“Is there an exercise or a way of seeing that would let us build a bridge between the linear-time alternative of the self-story and the dynamic underlying aliveness of it ?
In DTS there is a chapter “Healing Time” in which Rinpoche gives a sequence of 4 exercises dealing with one of the most common experiences for human beings: pain.
Exercise 13 “Commanding Time” can be seen as a description of Kum Nye Yoga using TSK time vocabulary.
Ex. 14 – 16 all directly deal with the potential of the experience of pain to be a doorway or bridge to the dynamic aliveness of time.
Pain usually shows up together with a lot of stories: first we label it as pain, something we do not want: We also want to know where it comes from and how to get rid of it – a lot of stories.
DTS 297: “Although the pain that we experience is real, it`s “realness” is not solid in the way that we imagine. Within the experience of pain, the power of non-dimensioned time remains available. As soon as we stop directing our efforts toward maintaining assigned identities, we can be “ahead” of time , ready to take command of pain “before” time manifests as painful.
DTS 303: “In the face of pain,you do not have to insist on it`s character as pain. There is no need to trace a pre-existing pattern. Instead, be aware of the “painness” of the pain. Look for how you label this painness in the act of recognition and identifying with it. Bring the power of painness to awareness and merge it completely with the power of knowledge.”
DTS 307: “From the silent communique of time comes the condition of painness, and through the friction between awareness and painness, subjective pain is born.But friction requires interaction based on position and claims. With no one there, there can be no friction, and then no pain arises. Awareness does not interpret and label, and the senses do not depart from silence to assign identity and demand reaction. With no identity as obstacle and maker of obstacles, awareness is energized as an open focusing: a background with no specifics.
Conducted as a very precise practice, inquiry that communicates with such awareness can offer inner healing. At the critical junctures of our lives, it can allow us to overcome pain and sorrow and emotionality, offering direct and immediate therapy.
Beyond these benefits, the shift that opens when we embrace the time communique is deeply interesting. The “I” is not there, yet experience goes on. In one sense , subject and object have reversed their roles. In another sense, they no longer play a role at all; instead they simply play.”
For everybody who wants to practice with pain and painness and has no pain available, there is a nice Kum Nye practice No. 105: Heart, Gold, Thread. In TSK terms it could be called a “not going without going” or maybe even better a “not going without not going”.
Klaus,
The connection you make between pain and a certain kind of time makes sense. In my own experience, I have noticed that pain is much more invasive when I am afraid that it is a condition I may never escape from. Whereas when I just encounter the sensations that are immediately present–without adding the label “pain” or projecting my fear that it will continue until I get ride of it–it may not be a big deal. For many years I have not got a pain shot at the dentist. The fillings and crowns have hardly bothered me at all. The sensation of the drill grinding away feels more dull than sharp, perhaps a bit like chewing a piece of aluminum foil. Might this this be an example of what you are thinking of: looking calmly at sensations without labeling them or giving them an indefinite career into the future, can harness the power of time to handle whatever arises in the present?