I’m very glad that Ron Purser invited me to join this course, but I also regret that I’ve been so busy these days with travel and time-consuming jobs. So a few days ago I found myself rushing through the reading material for Unit 6, with the idea of revisiting it at leisure later on. As I skimmed the pages, hastily underlining here and there, it struck me forcefully and comically that I was relating to Time in a rather stressful way. Then, near the end of the SDTS material, something happened that opened up the nature of this teaching in a way that had not happened before. I think it began with the following sentence:
“TSK invites us to see ourselves as an expression of time, space, and knowledge.” (SDTS xxi)
Until then, those three concepts had felt a little abstract to me; I had been looking for a more intimate way of understanding and feeling them. This sentence produced a noticeable shift. On the next page came another beautiful formulation, which I underlined, adding an exclamation mark in the margin:
“Good questions are an invitation to knowledge to sit at our table as an honored guest. Having accepted our invitation, knowledge brings with it time and space. If we treat all three with appreciation and respect, they soon begin to speak among themselves, giving us the rare privilege of listening in.”
The big “Aha!” occurred on p. xxix. Rinpoche gives several examples of the kinds of questions one might ask about time and how it operates:
“For instance, does time have a first moment? Either answer, yes or no, leads us into difficulty . . .”
At this point, the question arose: “Are there moments?” I don’t think I can describe what happened then better than by saying that time became still and space became wide, without any division into segments of time or units of space. I don’t mean that anything mystical occurred — I was just sitting in a room considering that question. But everything I had read in haste earlier as information to be examined later — that what we are is an expression of Time, Space and Knowledge; that inquiry is itself knowledge; that knowledge, respectfully invited, will bring with it space and time; and that if we give all three appreciation and respect, we will have the privilege of listening in on their conversation – was now self-evident.
Then, further down the page, I read:
“When knowledge asks new questions, space itself expands. In this more spacious realm, time slows down. In this new time frame, mind can operate diferently. The logos itself comes more fully into view. Certain kinds of mysteries may dissolve.”
Which is precisely what had happened (or begun to happen).
Joel
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A question to Jack: I wanted to mark the citations in boldface, but didn’t know how. Is there a way?