful scene -- everything is shifting.

But then the self-process asserts and I remember some of the impressions from the prior moment, and I point to that concept as me, "There I am." But wait, that's an image of what I was, not what is now. I keep trying to catch myself this way, like a dog chasing his tail, round and round...

And I realized, that moment at the beginning, of just 'loving the dramatic sky,' there was no narrator, or concept of an objective self, I hadn't recognized myself as perceiver yet, until I divided into a warm and cozy bystander. The 'self-process' of narrating, interpreting, and looking back on a conceptual self hadn't yet started to follow the initial perception. That instant of love and connection with what was suddenly seen was almost infinitesimal and intimate. Then, I isolated myself, while looking to bridge the gap of my isolation - attempting to complete the circle of conventional connect.

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For a deeper understanding, we are instructed in the book, Love of Knowledge:

"The world we know is made up of objects appearing in space and events occurring in time. To understand the structure of conventional knowledge, space and time themselves will make a good starting point, for the structures that space allows and the patterns that time presents appear to be decisive for all knowing.
Physical objects appear in space, and it seems that without space they could neither appear nor exist. As the absence of what 'exists', space might be considered 'non-existent', and yet if space did not exist in some sense, objects could not exist either. This paradox, however, is not an issue for conventional understanding, for from the ordinary perspective space is simply irrelevant, and so 'disappears' from view.
Just as space is the empty container for what is real, so time is the domain within which events occur. 'Time' 'measures out' or 'distributes', separating one event from another and making it possible to establish order.
For human being, which establishes itself as real through occupying space and taking up time, knowledge is based on the senses. It arises as the sensory faculties make contact with the things that appear in space and the events that occur in time. The resulting sensory data provide the basis upon which interpretation and other forms of knowing can then be constructed." pp.99-100
"In the act of observing on which temporally situated knowledge depends, the possible modes of being appear to be divided into two aspects or poles. At one pole is the 'perceiver', who has the capacity for knowing and experiencing. At the other pole is 'objective reality', which has the capacity for being known 'as an object'.
The structure of division and polarity that operates in polar knowledge means that for the perceiver, 'isolation' and 'no-knowledge' take priority over knowing. At the outset, nothing is known. A 'knowledge gap' separates 'subject' and 'object', 'perceiver' and 'perceived'. Knowing arises when knowledge is somehow transported across this 'gap', ending the original isolation of the two poles.

The dualistic structure of observation inherent in 'subject' and 'object' finds further expression in the distinction between 'here' and 'there'. The knowing capacity resides 'here'; the known content resides 'there'."

The readings go on to say that in our conventional way of dualistic knowing the 'perceiver' occupies the present while the content of perception is conceptual, and thus occupies or appears in memory or the past. And so what is perceived is the object as it appeared in the previous moment.

"The polarities 'here/there' and 'now/then' are basic to standard observation. The separation between here and there - the expression of the 'knowledge gap' in conventional, extended space - exhibits itself as distance. The separation between 'now' and 'then' - the expression in conventional, linear time of the primacy of 'no-knowledge' - presents itself as the distinction separating 'perceived' past from 'experienced' present..." p.101-102
What motivates the act of knowing - the drive to bridge the 'knowledge gap'?
The source of this movement lies in another fundamental polarity: that between 'self' and 'world'. The self 'knows' a world that takes shape around the self in the act of being known. Only by moving out from the central 'here/now' to incorporate as known the content of 'there/then' can the self determine the identities and assign the meanings that together make up this 'known world'. Knowledge in this sense is the outcome of the self's response to its original isolation.

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PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall Session - "Self in Question"
September 27th - December 13, 2009

Davidu

1. The Self In Question - TSK Week 1
2. The Self In Question - TSK weeks 2-3
3. The Motivation for Knowing - TSK weeks 5-7

starlight

1. The Queen and 'I' - TSK 1
2. Tyranny of I's...TSK wk 3
3. Binding Through Identity...TSK wk 4...
4. A World Given...tsk wk 5...
5. Forgetting to Remember...TSK wk 6 & 7...

Balder

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The Self In Question – TSK weeks 2-3

Posted on Oct 14th, 2009 by

Davidu

The Consolidating Self

For the last few weeks we've continued to investigate the self in our experience by looking for the 'I' in operation, and challenging the 'I' by saying 'no' to what it wants. Our teacher, Jack Petranker, says, we do this because once we see how the 'I' operates, we get some sense of detachment, better able to see with a more open and spacious perspective. Consequently, there's more room to experience more fully, there are more options available, more possibilities present themselves.

In our weekly conference call we discussed how every experience has a surface – the stories of the 'I' – but this is a layer of illusions. Under this layer is more, for instance, in the morning we often experience a kind of waking up into the 'I'. If you go deep enough you don't know who you are. Who tells the story? No one, there's just stories. The 'I' is like a dictionary of itself, a self-referencing circularity. When we let go of 'I' we gain a creative unfolding of experience.

A question was posed, "What purpose does the 'I' serve? If the 'I' or 'self' is a construction, why is it constructed? Why do we operate from this sense of 'I'?"

At first I thought the self is a learned behavior that surfaces when as infants we begin to get a sense that we are physically different from our mothers. It's a process or skill we gradually become used to and more proficient as we develop over time and remember past experience. If we didn't learn to differentiate ourselves from others and things, we would have tremendous difficulty adjusting to life, unable to distinguish what was safe or dangerous, unable to discriminate between alternatives or opposites. We would be continuously confused.

But while this may have some merit, a TSK perspective looks a little differently at the functions or activities of 'I'. As I practice watching for the 'I' in my experience, I see it showing up in language. It's an anchor word, used to label and pin me to a time, place, or identity, to 'fix' it in place or freeze it, so that I can attach other times, places and identities in relation to 'I', like a gathering of self-referencing ideas, or 'things'. The 'I' seems to gather from there, accumulating in memory, available for reference in each new experience.

