Photo courtesy of: ‘Open Freedom’ by Peter S. Quinn – Flickr
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Like water flowing from far-off mountains, the lyrical flow of Longchenpa’s “Kindly Bent to Ease Us†laps at the edges of my awareness and I imagine myself being carried along by inner calm and wider perspective.
Then I realize that—although I am interested and moved—I am not actually on the Developing and Fulfillment Paths, and far from grappling with the supreme challenges that such paths prescribe.
But something happened in the 1980’s when two books came into my life: “Skillful Means†and “Time, Space, Knowledgeâ€.
Looking back, I realize that I had stumbled on an awareness of “Unique Occasion and Right Junctureâ€,  penetrating my helpless way of living at that time. I also see in a new light how this could not have happened without the presence of Nyingma in America and the untiring efforts of a group of people who are working to preserve the teachings and to translate them into a form that I am capable of understanding.
One of the most surprising of those translations has been the Time, Space, Knowledge vision, in which the reach and range of pristine cognition shines forth for minds such as mine, awakening a desire to be afloat in time and space, buoyed by and bobbing in a knowing that has been forever present.
Wearied and weakened by the fictitious being in which I have wandered since time beyond reckoning, I drink with gratitude at the edges of a shoreline, where knowing bestows refreshing glimpses of a time and space that have always been my life.
