@david-filippone
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I wanted to post the introduction to Michael’s above post that appeared on the Center for Creative Inquiry Facebook page here. See as follows…
“Author Michael Gray has written a new Blog on the Center for Creative Inquiry Forum, entitled: ‘Moonlight At The Center’. It’s a brief and lovely story from his past. He begins by saying:
“Whether we actually practice being at the center of our experience, or simply try to pay attention to our feelings and thoughts as they pass on by, we are probably hoping to be in touch with our own being. But when we use our thoughts to navigate, and use concepts and judgments as our oars, we soon find ourselves outside experience, looking in.”
His story unfolds from that point, and as I settled into the telling, this quote by Rinpoche came to mind regarding the edge of the future, not an imagined future, but “the point where the future could be said to come into being.” Michael’s story is an example of what the following quote from Rinpoche foretells…
“Within the steady flow of linear time, there are movements we would consider favorable and others that are unfavorable. Yet if you welcome the future without regard to specifics, you may become aware of a dynamic that unfolds naturally toward improvement.
The more you relax any preoccupations or concerns, the more you may notice this evolutionary thrust in your own experience. For instance, you may go toward being more precise and accurate in your thinking and planning, or toward more stability, richer experience, or moral clarity. Welcome and cherish these tendencies.
…’Dynamics of Time and Space,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p. 331
This introduction to Michael’s story, ‘Moonlight At The Center’, from the CCI Facebook page at the link…
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=974001064523232&set=a.556042916319051
I wanted to add another passage relating to a question that came up about: ‘Where is knowledge located?’ The inquiry IS deep, and can well extend ‘beyond all grammar’. This excerpt by Rinpoche seems to touch on this question…
Excerpt From ‘Knowledge of Freedom‘: Chapter 9, Breaking Through the Known: [Emphasis added]
In moments of wonder and great humility, human beings through the ages have felt a different awareness emerge naturally within the more familiar ways of viewing themselves and their world. Perhaps many of us have known quiet moments when time seemed to stand still, and for a brief interval ordinary preoccupations faded into an overpowering appreciation of everything that is.
Insight drawn from such moments of silent communion with our innermost being, when our sense of separation is silenced by awe, has inspired creative breakthroughs and forms the heart of the world’s great religions. But time and time again the part of ourselves that insists upon separation has arisen “like a reflex, obscuring our immediate awareness of the present moment. As inspiration begins to falter, we return to the small world of the separate self; then we become self-conscious and doubt the significance of our own experience.
The evidence suggests that we may have powerful untapped resources for understanding ourselves and our world. Yet we seem very comfortable with our current ways of knowing and interpreting the physical world and our own experience. Our world is governed by rationality; even our moods and emotions are linked through reasons to our thoughts and concepts. We build our knowledge carefully, through observation and inference, taking one step at a time. If we do not understand the reason for something now, we assume we will in the future, when our methods of observation are perfected. While a few gaps exist here and there, we can fill them with theories or interpretations, connecting one fact or “experience to the next, as if we were stringing a necklace of beads.
But what if, in reality, there is no string in the necklace? What if the string is only a construct devised by the human mind? Have we fully explored the structure that orders all of our different theories and explanations? Can we feel confident in our knowledge without questioning the self that evaluates and judges or the conceptual patterns that unify our formulations? If we did not rely exclusively upon conceptual knowledge, might we find other possibilities for expanding our knowledge, rather than moving linearly from fact to fact and concept to concept?
The view of ourselves as separate from the world we know is now almost universally shared. It has gone largely unchallenged for centuries. What if we could break this pattern and begin to see ourselves and our world in a new light? Much as we explore the mythologies of cultures past, might we be able to step outside the assumptions that constrict our understanding and explore the way we interact in the world? Are there other forms of knowledge that would serve us more effectively?
…Perhaps we need not accept ourselves so readily as separate from our world, as bystanders to our own experience, limited to judging and interpreting what is happening around us. Now we can overcome this sense of separation only by accident, relying on rare moments of inspiration to penetrate our conceptual barriers. But if we can query the self that is separate from its world, we may tap the wellspring of a deeper and broader way of knowing. Looking directly at our own experience, we can find reliable pathways to our awareness and trace our knowledge back to its roots.