The way I think, the stories I tell about myself -- who I am, where I came from, how the world is -- are all told from the perspective of this 'I' that organizes and gathers its experience around itself in time. As Rinpoché says, the self is a 'consolidating tendency', a 'gathering tendancy'. As such, it tends to reveal itself in these activities: objective self, perceiver, interpreter, narrator, and witness or owner.

• First is the 'objective self', subject to history and conditioning, to birth, life, and death. This is the aspect of self that gives self-identity its content: a personal history and a personality, a set of goals and purposes, a physical locatedness and an embodied nature. But this self—the self as object, with an identity and characteristics knowable by others—is part of the world 'out there'. It lacks the unique capacity of the self to occupy the 'here', which sets it apart from the rest of existence.

• Second is the self as 'perceiver', active 'here and now' in the present. Confined to the moment, this self lacks the power to shape, define, and organize experience.

• Third is the self as 'interpreter'. This is the self as subject in a world of objects, defining, naming, and labeling: the self of descriptive knowledge, knowing on the basis of the past. But... interpretations lack the power to found themselves. A self reliant on them is in the end only another interpretation.

• Fourth is the self as 'narrator', the self of intentional knowledge… The narrator gives meaning to events by directing them toward the future...

• Fifth is the self as 'owner' and 'witness', validating experience and reality in validating its own identity: the self that underlies and guarantees the perceiver, interpreter, and narrator. This is the 'core self' whose existence is the key to all temporal knowing. LOK p.170-1

I have been focusing my practice on watching for these activities, and found this way of looking at experience helpful. As Rinpoché says:

"A single story may be fully formed, subtle, and intricate, or fragmentary and suggestive. In either case, it allows for the possibility of subsidiary stories, bars the telling of conflicting stories, and establishes a framework for later experience, defining the understanding within which descriptive and intentional knowledge operate. As stories interweave and grow more elaborate, parts slip out of view, too complex in form and content to be grasped as a whole.

The growing complication (and internal conflicts) of the web of stories can lead to a fascinated self-absorption. The self learns to turn to its own stories for gratification and to make sense of events. Tracing out the patterns of interlocking stories permits the creation of new, more comprehensive, or more satisfying stories, including stories about stories, or even stories (such as this one) about how the story-telling mechanism operates.

Common to all these stories is the narrator itself. Who is this narrator that tells the tales that shape existence? A clear answer is given: It is none other than the actor at the center of every story — the owner of each experience. But the narrator is also none other than the audience that reacts to each story with emotions, explanations, justifications, and more stories.

…the narrator is none other than the objective self whose identity and attributes the intersecting narratives establish. The narrator’s stories unite owner, actor, and objective self, bearing witness to their existence and persistence 'over' time. The central narrative structures — "I am; I feel; I experience; I want; I act" — are the self-authenticating truth of every story.

The narrator thus asserts the self by telling another story — a founding story that makes possible all other stories. For without an actor at its center, an audience in attendance, and a teller of the tale, no story could unfold and meaning could not emerge. But this founding story is intended as its own witness: presented as the basis for self and world alike. LOK p.172

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PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall Session - "Self in Question"
September 27th - December 13, 2009

Davidu

1. The Self In Question – TSK Week 1
2. The Self In Question – TSK weeks 2-3

starlight

1. The Queen and 'I' – TSK 1

2. Tyranny of I's...TSK wk 3

3. Binding Through Identity...TSK wk 4...

4. A World Given...tsk wk 5...

Balder

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The Self in Question - TSK week 1

Posted on Oct 3rd, 2009 by

Davidu

To start the TSK on-line 2009 – 2010 class, our teacher, Jack Petranker, had us "loosen up our inquiry muscles" so to speak. We were asked to consider knowledge as not something we own. In Love Of Knowledge, Rinpoché says: “Knowledge is not what the knower knows.” The problem is we are used to assuming, "knowledge is what the knower knows, that no one else can do the knowing."

The example of 'typing' was used to point to how often 'typing seems to happen automatically'. Our teacher said, the body seems to know what to do, and the mind makes thoughts and words available. The idea is to look at the assumptions operating here of my thoughts, my skills, my body and my mind. What does this mean, and what is the basis for the claim of 'my'?

For practice we were asked to try the following: When the ‘I’ wants something (a snack, a break from work, words of praise, etc.) try saying no. Don’t go along with what the 'I' wants. What happens?

Inquiring Inward

My practice notes:

I've been challenging myself, that is, saying 'no' to different things I want -- to see how that feels. The obvious thing I noticed was that giving in to the desire, or saying 'yes' (actually getting what I desired at the moment) happened only once, but when I had to say 'no' I did so repeatedly -- the desire kept returning. Watching that insistence was interesting, it was like an urge nudging me. It often arose in the form of an imagined feeling and image; how I would feel and even look enjoying what I wanted. This was a definite pulling apart from where I was just prior to the arising of this imagined pleasure. Because just prior to the desire I remember just moving with whatever presented itself; sometimes I was watching TV, another time I was reading. Both times I was engaged with that activity without much distraction.

Saying 'no' to the desire as it arose in my imagination actually produced a tinge of anxiety, because I realized I would remain separate from what I imagined, there would be no satisfaction, but on the other hand, this inquiry was also interesting, and I wanted to see where it led. So it would seem another desire took the place of the original one. I thought this was curious too; observing how I was being led from one subtle desire to another.

Someone in class pointed to Kafka's idea of the 'self as Evil One', something like, "When the Evil One takes us over, our explanations are no longer ours but those of the Evil One." I don't feel the self is evil, but I do feel the urge or tendency to 'take me over' by separating, and consolidating. I suspect in the coming weeks we will inquire deeper into self-activities; how they happen, and how it feels.

