2009.03.08 13:00 - Zeroth time

The guardian at this session was Maxine Walden.  The comments are hers. 

Last week this guardian meeting decided it would like to have a focussed topic.  And after some discussion it was decided that Pema and I would co-moderate the discussion on Zeroth time.  While I have deleted all the hellos and initial greetings to focus on the heart of the discussion it should be said that 14-16 people attended this meeting with some coming and going.

After some preliminaries we begin the discussion with a lovely introduction by Pema.

Maxine Walden: We are still gathering, but Pema we were going to do zeroth time today, do I recall that correctly?
Pema Pera: yes, indeed!
Pema Pera: I suggest that both of us give a little introduction, and then we all join in, the whole group, on the theme of "zeroth time", is that okay with you, Maxine?
Maxine Walden: very good, Pema
Pila Mulligan: in doing so, please try to make the concept simple -- for non-sciene types :)
Pema Pera: While Maxine and I are focusing on the theme, can someone else IM newcomers with basic instructions?
Pema Pera: will do, Pila -- no science involved here :)
Pila Mulligan: cool, thanks
Maxine Walden: yes, that would be helpful, for someone else to IM the newcomers
Fefonz Quan: I can do that
Fefonz Quan: what instructions are they though?
Pila Mulligan: thanks Fefonz
Pema Pera: thank you Fefonz!
Pema Pera: various options, you can basically give them the URL of PaB wiki and ask them whether they mind being recorded, or give them a note card
Pema Pera: like what you get when you click on the blue sign behind Maxine
Pema Pera: same what you always do when you are the guardian on call
Fefonz Quan: ah, sure, i forgot we are on pab and thought of a time workshop :)
Wol Euler: evening everyone, sorry I'm late
Pema Pera: So Maxine, why don't you start off, then I follow and then we all join in the conversation
Maxine Walden: Pema I would appreciate your beginning with an intro, you have such good 'plain speak' about these issues
Pema Pera: hahaha, sure, Maxine

Pema begins his introduction of zeroth time:

             Pema Pera: Well, let me try to summarize afresh how I see PaB

Pema Pera: We all stroll together on the beach, near the shoreline between the relative and the absolute, looking for pretty pebbles
Pema Pera: there are three things we do with the pretty pebbles
Pema Pera: we see them, share them, compare them
Pema Pera: Knowing is useful, knowing about pebbles, but by itself that doesn't yet give you a pebble
Pema Pera: you have to find them, and to find them you have to see them, recognize them
Pema Pera: Then the name of the game is to share them, not to hoard them for yourself
Pema Pera: and in sharing the point is to compare them, to learn from what we all have found
Pema Pera: to learn together, that is our play
Pila Mulligan: :)
Pema Pera: now what is the sea and what is the shore?
Pema Pera: The shore I have called the relative, and the sea the absolute, but that may be hard to grasp
Pema Pera: Just today I read a book I had just bought, and the author, Tsoknyi Rinpoche had two nice terms for absolute and relative
Pema Pera: The book is called Hinting at Dzogchen, published last year, 2008, very nice book
Wol Euler: hello ade
Pema Pera: I started reading the second chapter, p. 49 tp 94
Pema Pera: couldn't put it down
Pema Pera: So the author talks about the fictional and the superfactual
Pema Pera: instead of the relative and the absolute
Pema Pera: I like that: the relative world we (think we) live in is the realm of the fictional. We live in concepts and lables, the fictional, we talked about that at length wth Wol et al. this morning
Pema Pera: the absolute, the other side of the coin is the realm of the superfactual, that what goes beyond the realm of facts
Pema Pera: in any case, these are all just names, but it is sometimes nice and refreshing to use new names
Pema Pera: Now past-present-future times, all three of them, are what governs the realm of the fictional
Pema Pera: and fundamental time, zeroth time, that comes before the 1 2 3 times of PPF, past present future, is part of the superfactual realm
Pema Pera: at lesat roughly speaking (this is all not quite correct, more a first approximation)
Pema Pera: So to sum up:
Pema Pera: here we are, walking up and down near the shoreline
Pema Pera: in the sand of the fictional, getting our toes wet with the superfactual
Pema Pera: and we see, share and compare the pretty pebbles we find
Pema Pera: Maxine, over to you!

After such an elegant introduction I feel I have little better to offer as introduction so I then begin to focus on the possible pebbles of zeroth time.  And many interesting contributions arise from the ensuing discussion. 

