The topic of light is potentially deeply interesting and (excuse me for saying it) illuminating.
We have been taught to think of light as a purely physical phenomenon. But light necessarily involves both what is seen and the one that sees. We can imagine photons of light speeding off in all directions in a universe that has no living beings, but that is only a theoretical construct. The fact is that when we see, the knowing capacity and what is known are inseparable in an especially powerful and self-evident way. The Greek theory of seeing was that it depended on a ray of light that issued from the eyes, and that is an interesting and helpful perspective.
In Knowledge of Freedom, one of Rinpoche’s books not in the TSK series, Rinpoche asks us to call to mind an imag; for instance, the image of your first car. Then he asks, “What is the source of the light in which this mental image appears?” Is that question clear to you? It’s not a question people think to ask. But it gives a very direct way of pointing out the relation between knowing and light.
In reviewing it right now, it seems to me there is probably too much reading for this course. I based it on Topic 71 in Part 2 of When It Rains, but that does not mean we have to squeeze all the readings given in that topic into nine weeks. I will review the readings over the next few days and post a revised version.
Perhaps I can say more on the general theme later. For now, I will just go directly into some comments on the reading for this first week.
The key sentence to start with on p. 271 is the one in italics, which I will reword here: “What conveys the quality of knowingness is clarity itself.” That is what we will be investigating in this program: how to discover and make more real the clarity within experience. ‘Clarity’ is a good word, because it suggests very clearly both knowing(ness) and light. That is what the exercise I suggested (to see appearance as a light manifestation) is meant to explore.
Ex. 32A also gets at this very directly. Try it casually, and don’t worry about how ‘well’ you do it or how far you get with it. Even a single intense and ‘knowing’ light is enough to make the point. Don’t try to go beyond Ex. 32A. I look forward to your reactions.
Jack