MARKING TIME…

Photo courtesy of: ‘layers’ by peternguyen11 – Pixabay
https://tinyurl.com/ya4po8t3

What does it mean to ‘MARK TIME’? What is the event of ‘marking’? Or even a ‘mystical’ way of life? Rinpoche takes an inspiring look at this in ‘Keys of Knowledge’. He points to a ‘pointless-point’ saying:

“Even the unknowable, from the perspective of knowing, is a form of knowing. The form itself becomes the maker.” p. 185

Considering this, we might even say the essence of the time, space, knowledge vision is zero. Since open inquiry is at its heart, the urge to know is engendered by the unknown. From there you might even consider the great value of the TSK vision is that as a model, it has certain presuppositions and intentions as boundaries… but that’s not all. Having ‘open inquiry’ at its heart or essence, it has within it the key to rendering those boundaries transparent… (much as we do), a gateway through the conceptual knots that language and dichotomies of thought erect in mind-space. That key is the ‘unknown’ both conceptual and felt… and not yet experienced… the opening of knowing perhaps. And Rinpoche says in ‘Keys of Knowledge’… “The unknown may be more than, ‘what remains to know’.” He’s pointing openly to opportunity, possibilities, potential…

Regarding ‘marking time‘, Rinpoche says in the course of our journey through time, at some point we graduate… p. 182-6

“[We] see clearly that the unfolding of linear time, and the sense of progress on a path—aspects of reality that seemed so fundamental, so vital—are in fact only ‘marks’, points imposed on the rhythms of time. The marks do not mark out anything solid. There is no bridge that leads to nirvana, no carrier, no vehicle, and no road.

Marks are conditions imposed on every instant. A mark that is noticed becomes a point, but a mark that opens becomes a rhythm. Yet rhythms too can turn toward the solid. They can take their part in a causal sequence, always heading toward the ‘next’, always participating in the structure of before and after, of beginning, middle, and end. Through such structures, we ‘mark out’ and establish lines, which we name as moments in time…

The mark means that something has formed…We look for the cause, or for the process of arising, or the originating force, or for something that lies beyond… It is through this process that the mark manifests… compiled into a focal setting, perhaps through a combination of the sensory faculties.

We can speak of this as the field, the producer of the waves and rhythms and ripples we identify. It looks like action comes from the center of the field, but in the field, the field is centerless. Still, form manifests and creation takes form. With labels comes completion: now we can mark out the appearance that has been formed and founded.

Rinpoche reminds us that with language and concepts comes limits. However, when we think about how we mark time, the meaning of zero, the point of zero, and the other side of zero…

[We] find we are engaging a way of life that could be called mystical. This is the field of our reality, the realm of body, mind, and senses, of energy, waves, and gravity, of space and knowledge…

Looking becomes the mark, and the mark marks out a symbolic gesture. Our thoughts are like that, and mind is like that as well. Waves and gravity, energy and the invisible: all interact through the forms of marks.