Universal Unique

“Light encompassing makes light, until appearance arrives at the luminous round of the universal unique.”   DTS 230

Jack suggested we look up references to the phrase “universal unique” in Dynamics of Time and Space.  I found about ten places where this phrase is used.  Reading a bit more widely “round” them, I found many old friends who have not visited for a while: conducting, points, inward, outward, experience, etc.   Perhaps because it feels like a new arrival, the word “roundness” stands out.  I can’t begin to pretend that I understand even a small part of the field through which these hundreds of pages pass, like water flowing down a hillside.  I found myself wishing I had more “time” to follow all these meandering streams, so that—as the text seems to do—I also could arrive at the luminous and develop more understanding along the way.  But this view of time—as a commodity I need to wrench out of the soil of my lived days—is not the one presented in these pages.  I somewhat reluctantly realize that I will never master the rich presentations in Dynamics, of which I seem only able to glimpse the isolated tops of mountain whose wholeness looms underwater.

But the image of “roundness” continues to invite me inside.  It seems to step roundly forth from the zero point, carrying with it the qualities of universality and uniqueness, while also leaving space for the flowing qualities of how I conduct the themes of my individual life.  Like a beaver who builds a round dome under the surface of the river, safe but in the midst of the running stream, I appreciate having a home in the dynamic of time.

“Through the quality of open, the quality of life can be conducted within the reality of our own experience.” DTS 154.

About Michael Gray

I first started studying TSK in the mid 1980's and have since attended a number of retreats and workshops at the Nyingma Institute, in both TSK and Buddhist themes. I participated in the life-changing Human Development Training Program in 1991, and upon returning to Albuquerque co-founded an organization, Friends in Time (with a friend who has Lou Gehrig's Disease), which continues to serve people with similiar disabilities. I contributed an essay to "A New Way of Being"--the last one in the book--in which I describe how learning to honor who I have been has broadened and deepened my openness to present experience. I live in New Mexico with my wife and two sons.
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1 Response to Universal Unique

  1. David Filippone says:

    Well done, Michael! I was traveling this same territory, writing, rewriting, and dissatisfied with everything I said, but you just crystallized it for me. You spoke your words from MY experience as if you were ‘conducting the reality’ of my experience. My experience crystallized not in the sense of frozen, but in the sense of seeing-through. Thank you. :-)

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