4. Reports from the Field

Teachers' Voices

Within a decade of its publication, Time, Space, and Knowledge, the first book in the TSK series, had been adopted for use in over 100 university courses (Tarthang Tulku, 1990). I am not aware of any formal studies that have been conducted on the impact of TSK upon the experiences of teachers or students in these classes, or on the ways that TSK has been employed to structure courses or realize particular educational objectives, but several teachers have written personal accounts of their experiences that are worth considering. After discussing two of these accounts, one by a professor who introduced TSK exercises formally into his classroom and the other by a teacher who found TSK to be spontaneously informing his teaching style, I will close this section with quotes by several TSK students on the effects of TSK inquiry upon their lives.

In "TSK: A Teacher's Evaluation," Charles Davis, Ph.D. (1980), a professor of religion and philosophy at Appalachian State University, describes his experiences of working with the TSK Giant Body exercises in a course on New Testament studies. Before introducing the exercises to his students, he practiced them on his own and found them to be unexpectedly challenging, revealing aspects about his thinking processes and self-conception that had not been disclosed by his earlier work with yoga or psychotherapy (Davis, 1980, pp. 138-139).

One of his discoveries is particularly relevant to this study. Attempting to visualize the giant body, he found that he was not able to see it as a whole, but only as a series of parts which he then had to consciously relate to each other. This experience led first to the insight that, despite his extensive training in the holistic arts, Davis' (1980) thinking processes remained wedded to rather more analytical modes of cognition; but then gave way after continued practice to a visionary experience in which he was able to see holonically (pp. 139-141). In this experience, he found himself beholding a forest and its creatures from multiple levels and perspectives at once, as wholes and parts in nested relationships. Working with the exercises, deeply held structures were revealed both as unrecognized limitations and as constructs, allowing for a radical shift in perspective.

The power of TSK to effect such changes was born out in the experiences of his students as well, who reported a range of insights and personal benefits from the Giant Body and other exercises. Some of the experiences reported by the students (such as archetypal images or stories bearing an important message) might be expected to follow from the practice of most types of visualization, but others appeared to be connected directly to the specific aims of the TSK vision. In particular, after working with approaching and opening partitions and boundaries in the Giant Body exercises, students became more aware of their barriers to experience inside and outside the classroom, and were more readily able to call attention to them, engage them, and open them to inquiry (Davis, 1980, p. 145).

In "Teaching and the TSK Vision," Ken McKeon (2004) also calls attention to the power of the TSK practice of noting and opening boundaries that define and limit experience. In this brief essay, he describes how this process might show up in the exploration of a piece of literature. Following the recognition that limits are both an expression of knowledge and a space which can be entered, McKeon (2004) describes how students can be encouraged to explore the views expressed by authors as positions which enact particular spaces. Through inquiry students can learn to explore the boundaries which limit and define these spaces, and to open up and feel into their own reactions in the same way (p. 65).

Such an inquiry can go in any direction, McKeon (2004) suggests, touching personal and social concerns as the energy of time inspires new vision. The consolidation and "layering" of space in the classroom can be explored, inhabited, and the edges entered and opened. McKeon (2004) describes the experience in TSK terms:

The arising energies can be ridden like a wave. We have seen a particular space presented (the referents and meanings established by the text), and an activation of time (the various positions taken by the individuals involved). A sense of appreciation can be brought in here, a sense...of knowledge. As knowledge, or knowing, presents itself, a shift occurs. In the nutshell of this imagined class, the encouraging promise of TSK is being realized. (pp. 65-66)

The promise he is describing here is the activation of an appreciative inquiry that thaws pre-given structures or unquestioned perspectives and invites a more intimate knowing to the fore. In this essay, McKeon (2004) describes an imaginary composite class, but the sense of freedom and possibility he evokes is not an invention; it is one of the hallmarks of entrance into the fullness of time, space, and knowledge.

Such experiences are commonly reported by students of the TSK vision. I share a handful of them here. Unless otherwise noted, the following comments were previously published in an appendix of Visions of Knowledge (Tarthang Tulku, 1993, pp. 181-191).

Students' Voices

"The vision has taught me the meaning of challenging barriers that would normally have turned into beliefs and beliefs that would normally have turned into barriers. I have come to appreciate the aliveness and impermanence of appearance. Not one moment is the same as the next - now I can really see that. Nothing stands still. It's not that I've changed one view of reality for another; it's just that my views aren't limitations. Just seeing what it means to shift from one level to another has been liberating."

~*~

"What is most precious is that there is no part of my life that is outside the vision. This is really the basis for a complete education. I feel myself opening, and sometimes I am just flooded with wonderment."

~*~

"TSK gives me a process that lets me challenge my own rigidity and the impenetrable structures that have guided me in my professional conduct and standards, my relationships, and even my thinking. My whole approach has become more fluid and open. I look forward to bringing that openness to each new challenge."

~*~

"I am beginning to trust a different way of knowing. There is less sense of someone controlling something, and more a feeling of being in harmony."

~*~

"The vision has kept me face to face with continued not-knowing. A new way of being with this not-knowing has revealed a whole area of my life that had been opaque before. I have been able to contact the positive energy and actual nourishment within aspects of my nature that I had resisted."

~*~

"TSK experience shows me my habitual way of looking is narrowing my vision; a myopic observer who confuses past images with the future. I have to smile and look at the reflection in the mirror. What a fine recognizable image! A representation that recognizes itself, but also realizes it is a reflection of a representation. While there is something physical here, it just keeps evolving" (D. Filippone, personal communication, June 4, 2005).

"Tarthang Tulku points out that finding Space without understanding Time will not inform a higher level knowing. For me at least, I now understand in an embodied way, a few peak experiences will not transform by themselves, but instead, tended to fuel a searching, a kind of 'wondering' in the darkness, until Space allowed Time to introduce and inform, and I began to have an expanded understanding of their unfolding" (D. Filippone, personal communication, June 4, 2005).

"Working with my focal setting, by modulating this perspective, it has revealed some interesting things. I have seen that while merging the observing perspective with an arising object, that it provides a different view and new objects to behold, and while I may often feel a sense of freedom as a result, I don't always. While wondering why, I then realized that it isn't necessary to merge, only to allow the object to be compatible with its surroundings, since the object, the subject, and perceived space between them are all the same aware, sensing medium. Then I realized because these are all the same 'stuff' there really isn't any distance between them. Distance is an imputed quality that I am imposing on my own awareness. When I realized this, there was a definite sense of freedom from constraint and perspective opened noticeably" (D. Filippone, personal communication, August 10, 2005).

"The previous oceanic perspective being the widest focal setting so far prior to void, and the insight that all elements observed and the observer were of one sensing substance, and that 'distance' was simply a way of looking and not really there, all have brought to my practice a certain ease, a kind of fledgling skill for working with focal settings or perspectives. It is easier, at least in practice, to opt for space; to choose 'open' instead of cramped, to not get caught in the net of value attachments and projections, not by denying them, but by 'acknowledging' and 'allowing,' by not giving more weight to any element in favor of another. This is a direct experience of equanimity" (D. Filippone, personal communication, August 21, 2005).

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