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall Session - "Self in Question"
September 27th - December 13, 2009

Davidu

1. The Self In Question - TSK Week 1
2. The Self In Question - TSK weeks 2-3

starlight

1. The Queen and 'I' - TSK 1
2. Tyranny of I's...TSK wk 3

Balder

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TSK Fall '09 Session - "Self in Question"

Posted on Sep 13th, 2009 by

Davidu

Dale Chihuly
(click on the name)

The new on-line, TSK Class (Time, Space, Knowledge) is about to begin. The following is quoted from the CCI website.

Time, Space, & Knowledge - Online Course
Fall Session - "Self in Question":
September 27th - December 13, 2009
led by Jack Petranker

It's time for the new online TSK program for this year. We have a theme, some new technological developments, and a few calendar changes that will affect the start of the program. The program is open to everyone, whether you have previous experience with the TSK vision or not.

Theme: The Self in Question

One of the key insights of the TSK vision is that there are ways of knowing that are not the property of the self. As that insight awakens within us, we come to learn that there are ways of being that also do not center on the self. Then the way opens for the new vision of reality -- and our role within it -- that stands at the heart of TSK.

Jack will be traveling in Europe in late October, and will be offering TSK-related programs in both Holland and Germany. With that in mind the fall session will be structured differently. We will start with a three-week introduction, running from September 27 - October 11, in which the readings will be from Knowledge of Freedom, also by Tarthang Tulku (see online readings page.) Then we will take a three-week break (during which online discussions will continue). On November 8 we will start up again and run for six weeks, through December 13. This will give people who take part in the programs in Europe the chance to join the first session in a way that will work for them.

Cost: $90 - for the Fall 2009 session
register for program

For more information,
please contact mailto:Nyingma-mcle@creativeinquiry.org%20

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I don't know about you, but I have always needed help with inquiry. At first I didn't quite know how to fruitfully question, but thanks to some practice and TSK I've found an effective way. The following is taken from the CCI website:

"Our society is bursting with ideas, opinions, solutions, and plans, with analysis, debate, and carefully reasoned positions. And yet we suffer -- both individually and collectively -- from a pervasive sense of being lost, confused, and unsure of our direction.

Clearly something is missing. If we want to break out of these patterns, we need to stop telling ourselves worn-out stories that leave us feeling stuck and hopeless. We need new ways to ask questions and also new questions to ask. Creative inquiry is about waking up to these kinds of new possibilities -- across disciplines and in every field of human concern.

Creative inquiry offers a different approach to knowledge. It asks us to break through old ways of thinking and to craft new methods and approaches to knowing. Without abandoning concepts and analysis, it starts from our immediate experience, our deepest convictions, and the concerns we care about most, and it asks: "Could I be doing all of this differently?"

Let's take a specific example of the kind of question creative inquiry invites. In the years you've been on this earth, you've built up a lot of patterns and done lots of things, some of which you are proud of and some of which you regret. What is your relationship to this accumulated past? Is it who you are? Does it condition you? Determine your future? Could you walk away from it? Relate to it differently? Change it? What is the structure of time, anyway? How do past and present and future interconnect?

In asking these questions, the point is not to come up with an explanation or a theory. If you want to understand the way the past operates in your life, look for yourself, in this very moment. Be ready to question your commitment to a particular way of understanding the weightiness or gravity of the past."

Are there ways to do this? Plenty! It's not a question of learning specific techniques, but of getting really specific about your own experience and your own assumptions. The point is to be both precise and audacious at the same time. The more you can do that, the more the gravity of the presupposed loses its hold."

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My Summary of the TSK Class

Posted on Jun 1st, 2009 by

Davidu

A Glowing Trail

I've been thinking about how to briefly summarize my experience of the last series of TSK (Time, Space, and Knowledge) courses. But first, I wanted to honor all those who have participated by posting their own practice notes here including, debyemm, starlight, and Balder. Also, to give special thanks to Erin (CrouchingTiger), who contributed, but had to move on. Her insight is particularly missed. I appreciate everyone's comments and encouragement, and their practice notes, for their telling allowed me to see with their eyes, and to expand experience beyond my own myopic focus. I am also grateful for those at Gaia who took the time to read our posts, for the most important purpose of posting here, at least for me, was to allow more people to see how accessible TSK really is, and how beautiful and elegant a vision it is for inquiry, and for the possibility of transforming, without requiring a system of beliefs.

In summary then, we spent the first nine weeks inquiring into Space, attempting to see beyond content, to see into the layers of our own mental activity. I observed how I put together the content of my own experience, looking deeper beyond surfaces of 'things' where a process of layering is going on -- sensual input, and patterning of that information seemed to flow in space. I saw directly how I created 'sub-spaces' to remember and process 'things'. Then, Space revealed more; not just distance between things, and around ideas and images, but space as an allowing medium, an aware field. And then even 'things' imagined or remembered seemed to become transparent, flimsy, not so set or fixed, in fact, they began to be seen as space too, as space itself became aware or knowing.

We explored aware space as a 'field', within which, as perception happens, and there is an unfolding from a point along a linear path, there's what we might call the 'field communiqué' transmitting forward to its parts, like the way rules to a game include certain kinds of activity while excluding others. In this way 'field communiqué' ripples out from a center, and seeks, through referral, to control or conduct what is focused upon. I observed an often vague sense of where I wanted to arrive, through my intent, as I embarked on various expanding scenarios. I gradually realized that the constant circular referring to 'things' gave me a sense of solidity, so that it became easy to get carried away from space awareness toward fixed content. I learned there are simple exercises that can generate space, which can refocus awareness back to an allowing and more encompassing perspective.

As our teacher, Jack Petranker, said, "If you learn to look at space in this 'more fundamental' way, you immediately undermine substance. Nothing has substance, because whatever appears is just given by space. The result is that you are no longer the victim of an 'unknown interior' to what appears. There is only appearance. Things 'appear' in space: that is all."

Over the second nine weeks of the course we explored 'thoughts, stories and the self'. Observing the stream of mental events, I saw that I am almost always thinking. I realized I could focus on the stream; just observing that I was thinking without getting caught up in the content of thoughts. As our teacher said, "...there is a level of thought, or a kind of thought, that really frames our whole world. In this sense, we live inside our thoughts. And that thought-world is a world without space, a world that is filled up completely with content." By simply observing this we create more allowing space, which may eventually open to the founding thought - a founding story.