Questioning and being aware: these are the most precious teachers. They dwell in the heart of every human being who begins to awaken to the waste and danger of an unexamined life. In taking responsibility for our lives and backing up that decision with action, we take the first step toward greater understanding of the nature of human being.
Came across this when I was thinking about how would one go about locating knowledge in an individual, or if knowing is even locatable at all? Positioning of a knower may have nothing to do with it. Beginning on page 55 of ‘Keys of Knowledge.’ Rinpoche asked:
So at what point does knowing occur? If I point to a point called ‘the point of knowing,’ is knowing found at that point? Or in the pointing?
…Knowing in time may render all knowledge translucent: for it seems at the heart of time, the entire edifice is shimmering. What is knowledge at this moment? If knowing knows no borders, it cannot be located, limited or measured. Never created or discovered, it can never be lost.
…It is not about looking at a picture. The realization, the revelation, and the recognition are together. Seeing, being, and doing are one.
The discovery of the nature of mind may be nothing other than the operation of knowing beyond all grammar.
And in the end ‘showing’ and ‘shining’ may have much in common.
I think this is pointing back to Rinpoche’s first quote at the beginning of this entire thread. About how important it is to recognize Knowingness when it is exposed momentarily in our lives. The world begins to open exponentially…
I wanted to add this passage to the discussion regarding recognizing ‘knowingness‘ day to day in our experience, while seeing through that clarity. And how once recognized, continuing to notice the immediacy of Knowingness, and the ongoing memory of that maturing recognition, seeds our future read-outs expanding our awareness through time. Rinpoche writes:
“Once we develop more awareness, we can begin to see that events and thoughts—which we have seen as a continuous surface stream—do not actually have the dynamic connections that we commonly assume and attribute to them. We can then relax and open a bit more; we do not have to keep tidying things up by fitting thoughts together or ‘placing’ them. After we become accustomed to this freedom from constant bookkeeping, more subtle ‘knowing’ capacities may emerge which are not indexed into any ‘self’. They are not ‘our’ capacities, but neither are they isolated from us and our experience.
Such a ‘knowing’ provides a broad and encompassing base for the apprehension of factors or elements of experience which we usually cannot see. Even the facet of experience which ordinarily stands as the ‘self’, the ‘investigator’ or ’noticer’, and which directs attention outward and away from itself, can be embraced and intimately understood by this special ‘knowing’.” TSK p.56 [Emphasis added]
One might ask: What would that mean for me? For my growth and development as a human being?
Well… acceptance of situations that arise would be enriched… appreciation for the immediate presenting of flickering moments of time would be expanded… sunsets, blooming flowers, the sound of children playing, the innocence of animals, we might discover the ‘humble moments’ ** of our ordinary lives essential… the fullness and vitality of a deep breath, inspired creativity, intimacy, on and on… Worries and the constant conjuring of stories that we tell ourselves, and then inhabit and live within, noticeably diminish as more room becomes available for appreciating what is here and now. Gradually, time’s present moment could open wider… a more spacious experience would then reveal more depth and breadth as more resources present themselves, more possibilities arise too.
As this gradual enriching of experience is happening, something else is refined as it broadens; a more attuned and subtle attention develops allowing a clearer understanding of mental forms, such as thoughts, dreams, stories, and emotional undercurrents. Even the common assumption that the more opinions we hold, the more substantial we are… dissolves.
We may begin to understand substance isn’t more important than an open, curious, and allowing attitude. Both substance and allowing can actually compliment and work together. The tendency to get carried away diminishes, and a sense of detachment from the gravity of opinions and positions emerges. Reactionary behavior happens less and less, triggers and hot-button responses subside. An inner calm becomes more discernible and available.
So, it may well be possible to experience life more fully… situations, yourself, and surroundings. The depth of what Rinpoche is telling us… just the passages quoted in this discussion… are breathtakingly profound.