Maxine Walden: Pema, using your metaphor of the sea as factual, what is the sense of zeroth time, then. How do we sense it, relate to it, as it is not one of the pebbles ?
arabella Ella: hiya
Maxine Walden: Or do we know how to sense it, relate to it?
Pema Pera: our experiences with zeroth time are the pebbles
Pema Pera: we don't speculate or argue
Pema Pera: we share what we see
Pema Pera: we all see something
Pema Pera: that we share adn compare
Pema Pera: and learn together that way
Maxine Walden: So a pebble for me is the everpresent never cresting wave of now...that would be one pebble for me
Pema Pera: beautiful pebble, Maxine!
Maxine Walden: But that might be thought of as the pebble of the present...
Maxine Walden: still it is not as much a creation of my imagination (I think) as the past and the future might be
Maxine Walden: (I will pause here for a bit...)
Pema Pera: shall we invite all of us to join in, Maxine?
Maxine Walden: yes, let's do, inviting others to join in
Pila Mulligan: time is usually measured by sequence and duration, but an individual's history and the future are more commonly perceived in particular places and conditions (situations)
Fefonz Quan: though we have memories of sequence
Pema Pera: yes, space and time are interwoven
Maxine Walden: and those memories do influence how we experience the moment
Pema Pera: Fefonz, can you hold up a pebble, an experience that may hint at zeroth time?
Fefonz Quan: hard to say, i try it hard to jump from being in the present to zeroth time
Pema Pera: any experience that comes anywhere close to, or in the direction of, an eternal now?
Pema Pera: Fefonz or anyone? We have to start with raw material!
Pema Pera: not speculation
Adams Rubble: the pebble is rounded as a result of timless forces acting upon it
Maxine Walden: Perhaps when I am involved in a project I lose all track of time and all that exists at that moment is an ongoing now
Pema Pera: yes, that's another nice one, Maxine!
Pema Pera: each pebble is a hint at what 0th time could be
Pema Pera: a pointer
arabella Ella: to me the smell and touch of the smooth pebble go beyond time as we know it
Fefonz Quan: sometimes when i hear a certain song, it's like being in all teh places i've heard it before at once
Pema Pera: can you say more about that, Arabella?
Pema Pera: very nice one, Fefonz, yes!
Pema Pera: we're collecting!!
arabella Ella: yes ... pebbles here have an eternal smell of salt water, the touch
arabella Ella: on the other hand is so smooth and so perfect
stevenaia Michinaga: for me it's the point of the pen on the paper
arabella Ella: it seems like it has been formed by supernatural forces
Adelene Dawner: Fefonz, yes - music is a common example but any very sensory experience can do that.
arabella Ella: which the ocean is of course ... as u said the absolute
Pema Pera: yes, as Adams, said, Ella, throug "timeless" interactions
arabella Ella: yes
Pema Pera: ah, nice Steve, that's very graphic!
arabella Ella: yet perfect in its own way yet unique too
stevenaia Michinaga: a moment of continuing contact
Pema Pera: yes, Ella, beyond unique and universal, embracing both
arabella Ella: exactly
Pema Pera: and yes, Steve, the point is the whole paper
Pema Pera: adn you and the pen
Fefonz Quan: right adelene, though i find the abstraction in music an advantage here
Pema Pera: all given togetehr
arabella Ella: time would never destroy the pebble with its timeless strength
Adelene Dawner nods to Fefonz.
Pema Pera: yes, Adelene, whatever triggers it is fine! We can find pebbles by hitting them with our big toe or stepping on them or seeing them glistening in the sun, doesn't matter
Adelene Dawner was noting a pattern, more. ^.^
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: anymore other pebbles?
Fefonz Quan: In some cases i had the feeling that the causes for things happening are in the future, not in the past
Fefonz Quan: like reversed causality
Pema Pera: can you describe that more, Fef?
Pema Pera: how that actually feels?
Mickorod Renard: I feel that too,,like destiny is written
Fefonz Quan: likes some events happen, and after a while they converge into an event in the future that was their "cause"
Fefonz Quan: no, not destiny written in a sense
Pema Pera: beautiful pebble, Fefonz, yet another reminder to open up beyond our usual causal PPF picture
Pema Pera: any other pebbles, anyone?
arabella Ella: i see timelessness too when a pebble skims and bounces off the surface of the water
Pila Mulligan: how about a story?
Pila Mulligan: last month I moved into a house I've been working on for three years, at the begining I lived in a tent here for a week or so each month, and at first I'd take the tent down and put it up each time, but then decided to try leaving it up during the interim absence, and the first time I did that there was a big storm. I came here after the storm in some trepidation to see the site, and walking through the forest as I came to the last corner on the trail before the tent site an owl flew in front of me an landed in a tree where it could see both me and the tent site I could not yet see, it would just look at me, then the tent site, as if saying 'I see what's on your mind, human' -- for me that was an 'aha' moment of recognition of impermanence, as the owl became the most lucid participant in the moment (and my recollection) of that personal drama
