Field Gravity
         I’ve been feeling confused and unable to gather together the various strands of my TSK studies. And something similar is going on in other areas of my life. Since I am spending more time both on TSK and on my other studies, this has felt a bit frustrating.
My current attempts to understand the TSK material about field dynamics and mechanics have resisted my efforts. I have found it difficult to step through the material in an organized way. The readings, the notes, the assignments, all seem to invite familiarity with some other area of the material and I was unable to remember one thing well enough to harmonize it with the others. At some point, it occurred to me that I was in a mutually-referring, mutually-defining complex, without a key, and that this felt strangely like how the “field†was being presented.
Unable to find a centre around which my desire for mastery could cohere, I started my practice of DTS exercise 3 this morning. I’m not sure whether my own experience is an example of how a field operates, but I did feel motivated to contact the “playfulness of thoughts‖in place of having my “energy squandered in thought patterns that lead nowhereâ€.
I recognized a gravitational pull in my feeling that there is too much to do and that I lack the capacity to successfully do it. I glimpsed a defining field, in which an anxious desire to be successful operates. However this field is more than an imprisoning set of conditions. It also sponsors the form of my human embodiment, provides a channel for the energy of life, and makes available the traditions, the literature, and the spiritual guidance on which I draw each day.
The idea that all of this is held in place by a field “mechanism†seems inadequate to my desire for openness, freedom, and beauty. However there are worse fates than to be acting out a script generated by field dynamics and shaped by field mechanics—since that means that I am free to audition for a different role than the one I am now playing. It is also comforting to sense that a dynamic energy, even with the limitations of its consolidating tendencies, is at play—since the familiar alternative is a substantial world driven by linear time in which I am an isolated atom fixed in place.
How much better it feels to have another vision than that of the unforgiving edges of a world too massive and abiding for one individual to influence, or to be collateral damage in some higher Being’s world creation. It seems more than worth the effort to grapple with a vision that offers access to, indeed participation in, this unfinished creation story.
        –Michael Gray
Thank you, Michael, for your contribution.
Confusion and my “feeling that there is too much to do” are my loyal companions.
It´s very difficult for me to translate the language of te TSK-Vision into the field of my usual thinking (not only English into German). I wanted, to finish my work with the program because I don´t want to be a monk in a TSK-monastery . Im a normal old man. I decided (once more) to “work” on my openness and let welcome the Vision, without struggling to “think through” contents and meanings, which don´t want to meet me.
Peter
Hi Michael,
This desire for mastery you write about is such a familiar topic. Our motivation to do study and practice (like the tsk) comes from the wish for something better. In other words, we feel we have to get something done, cause how it is now is not ok, and just saying : “well , that is life” just doesn’t cut it. But how and what to do? It sometimes seems to be so contradictory and such a struggle.
For example, the motivation to get rid of the 8 worldly concerns: loss and gain, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, shame and fame, totally comes forth from the wish from Buddhist mastery which comes forth out of these 8 concerns! (like the wish for less pain, more pleasure etc.)
A paradox and struggle in itself.
In SDTS p.xxix rinpoche writes “As we wrestle with our own beliefs, aiming at clarity and encompassing vision, something fundamental may shift”
So, “the effort to grapple with a vision” maybe in a way IS the “access to, indeed participation in, this unfinished creation story” and the offering might not be the vision’s, but ours, in our willingness to put up this fight?
Here a clip about contest and the openness it can bring:
http://youtu.be/Us4rS37iJLs
Michael,
Along my life I have been strugled to find the truth that guided me in my actions and gave me comfort and ease. Some phrases helped me in my quest for knowledge.
Somethings seemed very simple but in fact they are very complex. On the other way other things seemed very complex but in fact they are very simple.
What we have to see is just in front of us but for some reason we can´t see it and search somewhere else.
Tarthang Tulku said in the book Knowledge of Freedom that we can only know when we admit we don´t know. The more we let unanswered questions in the back of our minds the more we open the gateway to knowledge.