We are now working with Love of Knowledge, which in some ways is an easier book. Chapter 14 starts with “descriptive knowledge,” introduced in chapter chapter 13. The basic idea, which is really important for our theme, is this: there is polar knowledge and then there is descriptive knowledge. Polar knowledge is based on the idea that there is a subject and there is an object, so the subject-pole has to know the object-pole. But in fact, this is just a kind of theory, because that is not how we know at all. The reality of conventional knowledge is descriptive, which just means that we make sense out of our experience by looking back at the immediate past and describing what just happened.
 Now, we need to be careful here. A simple of example of descriptive knowledge would be if you asked me, “What are you doing just now?” I would say, “I am writing an introduction to this week’s TSK reading.” But even though your question and my answer are in the present tense, my answer is based on telling a story, on describing what I am doing. Before I answer you, I am doing something not yet put into words. The move toward description adds a layer onto the experience. That is why at the start of Chapter 14 Rinpoche writes that descriptive knowledge “isolates us” from direct experience.
The discussion at pp. 110-111 is about the point I just referred to. We say that polar knowledge is the most basic of all, but this is really based on a particular description of how knowledge arises. So really descriptive knowledge is the most basic of all. And in turn, this means that what is basic to our ordinary way of knowing is that it isolates us from direct experience.
What does this have to do with time? Well, descriptive knowledge only makes sense if we are located at one point in time and looking back at an earlier point in time, which we now describe. This seems pretty self-evidently true, but that is because we are relying on ordinary knowledge. In other words, we are caught in a circle: Our understanding of time gives us our ordinary knowledge, and our ordinary knowledge gives us our understanding of time. So we’re stuck; we have no choice (p. 112), and we’re headed nowhere.
Let me stop here for a moment to point out that this is a point with tremendous impact on our lives. When we feel frustrated, limited, angry at ourselves or others, it all goes back to our limited way of knowing and our limited way of being in time. At least, that’s what’s being claimed here. As Rinpoche writes, “investigating polar knowledge means asking whether we are free.” To this I would just add that the way to investigate polar knowledge is by looking at time as it manifests in our lives.
So what to do? I’ll leave the text now and go to the exercise. What LOK Ex. 14 asks us to is clear enough. Doing it may take some practice. But try. And as you do so, be aware that the experiences you have are not going to be accessible to ordinary knowledge. This does not mean they will necessary feel special, just that there will be a difference, an opening to something new that will not lend itself to description. Enjoy.
Jack
, “Investigating polar knowledge means asking whether we are free.” Connecting this sentence from LOK 14 with the practice for the chapter, I found that while looking for moments what I saw was a series of thoughts, and I wondered if I ever really initiated a thought. Perhaps they just come into my mind and I merely notice them. Whereas breathing has both a voluntary and involuntary trigger, perhaps thoughts are all involuntary. I don’t think that that would mean there is no freedom, only that freedom wouldn’t be created by thought. Perhaps the relationship is the other way around. Thoughts are changed because of a change in something more fundamental: an espousal of the heart for something offered by life.
–Michael