As our teacher said: "'Things' are by definition pretty uninteresting, except in special cases: a thing is something we have labeled and thus can safely ignore. But our own ways of being, our own mental states, are always more than the label. For instance, if I'm feeing anxious, the anxiety escapes its label: it has a dynamic built in that is easy to notice and to explore. Now we have entered the realm of stories, because there is usually a story that goes with the anxiety: not necessarily the story we may tell, but a story about who we are and what situation we find ourselves that manifests in the anxious feeling."

I wrote in my practice notes: "Every morning, it seems, I'm aware of constructing my world as I wake up, orienting myself in place and time, so I can project myself in imaginative space to where I will be -- appointments, upcoming events. I pick up stories as If putting on clothes. I remember them from yesterday and recycle them and reorder them, reinforcing my place here. Underneath every story retold is a substantiation of the essential story of 'I am', and that backs up my location as a sensory body 'here'. Grounded in my senses, wrapped and bundled in my stories, I feel real and tangible in time and space." But I also discovered that opening space by inquiring deeper into my thinking, my internal dialogue seems to shift perspective to a different and more spacious level, where other possibilities can be narrated.

I saw that I 'inhabit' stories, they were what I normally identified with, they gave me a sense of place, they were a kind of vehicle that carried me through time, while models were a little different. Models were an abstraction that explained things, but I could not inhabit them. A model was a short-hand summary for a story previously understood for the way things are. Linking models to stories increased the bandwidth, so to speak, of the stream of thoughts. But as our teacher said: "Stories are just stories. No story can be the last word, the final truth. Yet that is exactly what stories claim. The magic of our being is that we are never bound by the story."

For the final nine weeks the class focused on 'conducting time and knowledge'. I saw that inhabiting my stories and the self-structures I impose permit only certain kinds of 'things' and events while excluding others, like the rules of the 'field communiqué' discussed earlier. We read about, and investigated how, 'descriptive knowledge' which is based on the past, describes the world and provides a web in which the self arises, and gives birth to linear time as 'intentional knowledge', that projects the self into a future. We're advised the point of TSK is to inquire into the reality we live, "to see how time, space, and knowledge might be different from what we usually imagine", because our normal approach is inherently partial, restricted, and frustrating.

We were introduced to the idea of the 'happeneded', the notion of when thought is cast in iron, named, and becomes solid like concrete, coined, or 'habitualized', the way we think of ourselves and the world, so that in a sense it preordains and shapes the grooves of how and what can or will happen, in accordance with what has already happened to us and others. Our teacher said: "We all operate all the time with a 'conceptual' understanding of our own experience that limits what this experience can be, and those limits must first be expanded or set aside."

We discovered that we could reorient our conventional perspective of the self by going "directly to the point of arising itself: the point in each experience where the future could be said to come into being. Just there we touch an aliveness that can expand within our consciousness. The possibility emerges for a dynamic knowing, attuned to every presentation but limited by none of them." Reorienting toward the edge seems to be free of inhibiting attitudes and concerns for safety, it's a feeling of open expectancy, pleasant anticipation without an object, an acceptance and trust in whatever emerges with an almost playful curiosity. It feels fresh, free, and new - a pristine moment, a blooming seed of time.

By taking a perspective at the open edge of the future - the 'future infinitive' -- self-projecting concerns into the future were halted. The present, thus, proceeded openly, without the ownership and location that normally comes from triangulating between me, the past, and an imagined future. Here was a modulation of focus, present to both the self's 'coming-out' tendency as well as the melting of its frozen positions. In a sense the now contained the past and the present, and the future-infinitive provided the open, potential of the not-known. And it was from this open attitude toward the future that the sense of aliveness came, filling the present to the brim.

"Instead of somehow passing on substance to the present, the future sustains the present through its coming. Though this ‘coming' never arrives, its dynamic contributes the charged ‘field' within which the aliveness of present experience can unfold. " DTS p.95-96

A question arose for me when I was doing an exercise of 'observing moments begin and end', while looking out over the rolling contours of the field behind my house, and I saw how I 'came-out' of simply being present to the experience, and I reflected on it, which ended a moment and began the next. I then released the frozen perspective and resumed observing in open presence. The kind of knowing that's going on when the self is NOT 'coming-out' and 'freezing' time -- what is that? Is it a knowing that is not owned by the one who knows? I think so. I realized that knowing was available because of the open future, because the future was open and unknown. Later, I came across this quote:

"If you go closely into full awareness without preserving a realm of messages or concepts, you can conduct openness. In openness, the root of not-knowing as a limit on knowledge proves hollow. Openness itself becomes the source of knowledge, and knowledge connects with a pure, awakened awareness that does not belong to the subjective realm." DTS p.249
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You can follow along with us, as we engaged the exercises and the reading, by simply clicking on the links below. Each link is a window opening upon a space, which contains a particular story that not only leads to this summary in a linear progression, but also to a rich depth of discovery in that realm, for each participant. Every photo suggests an opening, every story reveals a depth or knowing within which that story was constructed. And every experience implicates a knowing prior to identity or position assumed by the one who knows.