arabella Ella: defying gravity for some time
arabella Ella: that is so moving Pila
Pema Pera: wonderful story pebble, Pila!!
Maxine Walden: very interesting, Pila
Pila Mulligan: owls are cool :)
Mickorod Renard: nice Pila
Pema Pera: great skimming pebble too, Ella
Maxine Walden: very wise...
Wol Euler wonders whether to toss in as an example of timeless, a single utterly perfect kiss that I had once. It might have been ten seconds or twenty minutes, I truly can't say.
Wol Euler: *timelessness. duh
Pema Pera: beautiful, beautiful, Wol ! ! !
Pema Pera: a real gem !!
Maxine Walden: a kiss which lives timelessly for you
Wol Euler: still.
Pema Pera: many of us must have those memories, Wol, I certainly do too
Maxine Walden: yes, Wol. Wonderful
Mickorod Renard: I have let a handful of sand slowly fall from a gap in my grasp,,slowly,,and been transfixed
arabella Ella: yes Wol I think that evokes timeless memories in many of us
Riddle Sideways: Hi Everybody, sorry I is late, but how can I belate in timelessness?
Pema Pera: :)
stevenaia Michinaga: and a want for an everlasting moemnt
Pema Pera: yes, Mick, I can almost feel it!
Squee: The education of a person is never completed until he dies.
Mickorod Renard: loosing onesself in the moment
Pema Pera: in what way Mick?
Pema Pera: pebbles have to be specific :)
Pema Pera: not the pebbleness but specific pebbles
Pema Pera: ah, about the sand?
Mickorod Renard: well,,seeing the individualness of the grains,,
Pema Pera: ah, yes, sorry
Mickorod Renard: doin there own thing
Pema Pera: didn't connect the two lines :)
Maxine Walden: perhaps certain painful moments can also seem timeless (unfortunately), sort of the other side of the coin from Wol's example
Mickorod Renard: detaching ones other thoughts
Pema Pera: yes, do you have an example, Maxine?
Adelene Dawner thinks this is why she brought stimmy toys to the meetup, maybe... we didn't, but they can be good tools for that kind of thing.
Pema Pera: a specific pebble?
Maxine Walden: pain frozen in time, like a specific trauma which seems to linger, or to become more than the timespan of its occurrence
Maxine Walden: that example may be an agglomeration of pebbles...not sure, would like to think more about that
Pema Pera: (perhaps not appropriate to ask for more specificity, Maxine, or . . . ?)
Pema Pera: oop, simultaneous writing :)
Mickorod Renard: what about a revelation?
Maxine Walden: oh, let me find an example: yes, an episode which triggered great shame at a vulnerable age, when I was an adolescent, still triggers that same shame now, decades later...as if the pain, unless I am careful, involves all of time
Pema Pera: sure -- can you give a specific pebble, Mick?
Pema Pera: would you care to give us a hint at what it was, Maxine, or is that too personal perhaps?
Wol Euler nods to Maxine
Maxine Walden: no, not too personal: as a young adolescent I had exhibitionistic fantasies, to show off to a crowd of my peers, but what I did not notice was that my slip was showing...
Maxine Walden: and when I got the reaction I did, one of being laughed at, the 'showoff' part of me felt very shamed when I so wished to be admired
arabella Ella: yes embarassing moments do have an element of timelessness altho somehow time seems to lessen the memory and soften it somewhat
Fefonz Quan nods
Pema Pera: that's a very striking pebble, Maxine, thank you so much for sharing it!
arabella Ella: but also accidents seem to stop time
Fefonz Quan: though the last example, with others, might point to our "preferd" memories, in a way, apart from time itself
Pema Pera: so what we are doing here is using the water of the superfactual to rinse the sand off the pebbles, the sand of the fictional . . . .
Mickorod Renard: I spent most my life contrlolling things,,so i could have a future of my design,,then one day I realized that i had been duped and that I had no control over it
Pema Pera: so you had to drop that sense of time then, conrol time, another nice pebble, Mick!
Pema Pera watching the beautiful pile of pebbles that has been found, held up, and shared . . . .
Pema Pera: what shall we do with all these pebbles?
Mickorod Renard: yes,,it was a stunning moment
Pema Pera: how to compare them, what to learn from them?
Maxine Walden: perhaps our seeing the commonalities, that we all share these moments, pebbles to some degree
Fefonz Quan: leave them on teh shore and step into the ocean, if only we knew how
Riddle Sideways: we could play with the pileof pebbles
Adelene Dawner grins at Fef.
Adams Rubble: yes Maxine, our humanity
Maxine Walden: indeed, Adams, our humanity
Riddle Sideways: we could try to skip them accross the fountain water
Adams Rubble: maybe we just hug each other
Corvuscorva Nightfire smiles.
Adelene Dawner: ^.^
Corvuscorva Nightfire: that might work.
Fefonz Quan: yes, that might work in RL ...
arabella Ella: we could treasure the lovely ones like that of Wol
Mickorod Renard: maybe we can join the flow
Maxine Walden: and/or we can let the pebbles just be and realize them to be pebbles as it were,

