Leading in to Week Two

The opening statement in the first full paragraph on TSK 166 says the self is “the embodiment of a lapse of understanding. Let’s not worry at the moment about what is not understood (I am reminded of Arthur’s “I am an unconscious being.”) The point is to open more to space and time.

Perhaps this is a good point to say that often in TSK we do not try to grasp or even question time and space directly; as the books often note, space in particular is not a ‘something’ to be grasped, and the same holds for time.

The reading tells “a simple story” about time and space. In this story, subject and object are “on stage.” My suggestion is to take this image very seriously, and use it as a variation of exercise 9A. Not only am I ‘given’ along with experience, but I am given as an actor on stage. The object is also an actor (you might think of a stage prop: something that plays the role of being more than it is; for instance, a rubber knife.)

When the self “declares” that it is on its own (p. 167) does this mean that the play is now underway? The idea that Time plays the role of the self depends on certain parts of the TSK vision that we will not be exploring, but there is a common sense way of thinking about this: my experience unfolds across time (thoughts, sensations, etc.) and I give this series of events in time a fixed identity: the self or subject.

The “local limitation” discussed on p. 167 does seem to have to do with a subject ‘here’ and objects ‘there’. Again, this vocabulary may add more dimensions to the practice of Ex. 9. The practice is what concerns us most.

The same holds with the concept of ‘bewilderment’ introduced on p. 169. Is it possible to sense some background sense of “being bewildered” operating in all our perceptions and engagments? Note that the word “bewilderment” is closely related in meaning to the word “labyrinth,” which is where we find ourselves in this course.

 Jack

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