** Note: Rinpoche refers to the ‘humble moment’:
“The humble moment, when seen as time, space, and knowledge, is a target worth aiming at. It’s the vital center of the universe; if we hit it, we explode everything that prevents fulfillment, attaining everything that fulfills.” Tarthang Tulku
…’Inside Knowledge‘, Editor Jack Petranker, p.67 [Dharma Pub.]Here is the introduction to Michael Gray’s post from the CCI Facebook page…
Author Michael Gray has penned a new Blog that seems to fit with an ending year, and tracking back in time asking, “How Did I Get Here?’ What a sobering question! How beautifully written is his Blog… it seems like a dream to the character speaking… life… time slipped away right under my nose. And as it goes, in a self-induced spell, I can’t help but focus on the past, because the present seems always just too frightening to face… Could it be a story of our life? Rinpoche writes:
“The quality of our knowledge proves itself in the quality of our lives. A knowledge constructed of concepts that identify and manipulate pre-established structures yields a world that is crowded, rigid, compressed, and impenetrable. Human suffering is built up in layers of increasing solidity, each layer a further misreading of a fluid dynamic… The limited knowledge that confines us in this way is shaped and confined in turn by limited space and time… If we could somehow open space or time, knowledge would become available in a new way. We could move out of the narrow angle in which we have been wedged to explore [more] space… We could reach out to know knowledge directly… No longer confined like an animal in its pen, we could start to live a richer way of being. “
“By devoting ourselves fully to knowledge, we may be able to direct the course of change, so that time and space do open and insight flows freely, supporting a deep sense of well-being. Yet unless the underlying structure imposed on time and space and knowledge is transformed, such change may be temporary: as though the angle that confines us widened for a time before narrowing once more—settling into a new but just as confining ‘order.’ We are used to knowing within a system or ‘order.’ Most often we imagine that the ‘order’ has always been in operation, not recognizing that this ‘always already there’ is an aspect of the knowing that the ‘order’ permits and embodies.”
…’Knowledge of Time and Space,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p.287-89 [Emphasis added]Continue reading the post above…
Here is the introduction of Michael Gray’s post from the CCI Facebook page…
Author Michael Gray has written a new Blog at the link below. He is considering fundamentally, quite important questions:
–What do I actually imagine will happen when I die?
–Do I experience an inner life that I feel can continue after I die?
–Am I failing to hear a message that this inner being is trying to tell me?
–Am I hearing what I have learned to hear and ignoring what remains unknown?
–Can I be open to a mysterious presence that is probably prior to, more fundamental than, and more vital than what I have been conditioned to notice?After considering these questions, he leads us to a quote by Rinpoche, to perhaps an even more fundamental consideration…
Continue reading the post above…
Here is the introduction to Michael Gray’s post above, from the CCI Facebook website:
Author Michael Gray has written a Blog entitled “Into the Light’, in which he reveals: “When I was two years old, I drowned in Lake Ontario, and I sometimes wonder if I had something like the experience that adults the world round have reported… I wonder if this is more a fantasy born of unrealized longings than anything that pertains to the phenomena of light as we know it, here and now, in this world. Those of us gifted with sight can attest to the importance of light in our travels among the things and people of this world. It makes sense to appreciate the presence of light in our lives. And it is comforting to hear that a version of the light we know—transformed into a welcoming warmth in place of the light of a sun we don’t dare look at directly—may one day welcome us into its arms. It is comforting to hear that this kind of light is almost universally reported in near-death experiences.”
Later he mentions “light– the medium that carries…understanding, clarity, and caring.” And I then experienced a flash… I recalled Rinpoche writing in Chapter 15, of the book, ‘Time, Space, and Knowledge,’ [perhaps one of the most important chapters of all the TSK books.] Rinpoche writes equating clarity and knowingness…
“We have seen that open-ended clarity can be found even within the obstructing presence of ordinary knowing—and in ordinary ‘not-knowing’ and confusion, as well. Both ‘ordinary knowing’ and its correlate ‘not-knowing’ can be thawed or cultivated to yield this luminescent quality. By working with appearance, refining this quality of clarity in everything, it becomes possible to use this clarity itself rather than ‘mind’ and ‘things’ as our orienting guide. As a result, our view of reality changes still further. It no longer seems broken up by knowings, lapses of knowing, confusion, limits to knowledge, and so on; nor is it apportioned into space, time, or discrete identities or substances.