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008
Davidu
1. Layers of Mind with TSK
2. Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3. Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4. Expanding with TSK
5. Expanding - Revealing the Field
6. Condensing Experience with TSK
7. Week 7, Generating Space
8. Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2. Deepening Layers of Mind
3. Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4. Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5. Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1. TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2. Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3. I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5. Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6. The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7. Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1. TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2. Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3. Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5. Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1. Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2. Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3. once upon a time...tsk exercise
4. restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5. Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6. self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7. core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8. self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9. Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1. Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2. The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3. How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4. Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5. My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1. Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2. on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3. Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4. Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5. Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6. Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7. Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

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Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6

Posted on May 8th, 2009 by

Davidu

Conventional Linear Time

For the last few weeks we've been working with observing how our normal view of time, our habit of attention, is centered in the past, in that we carry forward what we know, and these same past-based ideas are then flung forward to formulate an imagined future through our stories and models. Living consequently becomes a linear progression due to this more limited structuring of time. Our teacher advises to just follow along and observe as the mind jumps, being aware of our butterfly mind, and staying with it. Not so much controlling a one pointed focus, but staying aware of, and being present to our own experience -- the self 'coming-out', and receding back into the flow of time. We tend to get carried away and lost in the narrow content; however, TSK is about being present to both of these modulations. Like surfing time, catching those moments when we feel truly alive, but there are also less dramatic moments to observe..."Shifting shapes of unfolding presentation."

TSK suggests we shift perspective from a past-based view; we are asked instead, to cultivate a future-based view; not the future we normally imagine in which we create a space and project our past fears or desires into it, but rather, a future that is a gateway to the dynamic of time -- where things have not yet been given form. TSK points to a different way of 'being' through this shift in perspective, a way of living that allows for a fullness of experience and the rich feeling of 'aliveness', at the edge of the open future.

In the 2^nd exercise of my last post, I observed how it appeared that moments ended and began. At the edge of the future I saw that I was setting up the bystander-self in the act of 'separating' from an object out there, in the act of "standing-by", thereby creating 'distance'. I was doing it with the 'content' of my experience, but I also was doing this with time, not only objectifying particular objects visually, but by creating objects out of moments as memories and images.

So while I was 'freezing' experience by 'coming-out' as an identity located here, I was also alternately relaxing or releasing that identity and its location, by returning to the edge of the future with an open and welcoming attitude toward the unknown. By taking a perspective at the open edge of the future, self-projecting concerns into the future were halted, and the cycle of reaching back to the past that fed into the present was stopped, at least long enough for me to see what was happening. The present, thus, proceeded openly, without the ownership and location that normally comes from triangulating between me, the past, and the imagined future.

In terms of my experience, employment of this new metaphor at 'the edge of the future', and its shift of attitude toward the future's open potential - the 'future infinitive', (and not projecting ideas into it), in a sense time was restored to time. My exercise of looking over the contours of the land became a flow that did not depend on moments. Experience was actually more fundamentally prior, and time was a dynamic continuum. The 'now' was widened or expanded between alternating incidents of 'coming-out' and 'freezing' time by means of location and distance, and then, receding into time's flow by relinquishing them. Here was a modulation of focus, present to both the self's 'coming-out' tendency as well as the melting of its frozen positions. In a sense the now contained the past and the present, and the future-infinitive provided the open, potential of the not-known. And it was from this source the sense of aliveness came from the future, filling the present to the brim.

As Tarthang Tulku says:

"Without ever taking form, the unrestricted dynamic of future time manifests in the non-arising of obstacles that might hinder the 'coming to the present' of events in time. Time presents experience in a perfect neutrality, allowing for boundless possibilities, including those that express our highest aspirations. Through the availability of the future, there is no interruption or discontinuity, no resistance to be overcome, no delay or impediment.

We have learned to consider this unfettered present arising as natural to being. Can we instead allow ourselves to feel grateful for this offering of time? If so, we may discover in this ongoing, unexamined dynamic a gateway to the future infinitive.

Instead of somehow passing on substance to the present, the future sustains the present through its coming. Though this ‘coming' never arrives, its dynamic contributes the charged ‘field' within which the aliveness of present experience can unfold. " DTS p.95-96

Edge of the Future - Gateway

----------------------------------------

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008

Davidu
1. Layers of Mind with TSK
2. Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3. Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4. Expanding with TSK
5. Expanding - Revealing the Field
6. Condensing Experience with TSK
7. Week 7, Generating Space
8. Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2. Deepening Layers of Mind
3. Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4. Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5. Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1. TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2. Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3. I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5. Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6. The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7. Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1. TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2. Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3. Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5. Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1. Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2. Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3. once upon a time...tsk exercise
4. restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5. Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6. self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7. core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8. self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9. Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1. Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2. The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3. How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4. Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5. My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1. Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2. on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3. Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4. Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5. Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6. Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7. Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

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How Time Recreates – Class 3, Week 4

Posted on Apr 23rd, 2009 by

Davidu

Edge of the Future - photo by Garry

For the last couple of weeks the class has been working with what it's like at the edge of the future. Asking: Can we see what it feels like at the open edge of infinite potential? Does that have a different feel than the way we usually think of the future, the way we usually project into a space our hopes, fears, assumptions, images, values, etc.? I sometimes have the felt-image when I look into the future in my usual way, I'm leaning into a wall of jelly; a gelatinous medium filled with interconnecting, sticky stuff. On the other hand, when I move to the edge of the future, and look with an open and welcoming attitude, there is a palpable vitality, like standing on the bow heading into unknown winds, the spray of the fresh and new hitting me full on.

Our TSK readings point to the usual way we look at the future; by gathering the past into the present moment, and then projecting the past into our ideas of a future. In the book 'Dynamics of Time and Space', it says regarding future moments, "...the part of the metaphorical timeline that comes 'after' the present -- are indistinguishable from past moments. They are the playing out of the past. We could put it this way: Although what appears now or will appear in the future has not yet happened, it has already 'happeneded'." [p.85]

The use of the term 'happeneded', suggests the notion of when thought is cast in iron, named, and becomes solid like concrete, coined, or 'habitualized', the way we think of ourselves and the world, so that in a sense it preordains and shapes the grooves of how and what can or will happen, in accordance with what has already happened to us and others. 'Happeneded' is like a stutter, we articulate by reanimating and duplicating -- stumbling in the present over past utterances. We proclaim, then live into the echo of our proclamations! Like prophets of the same, we take our stories for how it is, and how it will be is unwittingly foretold. "We are like a piece of music that has already been conducted: There is no chance to act or create anew. Time has passed us by." [p.85] As our teacher, Jack Petranker reiterates, "Nothing is allowed that has not already 'happeneded'. It is as though we are characters in a play, following a script. As this image (and those in the text) suggest, our sense that we are free is mistaken in a fundamental way."