Pema suggests our upcoming explorations for the coming week, re pebbles of zeroth time and experience, to see what other pebbles we might notice

Pema Pera: how about this: we can spend the coming week, in RL and SL both, on the outlook for more pebbles to share, either next week, or in our PaB google group -- and the very "on the outlook" is likely to open our eyes further for zeroth time, dont' ou think?
Pema Pera: and then next week we can continue in the same vein
Wol Euler nods
Mickorod Renard: great
Scathach Rhiadra nods

I have to ask for a substitute guardian and co-moderator for next week.  And after some discussion, Wol, who has been such an angel for me in this stead before agrees to step in.

Maxine Walden: seems like a nice idea. Just to mention I cannot be here next week; would someone like to be co-moderator and perhaps take the chatlog as well (my tasks for this meeting)
stevenaia Michinaga: interesting way to create a beach
Riddle Sideways: ok
Pema Pera: ok to Maxine, Riddle?
Pema Pera: as goc?
Riddle Sideways: if I can be here
Pema Pera: perhaps someone else, if you're not sure, Riddle?
Wol Euler would normally offer but isn't sure she is the right person for this hob
Mickorod Renard: I may know what to do by next week
Pema Pera: oh she is, Wol :-)
Wol Euler: but I'm all dazed and confused about it...
Pema Pera: Wol and Mick, who will it be?
Pema Pera: that's perfect, Wol !
Pema Pera: that's a vital step
stevenaia Michinaga: grins
Pema Pera: in letting go
Pema Pera: seriously
Maxine Walden: I'm dazed nearly all the time, Wol
Adams Rubble suggests spinning the milk bottle
Mickorod Renard: well done wol
Wol Euler sticks out her tongue at Adams
Adams Rubble: hehe
Pema Pera: no crying over spilled milk, Adams :)
Pema Pera: Wol it will be then!
Mickorod Renard: grin
Pema Pera: thank you Wol !

Wol introduces the topic of milk, which gets some interesting associations going

Wol Euler: ((milk was a common theme in two discussions this weekend btw)
Adams Rubble: Yay Wol
Maxine Walden: Oh, wol, an angel again!!
Wol Euler smiles modestly
Maxine Walden: Interesting that Milk occurs in our discussions, maybe something about how nourishing these times are?
Adams Rubble: :)
Pema Pera: our way, the Milky Way !
Wol Euler: or perhaps the fragility of appearance and perceptoin...
Pema Pera: churning butter . . . .
Riddle Sideways: the milk that feeds us babies
Maxine Walden: interesting associations, spilling milk but churning it into butter
Fefonz Quan react quite negatively to milk...
Fefonz Quan: reacts*
Pema Pera: how aboutbutter Fef?
Maxine Walden: also...milk has many forms
Adelene Dawner snickers. "I shouldt''ve quieted Squee."
[13:57] Squee: The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
Fefonz Quan: worse!
Wol Euler nods to Squee
Pema Pera: play as science, squee
Squee: ^.^
Maxine Walden: wonderful discussion. Have to go. Thanks Pema and everyone
Wol Euler: bye maxine, take care.
stevenaia Michinaga: thanks Pema and MAxine
Mickorod Renard: bye maxine
Adams Rubble: bye Maxine, thhanks :)
Fefonz Quan: Thanks maxine and Pema :)