Photo courtesy of: ‘Partititons’ by geralt – Pixabay
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PARTITIONS AND OCCUPANCY…
TSK Instructor, Ken McKeon invites consideration of the hum of thoughts… a stream of stuff colored by feelings, and meanings put together by the moments… like stories I tell myself without uttering a sound. Stories that seem to always make me the subject at some distance from other stuff… objects… some are seemingly self-contained, leaving others only contained by the proximity of other boundaries, like meanings bumping against opinions and conclusions. BUT… even the subject and the objects co-arise within a more allowing and encompassing realm…
“Pick out an object, either one that is present before you or one that you imagine. Focusing on the edge of the object, consider that this is also the edge of ‘empty’ space. Reflect on the difference between space and what it contains, which should be most noticeable at the edge you have identified. Are there properties and qualities of ‘space as container’ that you are able to contact and that help account for its ability to serve as a container? …Which of the properties that we attribute to the object ‘belong’ to the object and which ‘belong’ to the space that (at various levels) contains the object.
…The logical approach is to say that physical and mental have separate characteristics that can be distinguished from one another. The second approach moves toward merging the physical and mental. In what sense are mental qualities physical? In what sense are physical qualities mental? Careful attention to this question can lead to experiencing different energies that are neither physical nor mental.â€
…’Knowledge of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p. 188-9
The exercise, and Ken’s poem invites Inquiry into partitions and occupancy… the poem may also point elsewhere…
CHASING BUZZ
By Ken McKeon
Everything comes in canisters, bottles, tubes, boxes, cans,
Bodies all, contained, restrained,
I hug them to me,
I go so far as to stroke coffins,
Cardboard, mahogany, polished steel, it doesn’t matter,
Containment matters, shape holding counts,
Think of the deeper knowing,
Think of a capsule
Shooting through blue black space time
Into the mind of a snoozing god,
That shell might hold all the breath of humankind,
It might just keep the out flow
From flowing so far out
That it would never return,
Recycling would be gone forever,
No getting anything back,
Only an endlessness of a staggering snoring
Down to the never to be last whispering of time,
That would be such a drag,
There would be simply no limits
To the ever so angular you,
A bed fast dummy,
Transcendently numbed out
By the wafts of centaurs
Prancing through the sleeping fields of Mars,
Would you want that to be your fate finality?
Of course not.
Nobody would,
Not even a reclining god,
The divinity would eventually have to step away from its bed,
It would have to pee, it would want coffee,
It would want to check out the news,
Its thoughts would roll on out
To the window of its life,
And there you would be,
A kind of shiny gnat sized thing
Just sailing on by,
And the god would smile
And you would wave,
Just before the shattering all done doors of this singular everywhere
Slam shut forever
On this most recent morning of your life,
As you head on out into infinity and beyond.
