INQUIRING INTO ZERO…

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INQUIRING INTO ZERO…

“We might think of zero as a remark by space, a saying that expresses an allowing. SPACE SHOWS ITSELF IN ZERO… As the symbol of form, the place-holder, ZERO SPEAKS in all language and in each connection. As THE VOICE OF SPACE, it is knowledge communicating with time and space, making the meanings. Knowledge draws the circle that gives zero shape, and zero in turn communicates what knowledge chooses to shape. ZERO MAKES POSSIBLE THE ‘WHAT’ OF ‘WHERE’, THE FORM THAT HOLDS MEANING, THE MOVING FROM POINT TO POINT.”
…’Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space,’ Tarthang Tulku, p. 50-2

Additionally, Rinpoche further suggests…

“We should be able to go beyond the zero-point of origination to a knowledge that is ZEROLESS… At the same time, ‘going beyond must stay WITHIN ordinary appearance, for only within appearance can we stay true to the possibility of a ‘sourceless source’.

IN THE GOING BEYOND of prior knowledge, WE START FROM THE ZERO POINT AND MOVE TOWARD THE LIMITS OF OUR EXPERIENCE. We expand outward and turn inward; we trace the lineage of the past and activate the possibilities of the future. Eventually we return to the starting point. But now the starting point is no longer a point of origination. We realize that there was nowhere to go, and that in a certain sense the journey never took place. The change is subtle, but absolutely fundamental. The quality of time itself is different, and the dimensions of space are not what we thought they were. It no longer makes sense to consider origins or departures from origins in the same way… How can we know that such a journey truly evokes new knowledge?
…..’Dynamics of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p.189-90

So for instance, when I am in the process of writing, trying to conceptualize or circumscribe what I mean to say, I am aware of an ABSENCE, a kind of place-holder…an ‘intentional’ space… There is an acceptance of an arising and the “simultaneous recognition of… meaning, and the absence that is suddenly understood to have proceeded it.” Writing is one way that allows me to glimpse, or dwell in, this ABSENCE… I might hesitantly describe as the humblest of spaces… this fundamental prior-zero meets zero edge of the future experience… of knowing the knowing… of being intimate with the center of my universe… my evolving, spiraling constellation, a tasting of the fruit of zero… Right THEIR… where the zeroless feeds the zero-point… is what I’m dwelling in momentarily and beginning, again and again. That being in the middle of the ripple, is the experience I love… free flight… that is the feel of my own depths being plumbed…

You could say space meets time in zero… the forms of time whisper space at zero… they FIT… Without a feeling of ‘fit’, how can one develop a sense of conviction? Psychologist Donnel B. Stern Ph. D., suggests in his book, ‘Unformulated Experience’, …

“Because preexisting nonlinguistic representations must be interpreted in language before they can be reflected on, there is no such thing as pristine ‘preexisting content’ that exist in the… mind, and against which the ‘accuracy’ of the verbal interpretation can be tested. In a very real sense, the interpretations we make of nonlinguistic unconscious representations ARE those representations—because those interpretations are as close as we can get to thinking about them…

What then accounts for the [person or a patient in psychoanalysis] feeling of fit? The perception of fit follows the patient’s sudden feeling of always having known in some vague way… We seem to know when we have fit our words to a preexisting meaning—or perhaps better, a preexisting ABSENCE. [We seem to know when the interpretation SPEAKS to US.]

[Regarding curiosity…] It is not merely the conscious application of inquisitiveness, the asking of questions. It is the more basic capacity to become aware of questions, of gaps in the material, to sense that there is something there to be curious ABOUT. Curiosity is the sensitivity to the possibility of a question… [The means to gain self-reflective access to experience.] p.170-6

So when I am writing, and I pause to consider what to say and how to express it… it’s a zero-point… a welcoming pause… waiting, you might say, for the zeroless to inform zero… so that I may speak it through my voice…

AT THE LINC… A TSK and Full Presence Mindfulness student discusses ZERO, and how, at least one way in his experience… ‘ZERO SPEAKS’… Also, follow the links in those posts for deeper discussion…

ZERO SPEAKS…