For this week, we are advised how important it is not just to understand the reasoning behind how we use the past to structure the present and intend into the future, but to see how time creates itself from moment to moment by looking directly at the dynamic of this recreation. When we look directly at how we conduct the 'happeneded', the content is no longer engaged the same way, we suddenly shift to a different temporal mode with much greater clarity. To help us do this we've been given a couple of exercises to try.

1^st exercise - Often we use a lot of energy justifying or narrating to ourselves why we should or should not do something, why it's good or bad, worthwhile or not. Notice this tendency in operation, the narrative and stories, experiment with letting it go and just act. Also, set aside time each day to reflect back and notice times when you did this, either to justify a small action to yourself or in interactions with others

2^nd exercise - Take about 30 silent seconds or so and see if you can notice how one moment ends and another begins. Then, comment on what you noticed.

'Time Blossoms' Forsythia - photo by Garry

1^st exercise - notice how we narrate and justify to ourselves.

I am forever telling myself something. It's easy to notice when I must articulate to a loved one why I said or did something. Explaining myself to another is often how I objectify a feeling, so that I have an issue to deal with, rather than to just be swept along by the emotion or presumptions of the moment. I particularize what might be a wash of different, even contradictory feelings. On the other hand, noticing how I justify to myself I noticed something else. I tried to catch myself in the act, but I seemed to catch it just afterwards, or even later, but not in the act. This makes sense, in that to catch it, I objectify the doing of it, and to objectify the doing of it -- to set it apart from being lost in the flow of the narration itself -- I must stop and look back on the memory of it. And I see, "Ah, I just did it again!"

For instance, if in childhood I was often concerned for my safety because of a parent's unpredictable rage, I might tend to view the world as basically unsafe, and spend at least some of my time being wary about anticipated situations. My concerns for the future conduct the 'happeneded' by my preoccupation for safety. Or perhaps if in childhood I didn't receive the affection and attention I needed, if I was often left up to my own devices, then my 'happeneded' world building would focus on trying to fill an emptiness that feels impossible to fulfill, and so I might continually look to the future as a source of happiness, making plans for new experiences, the next new place to go, a new adrenaline rush. Always looking ahead, I miss the fullness available in the present, at the open edge of the future.

It isn't that planning into an idea of the future is wrong, it's realizing that conducting the past into the present and future without being aware of what we are doing, by relying on identity and position, allows only certain kinds of preconceived knowledge to operate.

The readings tell us: "To be and to be alive I must connect with the full dynamic of time. Coming to the future from the past, letting go of the past to open to the future: In the vital 'hereness' of the actual I implicate both past and future, which are 'here' with me." DTS p.86

'Time Blossoms' Cherry - photo by dolphin

2^nd exercise - notice how one moment ends and another begins.

Lately, I feel time hidden within the evident. The seed of spring has been emerging from the roan and russet contours of the winter soil. Each day has been like waking up to time-lapse photography; changes in the field out back have been dramatic. Cherry blossoms and lemon-yellow forsythia appear in the midst of diverse greenish shades surrounding. What's particularly interesting about this vision is that a glow seems to come not from a diffuse grey sky, but from the budding growth and tender colors of the nascent earth, as though there is a light inversion, a kind of gloaming from within. Spring is radiating out, time is unfolding, and I am none other than this.

I float along the visual plain to a specific point in the distance, I notice what I'm doing, and in that instant of reflection, the 'floating' moment became old, as a new moment emerged at this shifting. A green sloping hill slightly rolls into a field of abandoned cornstalks. Time rolls on like the undulating earth while focus, like a butterfly, is lilting and light. I notice what I just did; aware of myself and my 'doing', and the act of looking back makes a periphery for an objective past, and a hollow for the emergence of a new moment.

During this little exercise I have no thoughts of a future, no images projected ahead, but the unrestricted and unshaped openness at the future's edge is intimate. The 'between' of now, and the immediate past -- 'the transition' from one to the other is open.

This quote from Tarthang Tulku is particularly striking: "Between future unborn and past passed away, the transition does not stay... the pastness of time binds us only so long as we insist on position and territory; on a place of our own. We have staked our lives on our identity; invested all that we are. Are we willing to give up our position as witness and owner -- the one who claims and proclaims what arises?" DTS p.89

------------------------------------------

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008

Davidu
1. Layers of Mind with TSK
2. Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3. Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4. Expanding with TSK
5. Expanding - Revealing the Field
6. Condensing Experience with TSK
7. Week 7, Generating Space
8. Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2. Deepening Layers of Mind
3. Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4. Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5. Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1. TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2. Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3. I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5. Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6. The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7. Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1. TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2. Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3. Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5. Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1. Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2. Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3. once upon a time...tsk exercise
4. restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5. Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6. self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7. core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8. self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9. Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1. Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2. The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3. How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4. Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5. My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1. Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2. on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3. Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4. Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5. Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6. Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7. Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

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The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2

Posted on Apr 9th, 2009 by

Davidu

Edge of the Future - photo by algo

Proceeding from last week, by looking at our stories and desires, we've been inquiring into how descriptive knowledge is anchored in the past and intentional knowledge gives priority toward the future, and how the enacting of these two types of knowledge installs a self at the center, who then begins the 'time-structuring' of referring from past to future. This structuring of experience by the self toward the future has an effect on the 'now': it insures a kind of poverty of the present, it tends to be overlooked, skipped, foreshortened, and unsatisfactory.

We are told we don't have to accept this structure; we can 'conduct time' differently. The exercise this week was taken from 'Dynamics of Time and Space', and says:

"The future transmits time's dynamic into being, and experience in all its aspects ‘embodies' this ‘future arising' of time... Young children seem to live in time directly, and there are times when each of us feels its energy. But as our world solidifies with the passing of the years, we lose touch with time's immediate power. Temporality becomes an external force, and knowledge fades. As this new, restricted time unfolds and we conform to its structures, we even forget what we have lost.

