2016.03.24 - Chapter 5: Time Presents

Exercise 16 - Space-Time-Knowledge on the Conventional Level

If you wan to locate Space, Time, and Knowledge in relation to the usual 'knowing self' picture, let all objects be 'space', the observing subject be 'knowledge', and the presentation of subject-object interation be 'time'.

(snip)

Simply relax your locatedness 'here', relax thelocating 'out there', and relax 'happening', 'now', and 'existence'. To relax them it is only necessary to notice them and include them in the Space-Time-Knowledge vision. By thus releasing all 'by-standers' and 'outside-standers', you may be open to more of what is 'here'.

The guidance Steven gave us, "The book is linear, and in a way that differs from the title (not my idea), but the vision is TSK, TKS, STK, KST, etc etc. Each makes the others more clear", fits especially well with this transitional place our exploration. Even the little hyphen appearing now between space-time-knowledge seems to serve as a reminder to me that TSK is not a static picture in which space can be held by our knowledge in one place or moment, time can not be placed under a microscope long enough to examine and gain knowledge to fill up our (head?) space with, space can not be captured in some way that is said to exist. Existence itself can not exist in that sense.

Space pouring into Time pouring into Knowledge, into Time, into Space, into 'me', into 'objects', into 'knowing', 'mind', 'knowing-mind', pouring time into knowledge into space-times presenting ....
 

Relaxing the partitions in the way described is at first disorienting. I feel a slight panic at the awareness of how much I am holding on. I think of the Rubin talk between Piet and Shekhar Kapur... Shekhar's parachute analogy (starts minute 46 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQJ1srXumCg) and his questions regarding linear time. Part of me, too, wants to measure progress from years of study of meditation, but there is none except this near-to-hand sensitivity and desire. I linger to taste the aspiration and want it to stay. Do I wish to relax to gain something - peace, insight, independence and autonomy? I think of Bruce. Therapy? Sinking farther. No, it is for its own sake. Pleasure, though not pleasure getting away from anything, just being.

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute.
The good news is there’s no ground.”
-
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

In doing a little reading ahead for the sake of planning our our April sessions, I stepped into the next exercise, 17. Tasting and remembering this exercise makes it very hard not to include it with mountain practice and what we might call chaos practice, too.