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The Prior of Perception
Tarthang Tulku in many of his books discusses in detail the dangers of NOT understanding the nature of Time… that is, taking Time for granted, because in a sense, time makes us uneasy, we tend to avoid facing things that make us feel anxious. For instance, in the book, ‘Revelations of Mind’, he says…
“Misunderstanding time, we relate to it wrongly and become caught up in illusions. Since mind and senses fail to alert us to the nature of these illusions, there is no incentive to understand and wake up to other possibilities. We take our point of view and all that follows from it to be incontrovertibly real, based on the observations of our senses and the rational process of our minds, inhabiting what in some philosophic traditions is known as relative reality.
‘Relative’ [refers to] whatever appears real within the scope of thoughts and concepts of past, present, and future. We know this territory and system from within. We know that it leads to restrictions and problems.
To free ourselves of these restrictions and problems, we need a different operation of mind, one that engages the dynamic of time more intimately. This would bring us face to face with impermanence, the continual falling away of the familiar and the emergence of the new.
Impermanence is the reality in which our lives unfold, a constant reminder of the change and loss that underlies our most persistent forms of suffering. Rather than attempting to dismiss in vain the implications of impermanence, it seems important to investigate further mind’s relationship to time, to cross the bridge to the instant before minding, to the clear, uncluttered landscape of mind prior to the instant from which all systems and ‘mindings’ arise… We find ourselves asking: What was before the identity and recognition that brought us this thought or instant of perception?â€
Rinpoche continues…
“Each instant of our conscious, waking life is bounded by territory that is unknown, a ‘before’ and ‘after’ where identity, labeling, and recognition are not operating. The coming into being of our mind-universe is repeated instant by instant… What we perceive as continuity may be better understood as a series of discrete perceptions.
…Time goes forward—moving ahead to the not known. The ‘from’ is not known, the ‘to’ is also not known. The ‘before’ of this present situation may have been only empty space…Be aware: every ending. Be aware: every unknown place. Be aware: every beginning…” p.174-7.
Perhaps as a demonstration of being aware of the unknown… look at the photo of the cloudy sky. Can you trace the cloud transitions the way you might trace transitions of thought?
At the bottom right accept the sun as the origin of the moment, color accents the changes as distance or separation from the present viewpoint seems to summarize or condense each cloud striation. As you slowly shift your view from that past…moving toward the center of the view, as now… colors and clouds become less defined, they tend to run into one another, there are levels in front that blur and obscure levels behind. But for there to be levels there must be space between, space that allows but is not directly discerned…like objects of thought, or sense of felt…
When you engage in this dissection can you feel the unknown surrounding your inquiry?
Can you feel it’s undetermined nature? It’s openness?
Hi Michael,
Yes, re-reading the passages and the book is in a sense in keeping with what Rinpoche is telling us about time. The freedom of being aware of the unknown begins to influence us. Aware of each instance of perception surrounded by the unknown we become free of a kind of tyranny of minding and our usual narrow way of dealing with time. Space opens, time opens, knowing becomes more allowing.
David, thanks for sharing this exerpt from “Revelations of Mind” and connecting it to time
I’ve started reading “Revelations” for the third time (accepting Rinpoche’s suggestion to read it four times). I find myself wondering with each pass whether the previous reading(s) are sensitizing me to the understanding being shared. I sense in a general way that this is occurring. But this morning, still in the first 30 pages, I had a thought–perhaps a realization–that my understanding of the relationship between self and mind has opened up. I saw the self as a resident of a larger terrain which we call “mind”. The self doesn’t often explore that terrain but–like an abscentee landowner–collects the rent from a burgeoning enterprise with only a superficial notion of what is going on there.