To rediscover the immediate feel of this connection, we can go directly to the point of arising itself: the point in each experience where the future could be said to come into being. Just there we touch an aliveness that can expand within our consciousness. The possibility emerges for a dynamic knowing, attuned to every presentation but limited by none of them." p.99

Edge of the Future - photo by gonzalo ar

The Point of Arising - photo by gonzalo ar

Sometimes, most notably during meditation, but also at other times, I have sort of inched closer to the breaking edge of the now, where the unknown openness of the future touches the present moment, where the seeds of the sensual bloom in allowing space, just prior to the process of positioning myself, and before assuming identity and the process of organizing data from referrals to memories, and flung-out projections of desires wrapped in stories. It is a delicate point close to the beginning of awareness when I am not a gathering self, but a presence, where organized thought has not yet taken form, where atoms of time emerge not as objects so much as waves of nuclear events of basic sensual happenings -- a womb of space and time.

There are other times, while walking in nature, for instance, a new moment emerges untouched, where the haze of thoughts and self concerns are blown away like dark smoke, and the seed of a new moment is born, freshly germinating from an impression deeply felt. Gradually, after the experience of such openness begins to fill in with thoughts and other consolidating structures, the open potential of the original moment thins out into a string of my usual desires and perpetuating stories. But I can sometimes choose to again orient toward the edge of the future. Reorienting toward the edge of the future seems to be free of inhibiting attitudes and concerns for safety, it's a feeling of open expectancy, pleasant anticipation without an object, an acceptance and trust in whatever emerges with an almost playful curiosity. It feels fresh, free, and new -- a pristine moment, a blooming seed of time.

Atoms of Time

Once in a similar exercise, I used this graphic to represent one experience at the edge of the future. The graphic suggests unfolding 'Time Emerging as Nuclear Form' in aware space. It represents my actual experience of feeling the 'oncoming' shapes emerging from the shadow of mental space; like walking in a heavy, driven snowfall at night. Once I recognized the subtle positioning of "I am here", my position seemed to drop away, and there was no separation -- I was bursting sensual form, that really seemed to have no visual correlation. It was perhaps more of an occipital feeling of bursting energy, like blooming fireworks in mental space - the raw feel of now. I think there's no visual correlate to these forms because they are not 'things', they are very basic events in glowing awareness out of which further events connect, unfold, and gather significance - where bursts of form are born; what my friend Balder once called, "the fireworks of creation".

So, the 'edge of the future' is not so much a boundary as a welcoming attitude; and not so much a place as an arising of the present. Whether in the midst of normal activities or deep meditation, it's not altogether where I look but how. It does manifest as the new, the fresh, and the revitalizing, or so it seems to me.

Note:  For the forms in the graphic representation, I could have used dandelion seeds, (seeds of a future potential) for they do seem vaguely similar, or fireworks in the night (for they emerge in brilliance and fade), but instead, I used a zero center with 16 extensions, (which seemed to suggest both), each extension terminating at another zero-point with a potential for connecting to 16 more extensions, and so on. I used the zero-point and 16 for their symbolic significance of the joining of the 'I' and the 6 senses, and the interconnecting potential as suggested in the book, "Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space".

                                      -------------------------------------------------------------

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008

Davidu
1. Layers of Mind with TSK
2. Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3. Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4. Expanding with TSK
5. Expanding - Revealing the Field
6. Condensing Experience with TSK
7. Week 7, Generating Space
8. Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2. Deepening Layers of Mind
3. Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4. Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5. Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1. TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2. Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3. I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5. Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6. The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7. Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1. TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2. Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3. Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5. Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1. Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2. Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3. once upon a time...tsk exercise
4. restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5. Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6. self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7. core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8. self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9. Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1. Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2. The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3. How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4. Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5. My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1. Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2. on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3. Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4. Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5. Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6. Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7. Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

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Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1

Posted on Apr 1st, 2009 by

Davidu

Desire - photo by Nick Owens

Our teacher points out: "No matter what we are experiencing, even if it's something as simple as seeing the flowers on the table in front of us...we make sense of it in terms of some story... in every moment we take a position, we posit a situation, and we impose meaning."

I saw in the last unit, specifically in the Cycle of Seeing exercise, but in others too, that stories while making sense of experience, also confine it through the self-structures and models I impose. This confinement manifests in part as time-structuring leading from past to present to future. I saw that this continuous cycle of referring from the past to the future tends to flatten out experience, while the fullness that is available is consistently overlooked. We've been reading about, and investigating how, 'descriptive knowledge' which is based on the past, describes the world and provides a web in which the self arises, and gives birth to linear time as 'intentional knowledge', and projects the self into a future. We're told the point of TSK is to inquire into the reality we live, "to see how time, space, and knowledge might be different from what we usually imagine", because our normal approach is inherently partial, restricted, and frustrating.

So this week we're asked to work with a modified exercise 19, Object of Desire, from "Love of Knowledge". Our teacher, Jack Petranker, asks us to observe our objects of desire:

"Do the exercise when you find yourself desiring something in the course of your day. It may be something strongly desired, but it could also be the little flicker of desire that leads you to reach out and have a second potato chip, etc. The idea here is to get familiar with desire in all its forms. You could also do the same thing with aversion or dislike. For instance, what is the feeling that keeps you from doing some necessary chore?"

Glow - photo by alsay

I wanted to observe my internal processes during different desires, and also during incidents of avoidance. Among other things, I observed the desire for an iPod, the hunger for lunch, the avoidance of anger and not wanting to display it, and desire for employment that was really a desire for some kind of financial security or independence. I even observed the desire to move out of the present to hang out in a space of imagined possibilities, in avoidance of the present.

