I’ve started getting up at 5 a.m. That’s a huge leap for me. I’ve always felt sorry for insomniacs. Curl me up on a cosy chair or sofa any time of the day and I’ll be asleep within ten minutes: staying awake has always been my problem. When the Masters write that one should contemplate such and such ‘day and night’ this has always felt to be impossible for me. Perhaps something is changing…
I’m finding the quality of space and time at 5 a.m. conducive to new knowledge. The first person I communicate with is Longchenpa. The fact that he died in 1364 makes absolutely no difference; in fact, in some mysterious way, it seems to make him more available.
I’m reading the first volume of his amazing trilogy, ‘Kindly Bent to Ease Us’. It concerns Mind and there is much of relevance in it to our TSK studies.
In his introduction to Chapter Three, which is on Frustration and Suffering, Herbert Guenther, in talking about how body, speech and mind are at one and the same time both boundaries and also not binding, writes: “…we have to start with the initial, immediately apprehended fact of an all-embracing field, which, more exactly, is a ‘presence’, an ‘appearance’, not of something but as something and which is termed ‘object-appearance’ (yul-snang).â€
Prof. Guenther emphasises that these must be understood as “dynamic processes of ‘appearing’ and ‘presentation’ and ‘disclosure’. The field character of the initial situation implies that the perception of the ‘object-appearance’ is not something going on outside the field but is a part, and a distinct phase, of the initial situation.†This seems to me to be profoundly relevant to our current studies of time, though I’m not philosophically qualified enough to explain why.
Is Longchenpa referring here to what is known in TSK as ‘the field communiqué’?
Incidentally, it’s interesting that I’m writing this today, as 1 March 1308 was Longchenpa’s birthday. And, on a more personal note, I’ve just discovered that, not only was Herbert Guenther’s birthday the day after my own, but he was born and died in March!
Caroline
I loved reading “Kindly Bent to Ease Us” when I read the first volume 20 years ago. Now I only remember that the poetry was beautiful and conjured up a deep appreciation for whatever Longchenpa was presenting, as if the language and the understanding were woven from the same cloth. I also remember the description of the conditions that make it possible for us to receive teachings: elements such as that they must exist and that we must have been born with the capacity to understand. I feel that way about TSK, and I appreciate you pointing out how similar a sense there is in both that we are immersed in an environment which is kindly bending toward us. Lao Tzu wrote, “Bend and you needn’t break”. Now we are discovering that we don’t even have to bend too much because time, space and knowledge are already bending in our direction.–Michael
Space allows
And Time appears
And Time appears in all appearance
All appearance, appear, appearing
And all appearing, expressing Space and Time
Intrinsic Presence