There is no longer a ‘looker,’ but instead, only a ‘knowingness’ which can see more broadly, from all sides and points of view at once. More precisely, the ‘knowing’ clarity does not radiate from a center, but is rather in everything, and everything is in it. There is neither an ‘outside’ nor an ‘inside’ in the ordinary sense, but rather a pervasive and intimate ‘in’ or ‘within’ as an open-ended knowingness.” TSK p. 281-2
Please continue reading the post above…
Here is the introduction to Michael Gray’s post from the CCI Facebook page:
Author Michael Gray has written a new Blog, or might I say, an ‘allegory’ for our time. He begins: “If I was a river, and I’m not saying I’m not, I would thread my way through all obstacles. Without them, I could not continue my journey.” Later, he relates:
“I remember the countless times I rode on high winds across deserts and fields of grain towards distant mountains, until those craggy peaks, as if replacing the open sky out of nowhere, were suddenly there, reaching up and pulling me into falling rain; and in no time, I was falling and gathering and joining, until there I was, rushing down a steep rock face in a mounting torrent.
It seems that these days those journeys are shorter, puddle jumping jaunts that are over almost as soon as they begin. Gone are the gentle invitations of the Sun, calling us drop by drop into the arms of the wind, to begin a leisurely stroll across the sky.”
Continue reading Michael’s allegory on relatedness and ecology of fire and water, [above]:
Here is the introduction to Michael’s post above from the CCI Facebook page:
Author Michael Gray has written another Blog, which in this case is a bit different. He writes as if from a deaf perspective. And when he first shared it I couldn’t help but think of the silence between all the ‘things’ that music involves; notes, rhythms, melody, sounds of accompaniment, crescendos – all the ‘things’ that silence allows… And then I thought of all the minding-activities—those minding ‘things’ that seem to fill the silent space of my knowing… thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensual input, nearly continuous conceptualizing in pursuit of meaning. And sometimes, a glimpse, when the ‘mind-things’ cease for the tiniest of an instant, it is possible to intimately see ‘through’ my ordinary way of knowing… as we say in TSK terms, to know the knowing…
Please read Michael Gray’s Blog [above] entitled, ‘A Deep Silence Beckons’…
Reading ahead in KTS, Chapter 18, Motion of Time, p. 83, regarding Time’s ‘different knowing’, Rinpoche uses a couple of helpful descriptors that might help us to recognize this different knowing when it suddenly appears. In a TSK Group meeting I desperately tried to describe sitting under the maple trees reading SDTS, just sitting with a paragraph for a half-hour or more, just allowing whatever might arise. And intermittently Time’s ‘different knowing’ seemed to reveal. Rinpoche writes:
“The motion of time’s rhythm is not tied to things or structures, nor is it abstract. The sense of time’s rhythm is awake within us; if we stay with this sense, not applying models or engaging the ordinary appearance of objects, we notice within time’s rhythm a specific embodying, a movement without movement, somewhat like floating.
For the ‘logos’ of the temporal order, this movement can be thought of as too ‘slow’ to observe. But for the frozen world of substances that the temporal order establishes, the motion of time’s rhythm (and the interactions it leads to) are on the contrary incredibly fast, like the ceaseless motion of particles in the subatomic realm.
The ‘bystander-outsider’ can only regard the motion of time’s rhythm as entirely inaccessible, its speed something from another dimension. Human experience cannot grasp it; conceptual models cannot make sense of it.”
While the chapter may seem dense to read, the description does resonate. On page 85 at the top of the page he writes:
“Internally, however, rhythm comes ‘before’ the ‘logos’, whirling the points of measured time and space into being, ‘establishing’ the ‘logos’ and its ‘order’. ‘Points’ express the rhythm through which they arise and which sustains them. First they emerge from the ‘body of energy’; only second do they conform to the ‘order’ of the ‘logos’.”
The point being made here is, you can experience [glimpses of] times different knowing… and when you recognize this different knowing in your every day experience, it changes everything.
