The Path of Time-Space-Knowledge (Practice Notes, Part 2)

This entry is a second installment on a series of practice notes I plan on posting from a recent TSK retreat I attended.  The first can be read here.

Midway through the retreat, after we had spent several days inquiring into the structure and operation of the self and exploring its relationship to knowledge, time, and space, we took an afternoon hike down the mountainside to visit a beautiful beach set in a rocky cove.  Jack Petranker, our teacher, had asked us to make the hour-long hike in silence, and although he did not assign any specific practices, I decided to practice Exercise 16, "Space-Time-Knowledge on the Conventional Level," on my way down.  I've worked with this exercise before during regular walks and often find it fruitful and enlivening. (It asks you simply to practice viewing ordinary events and experiences through the lenses of time, space, and knowledge -- exploring experience in light of each of these fundamental distinctions, much as you might also contact first-, second-, and third-person distinctions in Integral practice).

I started with space, connecting with the space around me -- spaces of various distances between me and the trees, the slope of the mountain, the hints of sky above.  Then I moved into the feeling of occupying and moving through space, gliding through the corridor of trees, the body light and space-like, opening eventually into a sense of being space.  At one densely wooded area, I felt the unique "flavor" of this particular space, and reflected appreciatively on the fractal relationship between the complex, criss-crossing lines of the forest and the network of nerves, veins, and bones in my body, which I was envisioning in its transparent, "Giant Body" form.  (In the Giant Body exercises, you spend a number of days or weeks meditating on the nested structures and spaces of the body at multiple scales, modulating perspectives and opening up boundaries and distinctions, working with your body as you might with a yidam in Tantric practice).  This evoked a sense of kinship -- of layered, resonant spaces.

When we came to a steep slope and I began to feel the pull of gravity, I switched to a focus on time.  I felt into the pull of the slope, the tug of gravity and my muscles' response, and I imaginatively experienced that as "time."  But soon, my attention shifted outward and I began to contact "time" as distinction, differentiation, proliferation -- the abundant differentiating, creative, "time" of the forest.  At one point, I felt in touch with a markedly different time, the time of these still, upwardly reaching trees -- a different timing or rhythm in which I was now immersed.  Time was a fountaining upward instead of a horizontal, linear unfolding, dynamic but also still and centered.

As trees broke onto a light-filled clearing, with moss-covered branches shining whitely all around, I switched to meditating on knowledge -- the light of knowledge radiating everywhere in white branches and fluttering leaves.  I felt body, thought, feeling, vision (forest, trail, sky) all as knowledge, as known, as knowings.  The forest seemed illuminated inwardly by dreamlight, a virtual shimmering play of form.

Later on the walk, after losing track of the meditation for awhile, I tried to touch a more integrated sense of time-space-knowledge.  I first brought time and knowledge back in to awareness, and I found this led to more self-object differentiation, which evoked something close to the Subject-Object Reversal exercise -- the sense of being surrounded by a circle of knowing presences, with 'self' known instead of occupying the role of 'knower'. (See this blog entry for a more detailed discussion of this practice).  At one point, this experience took on a thrilling, slightly frightening edge, as I smelled a wild animal and began to imagine being watched by a bear.  A little while later, moving to bring in space as well, I appreciated the integral and elemental or fundamental nature of these distinctions: touching the time, space, knowledge of the forest was easy and natural, an appreciative acknowledgement of what was already "present" that seemed to bring a deep sense of well-being.  Space here was the "allowing" of these recognitions, which indeed were nourishing and enriching, as Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, the creator of TSK, says:

"Space and Time are not simply backgrounds or supporting mediums for our ordinary pursuits and experience; they can provide a very special and direct form of nourishment for our 'humanity' or human nature, which is usually fed only indirectly through the pursuit of sensory and emotional gratification. Our attitudes, emotions and even our actions are usually rather 'closed' states of being. We can use knowledge to open space and time, and to inspire personal growth and integration. The liberating presence of space and time shows us that within all stagnant and oppressive conditions there is actually room for movement and growth. We do not need to escape from these situations. Knowledge can inspire a new way of being in which the usual difficulties and conflicts which we experience in our daily lives--and which also seem to be inherent in the world situation--can be seen in a new light--they are no longer so rigid or unsolvable. As these experiences take on a more open, transparent quality, we are more literally able to create balance and harmony in our lives, and in our world as well."