Whose Vision of Knowledge?
Availability of Vision – Tarthang Tulku
“Sit quietly and attend to the presence of sounds. You can use speech, music, or any sounds that happen to appear. Do not get trapped in the labels and significations that sounds bear, but concentrate on the quality of the sounds themselves. This amounts to learning to see more deeply into all Water Dropcommunicated presences, rather than being stopped by their surface partitioning.”
As I listen to the exercise, I hear my own confusion. I realize that I do not understand the natural exchange of energy. How can I exchange energy with the green plant in the corner? I breathe in the oxygen, but is that all the plant is offering me?
It is something that is in me. I comply with the exchange. It is outside of my will, and fully within it. Can I have a will without oxygen? What am I willing to give the plant? Does it have the same will? Why does it comply in the exchange? Why would I want to refuse? I do believe that I can have the knowledge to know.
I am the plant. I do what the plant does. If the plant has sufficient energy to make an exchange, then so do I. That makes me wonder if I watered my plants at home. See. It all connects. Sounds come with thoughts. Let go of the thoughts, what is left? My plants at home still need water.
I understand that I can get more access to knowledge. But whose knowledge is it? How can I know the possibilities of my own mind, if I still get distracted by a society that dictates me with lies? My own experiences that could teach me better, are rendered null and void. I need to continue to reprogram myself.
Whose information do I use to reprogram myself? I can get as much information as I can hoard, to get some more understanding. But, according to what plan? Does it matter if my tower of knowledge gets built in the ‘wrong’ direction? I might not have time to build it all around to cross the other side too.
I watch other people, and stop trying to get them to explain to me what it is that they do. I watch them, and watch the consequences of their behavior. I pay less attention to their justifications, and pay more attention to the patterns. They would not do what they do if it did not work for them. How is it working for them? The patterns that I could not see before, now talk to me.
I do not like how they get busy with me. They want to tell me what to do. They see something in me, and they want me to get rid of it. What is it that they see? I do not understand what they refer to. Even so, what are they willing to exchange for it? More of their confusion and lies?
Sadness engulfs me. I realize that my head is filled with false information. I hear the voices, and it is overwhelming. I want them to stop talking. Why? Why fight it? How can their voices hurt me? Those are voices from the past, they only have power in the past. Unless I let them have power in the present. In the present I do not want to hear them. I am angry for having listened to those voices in the past. I am angry at my own ignorance. I do not want to be reminded of it.
I let go of the emotions, and listen. If I know that they are sharing false information, then there is no need to fear them. I can listen, but not attach to what they say. If I got attached in the past, then I go back into the past in the present, and detach myself.
The voices are allowed to be. I can leave them in peace, no longer tied to them. I take hold of the pieces of myself that got attached, and listen to what they have to say. I listen more deeply, as I look at the plant. I am not to forget to water my plants at home.
