Questions about the reading (Week 4)

Having read DTS before, I appreciate where the argument in this chapter is going.  The “field communique” is a powerful sort of “pointing.”  But in the first half of the chapter, the concrete examples or illustrations don’t seem very effective or compelling to me.  For instance, when Rinpoche talks about the appearance of movement on the earth from a vantage point in space being free of labels, that just doesn’t make sense to me.  If, as he suggests, I am perceiving movement on Earth from up in space, that movement wouldn’t be entirely free of labels; it must be in relation to some orienting context for me to perceive “movement” at all, so I would be able to say “left,” “right,” etc.  I understand the point, I believe, that the distinctions we make are relative to our own involvement, our own concerns, at the time, but it is undermined by an example that seems to be too much of a stretch.

Also, the “phantoms in a box” example doesn’t seem that compelling to me.  I can imagine a box with ghost-like things in it without necessarily having to transform the box into something insubstantial too, although I can imagine why he makes the argument that, if the contents prove to be insubstantial, then “context” might be too.  But the example itself doesn’t really communicate this well.  Saying that the contents are “suddenly transformed into phantoms” makes it seem like something magical or arbitrary is happening to them; it doesn’t lead me in the direction of “questioning the box.”

Can someone help me with this?  Am I missing something?

Best wishes,

Bruce