It seems fair to say that this program aims in part at allowing space to reappear as a focus for concern. Has it had that effect for you? How do you know? What evidence can you offer? Can you identify specific differences in your actions? In your outlook or perceptions?
Could we experience space directly? It might be helpful to approach this question through comparing ‘space’ and awareness. … Like space, awareness is somehow ‘endowed’ with the capacity to accommodate. KTS 144
What is the relationship between awareness and space? … Awareness ‘experiences’ what happens in space, and experience takes shape through an interaction between awareness and its ‘objects’ that space somehow accommodates. KTS 145
Awareness is variable. It can be owned by a “selfâ€, but it can also open, relax, appreciate and allow. In that case, it counters the usual “control and improvement orientation†eases the transition to “doing nothing†and deepens towards ’knowingness’. WIR 207
What I have learned through studying and practicing is that the experience of space in new ways is a key issue in activating a new kind of knowledge that can touch our hearts and affect our conduct. Space is like the sky; it is open and it is already there. Touching the space with awareness it is possible to experience a “feel†of the space, to experience its quality. Therefore, awareness can be considered a bridge that connects us to space.
The ‘lower spaces’ we occupy have caused all kinds of crowding, confusion, weariness, and failures to communicate well. In order to create a sense of harmony and satisfaction both within ourselves and in our relationships with others, it is essential that we develop an awareness of the limitations, which we have been passively accepting due to our restricted perspectives and presuppositions. Once this awareness is keenly felt, an ability to open to new dimensions (which will stimulate integration and creativity), will naturally follow. TSK 17
In my experience, I realize that when the self owns the awareness; when I am right, when want or don´t want do anything, when I judge what is right or not, when emotionality permeates the experience, the frame of mind is full of resistance and I feel the space around me closed and claustrophobic.
Being aware of the quality my mind, I am able to see the limitations and restrictions and to tune into the allowing quality of the space, that is already there. Once the spacious quality is touched, it can be recalled latter, again and again.
If we cultivate a clear awareness (receptive, not owned by a self), this outward projection of knowledge can remain available ‘inwardly’. Let us call this ‘inward outward-knowing’… It allow us to know with a knowledge that is not ours. DTS 39 and 41
Hi Eliana,
I appreciate the dialogue you are inviting. I think I have experienced the softening or transforming of apparent limitations, but I am not sure that it has been by approaching the limitations themselves in their role as limitations. It is quite possible that is because I am not relating to the TSK vision as addressing specific issues, so much as making me aware of a limiting way of looking.
Have you ever studied the Skillful Means branch of Rinpoche’s teachings. What I found there was that the frustrations of work (such as resentment towards bosses, a feeling of being unappreciated and of the work being meaningless) offered a wonderful chance to see what pushes my buttons and therefore the “limitations” of my ways of living in the world.
That didn’t feel as an opportunity to challenge limitations in the environment so much as the debilitating frailities in myself. I guess those are also “limitations” but having a specific environment in which to work on these weaknesses/limitations/frailities was especially potent for me. Recognizing that I was wasting half my waking hours in an emotional holding back at work was very powerful for me.
I find something different in TSK–an opportunity to see further into the possibilities of life. For me it has never required struggling with limitations. Rather I find in TSK an invitation to step forth into a more open, living, hopeful world. Not by breaking the hold of old, irrelevant habits, but by opening the curtains onto a world that feels worth livng in.
Michael,
I woul kike to comment some of your words:
“I find myself wondering why it’s so essential to become keenly aware of our limitations. For instance, a prisoner might be keenly aware of the bars and cinder block walls that limit his freedom, but will that make him feel more free? It seems something else is needed than awareness of limitation as limitation.Perhaps that we yearn to be free of them and catch a glimpse of how we have already limited ourselves before we even know the nature of what is possible.”
To explore and analyze the limits of our way of knowing is part of the TSK vision. Seeing the bars and cinder block walls as prison is first level knowledge.
But if we can begin to open our perspective and discover new dimensions of space within our immediate experiences, the anxiety and frustration which results from our sense of limitation will automatically be lessened; and we can increase our ability to relate sensitively and effectively to ourselves, to others, and to our environment. TSK 5
There are people in jail that feel themselves free.
Eliana,
I enjoyed readingyour post/assignment and it stimulated a few thoughts in me.
I agree that the role of awareness is essential to our lives and to the operation of everything presented in the TSK vision. It’s still a mystery though, isn’t it? And pondering what you share about limitations, mainly in the quote from TSK 17, I find myself wondering why it’s so essential to become keenly aware of our limitations. For instance, a prisoner might be keenly aware of the bars and cinder block walls that limit his freedom, but will that make him feel more free? It seems something else is needed than awareness of limitation as limitation. Perhaps that we yearn to be free of them and catch a glimpse of how we have already limited ourselves before we even know what is possible.
You ended your post with a quote about “inward outward-knowing” (eknosis), and I realized that the way this makes some sense for me is in connection with the idea that the senses are two-way channels. I encountered that insight during a retreat at the Nyingma Institute and I’m not sure which of Rinpoche’s books might have written about it. I have experienced how when sensations provide a richly felt pleasure in the outer world (the wind in the trees for me), they light up something in my own being as I am listening. I wonder if that (sensing inside as it reverberates with what is experienced as coming from outside) is an example of the inner-outer knowing of eknosis: we know the one knowing through the act of appreciating the world in which we live.
Michael