I noticed, during a recurring desire for a 'thing', the tendency is to imagine myself in possession of it, in certain attractive scenarios or stories. I saw myself enjoying it, and there were pleasing feeling tones around the story. The pleasing feelings seemed to feed into a space that felt sort of lacking, a hollow that is almost 'itchy' for filling in; like not wanting to be here with what is, and hankering for something new. Avoiding something is very similar, but the feeling tones were different. They seemed to come from a desire to not want to feel uncomfortable, as I was immersed in an imagined story of how 'things' might be. Hunger, on the other hand, felt very basic or direct, but then I also proceeded to projections of filling the hunger, fulfilling the expectations that sprang from it.

Both desiring and avoiding seemed to emerge from concerns centered around my self-interest; there's a story from the past about the good thing I want or the bad thing I want to avoid, and there's a projection of a story in an imagined future; a space in which these stories are accepted as a possible future. The underlying feeling of a restless dissatisfaction seemed to motivate my-self to use these images as a basis to identify with the object, and a way of proceeding to act toward achieving the imagined desired object or avoiding it. I realized I could drop the self urges and just observe this process standing partially in it, and outside it, as an observer. The latter seemed like a way to encompass both.

I also noticed at times that it sapped my energy to want something if there was a lot of 'process' involved in the wanting (same with avoiding). So that at the end of investigating aspects round the desired thing (even though that seemed somewhat interesting), I still didn't have it, the thing was still 'out there', and I felt disappointed, frustrated, that the whole process was circular and a waste of energy.

A final point, I remember achieving something I wanted after much prior effort looking into it, it was a particular car, and I did feel the presence of it, and my involvement with it when I drove it. But after awhile the restless identifying with it, and the investigating process had concluded. There was little left to the imagination. In a short time I was once again ultimately faced with 'what is', and the urge to move away from it.
------------------------------------------------

PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008

Davidu
1. Layers of Mind with TSK
2. Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3. Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4. Expanding with TSK
5. Expanding - Revealing the Field
6. Condensing Experience with TSK
7. Week 7, Generating Space
8. Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2. Deepening Layers of Mind
3. Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4. Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5. Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1. Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1. TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2. Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3. I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5. Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6. The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7. Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1. TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2. Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3. Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4. Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5. Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1. Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2. Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3. once upon a time...tsk exercise
4. restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5. Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6. self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7. core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8. self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9. Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1. Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2. The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3. How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4. Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5. My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1. Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2. on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3. Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4. Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5. Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6. Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7. Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

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Tagged with: Jack Petranker, Tarthang Tulku, Time Space and Knowledge, TSK, meditation, When It Rains Does Space Get Wet, Spirituality, Inquiry based practice, Transformation

TSK Unit Three - Conducting Time and Knowledge

Posted on Mar 19th, 2009 by

Davidu

Dale Chihuly

It's almost time for the third TSK Unit to begin. I like this painting because it evokes aspects of the upcoming subject matter of the class. While each individual panel in the painting could stand separately, like a moment in a progression of linear time, but as a whole they seem to conduct a meaning that overlaps their individuality, both in form and color.

TSK Online Program 2008-2009
Unit Three:

Theme: Conducting Time and Knowledge
March 30-May29, 2009

Cost for each unit is: $90
(70 Euros - BRL 120)
register and /or pay for unit three

For information please contact CCI at 707.935.8268

Here's an excerpt from 'Dynamics of Time and Space', in which Tarthang Tulku asks a series of questions about how to conduct knowledge differently than the way we are normally bound by:

"A thought arises and then is gone. But its passing leaves a residue like the scent left by a wild animal to mark its territory. Like ripples in oil, like smoke in air, the residue expands, but it does not dissipate.

Although the residue remains cloudlike and insubstantial, its expansion brings a shift in focal setting. The available ‘field' of awareness has been occupied, and now matters unfold differently. Strong and forceful, the cloud generates patterns of emotional reactions; thick and dark, it reduces the capacity for clear awareness. Whatever is sharp, dynamic, or precise gives way.

The next arising bears the mark of this possession. It appears like a distant sound dimly heard, or like a feeble radio signal, more static than communication. Perception is there, but it is not subject to clear interpretation

Structured as the echo of a thought, the coming appearance is the secondary translation of its own arising. Indeed, even the translation is halting. The words come too slowly for meaning to be clear, and it is hard even to pronounce them. The mind grows numb; the numbness collects and builds.

At length the next thought has arrived. Emerging from the miasma generated by earlier residues, nothing in its genesis has prepared for greater clarity or awareness. The seed of bad stock, how can it produce good fruit? The echo echoes, becoming muffled. Echo of echo, child of child: Features are duplicated and transmitted forward. The string of sameness has formed: Each bead strings itself along, preserving the whole.

If we wish to conduct differently, knowledge must inspire knowledge. We can begin with mind, body, and awareness, our constant companions, conducting knowledge toward their operation. How do body, mind, and awareness contact one another? Who is the follower and who the leader, and how are transitions possible? How are they distributed to give order, to take form, to perceive, to make decisions, to act? Are these structures the same for everyone?

It is not enough to ask clever questions or get satisfying answers. Do we understand what we are doing? Do we know what we are talking about? Do we know how to question? Can we learn by expanding questioning?

In the happening of knowledge in time, the request to know yields the insight that nothing remains exempt from knowledge--not the tracings of sameness, not the echoes of the past, not even not-knowing or non-existence. We discover this for ourselves when we engage fully the temporal transmission of not-knowingness.

Inquiry born of dedication and sharpened through discipline can go deeper than our present way of knowing. It can be intrinsically satisfying, because it leads to full comprehension. Since it reaches no end, limits do not limit. The knowledge it invites can be comprehensive--truly all-knowing.

In the intimacy of this comprehensive knowledge, substance returns to light and space. Operations of knowledge inhabit space, allowing its openness to shine through. Conducting this intimacy nature, we can open the root of awareness. As awareness goes to light, we discover the nature of the primacy of knowledge, and recognize for ourselves: Knowledge can know." pp. 258-260,

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Tagged with: Jack Petranker, Tarthang Tulku, Time Space and Knowledge, TSK, meditation, When It Rains Does Space Get Wet, Spirituality, Inquiry based practice, Transformation

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TSK Unit Three - Conducting Time and Knowledge

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