“Both ordinary knowing and its correlate ‘not-knowing’ can be thawed or cultivated to yield this luminescent quality.â€Â TSK, 281.
Does this imply that just as there are an ordinary and a higher knowing, there are also an ordinary and a higher ‘not-knowing’? Perhaps ordinary ‘not-knowing’ is what gets excluded when we try to possess an object of knowledge; while the kind of knowing that is in everything does not cast a shadow of non-knowing precisely because nothing is left outside.
‘The body of knowledge’, as used in last week’s reading, suggests that nothing is absent just because we are unaware of its presence. The sense of absence may be a sign that the self’s focused searchlight is trying to cut something of special interest out of a greater whole.
In the last day of the recent Ratna Ling retreat, Jack shared readings that left me feeling that the TSK vision is too vast for my ordinary mind to grasp and other readings that pointed out how ingrained is the tendency to turn away from anything too difficult. Looking back now, I suspect that these are both avenues that invite a new relationship with the ‘unknown’.
Since returning from the retreat, I have found myself marvelling at the depth of the readings; but then I turn automatically to a view that the most I can hope for is to be repeatedly moved by these readings—since I don’t know how to ‘embody’ them in how I actually live. I expressed this in several personal e-mails to TSK-buddies, and received valuable feedback. One was that the practices move us toward embodiment of new ways of being. Another, from David, brought up something from the retreat itself:
“Remember at the retreat we did the exercise sitting at the edge of the future, focused on the unknown. After we came together to discuss it, you immediately conceptualized it posing a ‘what if’ question regarding the future . . . I felt at that point you clung to the thought, missing the intent of the exercise… to feel the openness . . . to ‘practice’ embodying exactly what you ‘think’ you are unable to do.â€
This gives me valuable feedback about something that I usually can’t see.
Perhaps it takes a friend to point out the hold of a frozen ‘not-knowing’—which is happily bobbing along in the great sea of ‘the body of knowledge’.
Hi David,
Thanks for doing a search and for sharing your experience of working with embodiment.
I find that holistic feelings can arise like a mist blowing in off the sea. And sometimes a feeling of dullness can be dissolved by paying attention to the TSK readings, which give me something both sane and visionary to dive into. Then there are more difficult states to work with, which usually involve an anxious desire to change something that I don’t know how to change–such as the predicament of a family member. Even in those cases, it can help to focus on something that is always present–such as the breath, the senses and the body. I’ve been taking a Tai Chi Chih class recently and that can help slow down the activity of the mind in order to coordinate the movement of the body and the flow of Chi.
Hi Michael,
Just did a search of the books on the word ‘embodiment‘. Some interesting results in DTS as we’ve already read, but also in…
You can continue reading from there, but for me, I often ‘start‘ embodiment awareness by focusing on my body and my senses. What arises? What am I feeling? Immediately I am in the present moment, NOW can then take a wider focus… it’s a practice, but it’s a skill too. You develop an easiness with it, you loosen up the head focus, the conceptual narrowness, and widen the focal setting as feeling is included. You can luxuriate in that openness, you can embody it. Just saying. :-)