Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche:Â “In suggesting a second level of time, space, and knowledge, TSK departs from standard attempts to improve our situation. Instead of asking us to change the framework or focal setting through which we currently understand our ways of being, it invites us to see the world in a new light.”
Does anyone find this passage a little confusing? For instance, how is the idea of the possibility of moving to a higher level different from standard attempts to improve our situation? How is “changing the framework or focal setting through which we currently understand our ways of being” different from “seeing the world in a new light”?
I have read and re read what Michael wrote below. He seems to have conveyed beautifully what may have been Rinposhe’s intent. I think I was unconsciously politically triggered imagining he had joined the Tea Party. However the light he invites is clear.
Thanks
Hayward
This is how I took this passage:
In changing the framework or focal setting there is definitely a subject/ object orientation (selfconsciousness) still present …
The move towards higher level,,, happens automatically with out the subject intending it (being self-consciousness) … specifically aiming at that goal
Instead of my normal subject/object oriented way with a focus and specific goal (of improving something) in mind,
Time and Space and Knowledge (knowingness) invites …. to see (with the mind’s eyes, vision) the world in a new light…knowing things and meeting situations in an intimate (no subject is strongly present anymore asserting herself in some way)… intentionality moves … with out anyone (there) asserting … just awareness moving and doing whatever needs to be done … without a ‘selfconsciousness.’
I get to this mode consistently when I garden … the day flies without me (subject) noticing it and I do not know where all the inspirations and ideas come from… it is beyond me (subject) … and I have never had any formal training in it! Things happen and get done with out selfconsciousness, subject/object frame work.
What “I got” from today’s discussion was that changing the focal setting so as to perceive a surrounding and permeating space is working “from and through” level one structures. Changing focal setting and re-framing do seem to be a level one attempt to get to level two. It sounds from Jack’s comments as though all level one structures and assumptions need to be transcended in unity to open to level two. It sounds as though “you can not get there from here”. There is nothing that can be done within level one assumptions that opens to level two.
I like Michael’s whimsical comment below, but would not like to count on it. Perhaps counting on or not counting on it remains a level one strategy
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I took “seeing in a new light” to mean that we are capable of seeing our experience in a light that has always been there but which we haven’t noticed. To see things illuminated in this new light, we don’t have to consciously/intentionally look in a different way (for instance in a way that expresses the desire to improve how we look). We just have to recognize that how we have been looking all our lives is not the only possibility. Then the light reflecting off our deceased mother’s silver teapot, brought in a steamer crate from England when she was a child, may suddenly wink a silver wink from our own table–without her son having to change anything or even launch an active desire to change. — Michael
Thanks Michael, I like your comment: “wink a silver wink”, even if I am not sure of knowing the german translation for it. I can feel the appreciation – thank you for sharing.
Karin
Dear Bruce,
I’m glad you’ve raised this lovely question, because it’s been on my mind the last few days, too.
It’s clear from the entire series that there is a positive life-forward intention in the vision. Somewhere in the recent readings Rinpoche even offers ‘transcendence’ of embodiment as a motivation for getting things in perspective. At the same time, the claim that TSK doesn’t have an improvement orientation, apart from being a good corrective for the self-grasping, says something about the reality of consciousness, and therefore of any sane approach to consciousness.
I don’t have time to think this one through, more presicely right now (we’re suffering major forest fires where I live – Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia – with hundreds of homes lost), but it does seem to me that: even if logically inconsistent, these approaches needn’t be experientially inconsistent.
Regards,
Christopher.
I had the same question. Seems that seeing in a new light “is” changing the focal setting.
I thought of it as a misprint. Reads more consistently as: Instead “it asks” us to change the framework or focal setting through which we currently understand our ways of being, it invites us to see the world in a new light.â€