The final week, but of course, we are always beginning

First, a reminder. I found several posts that I rescued from “general comments” and put in TSK online: these posts get lost if you do not put them in the right “Category.”

 Second, I want to thank you all for making it through the course. It is not that easy to keep up the energy when our connection is only online. Unfortunately, the plan for a Skype call did not work out; I decided that we need a minimum of four people, and we did not get that. So for those of you who are continuing on the next course, let’s plan more in advance next time.

 Next, a general thought. Many years ago I read the book call The Dancing Wu Li Masters, about physics and Eastern thought. I don’t remember the book at all, but I do remember that every chapter in the book was called “Chapter 1.” That is how I feel about TSK: always starting over. I hope that this program has been a good beginning for you, and that you are now (and always) ready to begin again.

The exercise this week (TSK Ex. 26) is presented in terms of the co-presence or co-arising of mind and matter, but it applies just as much to subject and object. The exercises for the last few weeks have all offered different ways of coming at the same point: challenging the distance and separation of subject and object. The idea is that this separation produces what the reading for this week calls “cognitive friction.” Another way to say it is that with the subject-object structure, we can only know what the self knows. We want to know with the knowledge of the whole, the knowledge that infuses the whole.

Jack