Hi All! Nice to be back.
It wasn’t hard to get a general understanding of Rinpoche’s concept “intentional knowledge,†however yesterday I saw it more directly in a moment of desire; a seeing which challenged my patterns some (thankfully).
A woman was crossing the street as I was passing by, and I looked a second time with a longing kind of mind. It was only momentary, but it was enough time for me to see the overlay of intentionality (desire) in my reading of the moment. And as soon as I saw that, I could see an underlying layer of ‘descriptive knowledge’ that laid the foundation for the longing to spin its magic. Very interesting – because I then sensed that that descriptive level, too, needs examination – to see if what it presents as ‘there’ and ‘woman,’  would stand up to scrutiny as ‘there’ independent of a ‘self’ here.
Later I did some ‘Focusing’ work (Genlin: www.focusing.org) with the desire and a resistance arose to absorbing this insight, because (said that part of me) it was afraid of what this would mean for the project of securing happiness; and, further, what it would mean for the project of securing the happiness of existing as an intentional self. Wonderful.
(I couldn’t help but notice that this ‘descriptive knowledge and intentional knowledge’ distinction matches the tri-svabhava concept of representations and imagination. The representation being unchallenged, the imagination has something to build on.
In the past this wasn’t so easy to see, because I kidded myself that the longing wasn’t actually an intention in respect of the longed-for ‘object.’ But now the intentionality in desire is much clearer.
Christopher.
Hi Christopher,
Your description of how the eye looks twice as an object of attraction is all too familiar. When you attribute the intentional knowlege (of longing) to a “desciptive knowledge” on which the longing is presumably based, it occurred to me that this can take place entirely inside a fantasy world. I may be attracted by the very aloofness of a woman: the fact that she is not part of the realm in which I can communicate with another human being. In that case is the “descriptive knowledge” merely the primal ooze of prior longings? Is the problem then not one of description providing the material for intentions, but rather of being lost in a realm that excludes any heartfelt involment with something that might really matter. — Michael