Several months ago I posted on this forum about our TSK Study Group discussions regarding noticing the seemingly simple, humble moments, and the importance of appreciating them, as a way into that ability to dwell in knowingness. I quoted a section from the book, ‘Keys of Knowledge,’ in which Rinpoche points out HOW. It is a simple, but profound pointing out. from Chapter 4, p. 96-99.
What Rinpoche seems to be saying, as he does in the above post, appreciation which springs from love and caring, that is pre-verbal, prior to the arrival of ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’, and sourced from the heart of being, is a different knowing, than our ordinary way of knowing… TIME presents a different knowing as Great Space allows. Rinpoche writes: “Simple appreciation for time and its presentations, free from the demands of need, is itself knowledge.” Read more at the link:
https://discussions.creativeinquiry.org/forums/topic/recognizing-dwelling-in-knowingness/
I wanted to post here the original CCI Facebook intro to Michael’s post above, from this link:
https://www.facebook.com/CenterforCreativeInquiry/posts/pfbid02NmNyPJskTvJZjF8FNfaD7ca2tJwhCJBGDF51YkmMXpsEExZ3XeT6zmpcup6aEjp4lTHE WALL AND ME…
“We do know that on some level and in some way time passes; that present will pass into past; that memory will fail us; that the time that arises as present will soon enough be gone. But this is knowledge from the outside; knowledge of time as a phenomenon that we observe rather than a truth that we live. Can we truly claim to know present time through such a knowledge, which takes form only with the passing away of time?”
….’Dynamics of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p. 78Author and long-time TSK student, Michael Gray, sees the writing on the wall… constructed, partitioned, and closing… a wall is a curious metaphor separating the ins and outs of subjective living, forming the unformulated into meaningful messages to share with others… time unfolds, but as with ‘listing’, we limit, and thus may miss the essence of the movement… on the other hand, were we to embody impermanence… we invite the vitality of living by focusing on the unshaped possibilities of the future.
I’m posting the introduction to Michael’s post above taken from the Center For Creative Inquiry Facebook page. See below:
You might imagine bricks are like thoughts, putting together stories, building a structured reality… the way we think we know how things are, shaped by our opinions, and presumptions. Rinpoche often writes about ‘how’ we have a hand in building up our world… for instance he says…
“Thoughts structure experience by ‘building up’ reality. Together with their content, they communicate the substantiality of that content—a sense of persistent qualities and independent ‘presence’: a special kind of ‘mass’ that exerts its own gravitational pull. This gravitational force in turn shapes what appears ‘to’ and ‘through’ the mind in ways that structure the whole, conforming to the established order.”
… ‘Dynamics of Time and Space,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p. 53It so happens, we have the ability to see through the brick walls of our put-together world-view—by examining the bricks. Michael Gray’s Blog looks at this… as a way to open or deconstruct our fabrications… Why? Well… perhaps by opening the present, we could allow for a less confining, ‘bricked-in’ future based on brick-like projections… which might in turn, accommodate a future of unthought possibilities… if we care enough to inquire…
AT THE LINK… Continue reading…
Sharing the initial CCI Facebook introduction and quote that lead into the poem posted above”
WHERE’S THE OPENNESS?
As TSK students, at some point we’re faced with a perplexity, a pickle, a Catch-22… we want to discover open mind… the blank availability out of which all our thoughts, and feelings arise. So we think about that primordial space… we imagine it. Unfortunately, when we imagine this space, we are creating a thought ABOUT it, which is NOT primordial or zeroless space we seek. Rinpoche writes…
“In order for thoughts to appear… [there is] a blank availability… But just as with physical space, this ‘no-thing’ is in fact the opposite pole of ‘something’: the indispensable prerequisite for substance to arise. Starting from the ‘zero-point’ of thought, points take form as solid, and [the prior] zeroless space disappears into the dichotomy of substance/nothingness… substance proliferates, and the transitional constructions of multidimensional appearance give way to a reality that has already been established.”
