Ron’s questions about time are just the sort of thing this unit aims to evoke. As he writes, when we sense we are wasting time, we have a sense of time, but it is “bad time.” When we are at home in time, fully engaged, we may not identify time (no special point in doing that anyway), but we can experience something “timely” in our experience.
Peter, writing in German, notices with dismay that he is much more in the past or future than in the present, and that he is very much caught in the past-present-future structure. In a passage we will read later, Rinpoche writes the self is “distributed” along the whole length of time. If so, that makes it clear enough why we are not that often engaged in the present. (This reminds me of a “chronosynclastic infundibulum.” Extra points to anyone who can identify the novel that remarkable little phrase come from. : >)
That is what makes this series of exercises so refreshing. In Ex. 18 we see the way things are, in Ex. 19, we go more deeply into the structure of the way things are, and then in Ex. 20-21 we start to challenge that structure.
Peter wonders if he once stood more fully in the present, perhaps as a child. But there are influences that keep us from taking the risk.
At the end, Peter wonders if the joy of discovery (you should read David’s post) deceptive: just a trick by the self. It’s an important question. Here is one thought: if the self does not have a ‘place’ in time to stand, perhaps it loses its power to trick us.
Jack