Photo: ‘Orange Sunrise’ by Pexels – Pixabay
https://tinyurl.com/y8p534b8
In class we were considering ‘field dynamics’, which from a TSK perspective suggests…as science tells us, ‘everything is made of fields’. Keeping that in mind as we employ our normal way of knowing, (subject engages an object), ‘I encounter things’…but also remembering that things are NOT really solid, that they are themselves ‘fields’ – that opens them up. We introduce ‘space’ into our thinking…the field encompasses not just things, but the space they are drenched in and composed of, and this drenching relates everything to everything, and space itself.
Instead of ignoring the FULL significance of space and merely thinking of it as distance or separation between things, we can ‘perpend’, envision, and propose…see into the permeable and insubstantial nature of ‘things’… This changes everything…rather than the solid & fixed – openness now becomes essential, boundaries are breached, and NOW, instead of the past dominating and determining the present…the present ripens from the future…
Experience now sings… Like a lover’s song of the sea at dawn…even though our lives are laced with loss we persevere, our hearts are made of this earth and waters, knowing born of the sun glows within, we do not want to be released from our connection to this sacred place, the love of our life…we long to be unified, fleshed-out, gathered not dispersed…hearts ‘sing’ at dawn, of the promise of possibilities ripening from the night…
Excerpt from…‘Aubade’
By Ken McKeonOrange to deepest crimson now…
… Even loss breaks up to be
Your song sung,
It lifts free as your lips part,It is your breath,
It the sea crown’s sway,
And all mustAye to you, my loving lovely one,
The tones of life resolve within
The rising silence of your waysThough so freely sown,
The seeds of death,
Become the notes that spell us all,Effortlessly this naming of the sea
Becomes the calming morn,
First light, fresh breeze, the bells
Ring, my charmed love, they bring
To sight the sun, the scarlet, then orange one,
The day’s light to be a diamond clarity again,This rounding hewed down just dawned earth loft day.
In the readings, Rinpoche cautions against tracking space itself to any great degree due to the possibility of confronting the ‘confusion’ associated with ‘blackouts’. I remember many years ago going through that… practicing deep meditation for years, I went too far, before I was ready for the consequences. In deep meditation I was not asleep, for I still sat in lotus, head straight, fingers on touching points… but I was totally gone… blank… 20 minutes (sometimes more than 40 minutes) later I came out of it, and became aware again. This happened on more than one sitting occasion.
As you might imagine, this caused a great stir in my psyche, fundamental questions kept returning, and I became somewhat fixated on this type of experience. It actually took years for me to settle down and let these gaps go without grasping at them. During that time I was like the story of the Zen-moths… mesmerized by the glow of enlightenment, caught circling that glow (an ideal desire). Eventually, I discovered while it can be beneficial, even essential, to seek understanding and expansion of one’s own depth, life must still be lived, and seeking ideals of enlightenment should not be used to avoid facing being present to one’s own living.
That was more than 20 years ago… since that time I’ve found it’s far more ‘useful’ to be awake and aware, and that seems to be where Time, Space and Knowledge happens… and why I find the TSK vision so enlightening.
In the post above, I was practicing The Source of Thoughts exercise… using the readings and the practice TO INQUIRE INTO THE SOURCE OF THOUGHTS, THE MOMENT, AND MY EXPERIENCE OF THE DAWN…
EXPLORING SPACE…
“Space by itself is difficult to attend to because our ordinary world view has an implicit preference for tangible ‘things’—existence, existents, interactions, causes and effects, and events. Any explanations which are proposed for ‘how things are’ must ordinarily select something from this picture, with its thing-as-cause orientation. However, it would be helpful to try to reverse this emphasis temporarily and attend more to the significance of the presence of space.
Objects seem to depend on space in many respects, although it is true that objects are not, at least in any common view, subordinate to or caused by their surrounding spaces. But they are in fact mostly space, as a more microscopic view shows. The macro- or microscopic constitutive elements ‘need’ space to ‘be present’ and also turn out to be mostly space.
At a certain point, we may wonder whether our usual emphasis on ‘objects’ and our relative indifference to space is not misguided. Is existence ‘at bottom’ really space? Can space itself be the fundamental nature of existence that we seek elsewhere or simply ignore?
…Contemplating space—as a result of pushing our examination of existence as far as we can—actually guides our awareness into new types of spaces, until we can reach a kind of space that is, in more than a symbolic way, the ground of everything. Initially, however, it is important to attend to space as we ordinarily experience it, for such an attending may serve as a doorway to a wider realm of understanding and, consequently, to the resolution of ordinarily intractable problems.
In the beginning, given our relatively fixed reaction patterns, it is difficult to progress in our understanding by contemplating objects. DIRECTING OUR ATTENTION TO SPACE ITSELF IS THUS MORE HELPFUL. EVEN ON THIS ORDINARY LEVEL, SPACE IS NOT A ‘NOTHING’, AND ATTENDING TO IT CAN BE A POTENTIALLY POWERFUL AND SALUTARY ENGAGEMENT OF HUMAN AWARENESS.
If conducted properly, this type of engagement can result in the attainment of a new kind of ‘focal setting—one which is not just a macro- or micro-adjustment within a particular space—but one which actually opens up qualitatively new ‘spaces’ wherein ordinary awareness and its clumsy conceptual structures are inoperative.”
….’Time, Space, Knowledge’, by Tarthang Tulku, p.7-11
David,
I like your exploration of so many TSK themes and perspectives in this poetic exploration. It is thought-provoking (how can the present ripen from the future while possibilities ripen from the night?), evocative of human experience and the beauty of the world, and a nice intro to Ken’s poem…