About a week ago Michael shared a flyer from Hayward’s website about an upcoming workshop he will be conducting. Those of us who read the flyer saw a quote from Hayward that seemed to crystalize some TSK points that he will be discussing. He distilled what Rinpoche said in the readings.
“Our self is a tendency in time not a thing that has already happened. The past is a corpse and cannot support the birth of our future. The future flows from upstream. We can position facing and receiving the ever arriving clarity of this stream. Reexamining the flow of time, we can enjoy the aliveness of our being.” Hayward Fox, Ph.D
I asked myself, what was it about this quote that had such power for me, why did it strike me with such force?
The first sentence seemed to open deeply, it cut through a gathering of surface assumptions about being solid and located here. Each subsequent sentence was an insight that, for me, had the kind of power that I often associate with seeing something beautiful in nature – similar to bright-yellow forsythia lit by the sun – it literally ‘dawns‘ on consciousness with touching power and presence.
The quote, in a few short sentences and a small number of words, distilled dozens of pages of TSK text, and thousands of moments of attention spent looking into personal experience — self is a tendency in time not a thing that has already happened. It DAWNS on me I am not only a gathering of memories, I am a living unfolding, a being in transition, a clarifying awareness.
From this more fundamental perspective memories can guide, but the past need not control a limited conceptual future, I am also free to receive the arriving clarity of my being.