“It might seem that we could cut through these complications by going to direct experience, prior to all thoughts. But is this alternative really available? We do seem to experience and act non-conceptually; for example, when we perform a habitual action such as walking without having to think about each step along the way. Yet even if such everyday ‘NO-THOUGHT EXPERIENCES’ are in one sense undeniable, THEY ARE ALSO INACCESSIBLE. AS SOON AS WE FOCUS ON SUCH AN EXPERIENCE, WE MAKE IT AN OBJECT OF THOUGHT AND THUS LOSE THE EXPERIENCE ITSELF. If we claim we can rely on the experience without describing it, this claim is again the product of thought.”
“We are caught in a dilemma… Though there may be awareness without thoughts, it is not clear how this awareness can be transmitted forward into the next moment in order to be known without thereby making it the object of the thinking mind… In its initial arising, its popping up, THOUGHT APPEARS to be dimensionless. Even if a transition to dimensionality follows at once, THERE MUST STILL BE AN INSTANT WHEN THE ARISING THOUGHT IS NOT YET COMMITTED TO ITS CONTENT; WHEN IT REMAINS FREE TO TAKE VIRTUALLY ANY FORM AT ALL.”
“We have grown accustomed to thoughts that establish a world and are themselves established, defined exclusively in terms of their content. But IN THIS INITIAL MOMENT, THE THOUGHT IS UNESTABLISHED, AND THE WORLD IS UNESTABLISHED WITH IT. Could we stay with the freedom of this being unestablished, savoring its flavor?”
….’Dynamics of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p. 54-6 [Emphasis added]
Hi Michael,
I love your inquiry, perhaps inspired by the quoted questions that Rinpoche posed:
“What is beyond the cosmos? What does light reveal when there are no objects to reflect it? Where can we go if ‘from’ is fused with ‘to’? What properties do we discover when nothing appears? What meaning does our life assume when there are no more stories to tell?”
Rinpoche goes on to suggest: “When the structures of linearity collapse into nuclear time, we inhabit the inwardness of time.” It seems natural to me to inquire of that openness: How does that feel? Ordinarily we focus-in, narrowing down, because as you say: “[Everything] is scattered so that nothing appears clearly and unambiguously.” And consequently, we don’t usually value that view, so we skip our attention over it in order to fixate a view we feel is anything but ambiguous. Because it feels more familiar and safer. I am reminded of some TSK practices designed to counter the devaluing of that seemingly ‘ambiguous’ or more open perspective. For instance, excerpts here…
TSK Ex. 29 – Awareness as a Reflective Surface, in which we are invited to: “Instead of manipulating your ‘mind’ or knowing capacity so as to seize upon objects and thereby know them, simply allow all objects to ‘be known’. At first, this amounts to adopting a more passive role than usual, conceding the active role to the perceived objects . . . they present themselves to your awareness. It is as though you, the subject, have become a neutral, reflective medium, like a mirror or the surface of a lake. Everything that draws near is accepted and reflected without your awareness itself doing anything, or changing in any way as a result of its responsiveness.”
Also related is…
DTS Ex. 22 – Return to Light, “…look within your thoughts and sensations for the quality of darkness. Become familiar with darkness; be ready to let yourself sink into it without losing awareness completely. Gradually you will be able to sense fluctuations within the dark: moments that are more luminous, when experience seems lucent and free. The quality is one of shining through, of a delightful aliveness. To dwell within these moments is to engage a familiarity with light that makes its own path…
Despite what the voices of ordinary experience may say, light is never far away. If our experience exhibits darkness, it is self-constructed. It is as though we had built a box of light, then climbed inside and closed the cover. Now we insist that we are surrounded by darkness, choosing to ignore that the box that shuts out the light is also made of light.”
So it seems the value of your questions, and the practice of TSK, is that they open that narrow focus on ordinary experience, allowing us to look within our own constructed constellations of mind, into their open source, and that we might feel that quality of light shining through, and learn to value it too. Rinpoche writes:
“In terms of our daily concerns, such investigation might prove extremely valuable. If emotionality and confusion could resolve into a space-like openness, the quality of experience could shift dramatically. Interpreting the mind in such terms might allow a different kind of knowledge, accommodating a ‘field’ of mental activity that could support more positive or complete forms of ‘minding’. Seeing mind as space or opening to space as alive with knowing might encourage new forms of experience: more vivid and fiery, more sharp and clear, more flowing and receptive, or more stable and balanced.” KTS p. 162