4th moment

 

Recently I have been trying to read up on a few things, especially on Tibetan Buddhism. This talk of Chogyam Trungpa was in 1974 at the Naropa Institute in Colorado.

 This was never published then, but they have now after 30 years. Being totally ignorant of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy I found it very interesting and enlightening. So here I have some some high lights about `nowness`. I quoted part of his talk, the more important parts and some are are my words.

Beyond, Present, Past and Future is The 4th moment...

Chogyam Trungpa on meditation, the spiritual path, and sense of time beyond relative time.

We talk of stages on the path, in relationship to meditative practice, there is a problem here with the terminology. Meditation is more like a process of growing up and aging, it is not stage after stage, but a process of evolution, of development. You don`t become suddenly grown up. Meditation is a process takes place in you. Such a process takes place in accordance with one`s life situation. All spiritual development in an evolutionary process, that takes place constantly.

Sudden enlightenment, sudden glimpse, satori and other kinds of spiritual attainments needs enough preparation to be  sudden, needs to be in the right frame of mind  for such experience. Otherwise it can`t  happen at all. When we talk of suddenness and sudden flashes of all kinds, we are talking of in terms of conditional suddenness, conditional sudden enlightenment. Sudden enlightenment is dependent on the slow growth of the spiritual process, the growth of commitment, discipline and experience.This takes place not only in the sitting practice of meditation alone, but also through the lifelong experience of dealing with people, things in your life. And to work and learn from those experiences.

Scholastically and experientialy  there is no such thing as sudden enlightenment in Buddhism. So-called sudden enlightenment is simple insight, or understanding, on what we already have experienced. Its like `suddenly I saw a sunset`.What you are seeing is the situation that already exists, but making it sound dramatic, The sun dosn`t suddenly set.  It depends on your experience.

The point here is that there is continuity in the spiritual path. You begin solidly, progress solidly, and you evolve solidly. Don`t expect super normal-magic of any kind on the spiritual path.

No one can save us from the state of chaos or samsara unless we understand the meaning of chaos and confusion, unless we have experienced it, suffered from it. Otherwise we don`t notice it. You begin to feel uncomfortable , something bugging you constantly, when you realize this you are already making the journey. This spiritual journey  here discussed, nothing to do with the spirit, but self existing healthiness that everyone of us posses. The spiritual journey can onlytake place if we make ourselves available to the path. The path is you.You exist, so the path exists. It`s personal as well as impersonal. You discover the path, you are the maker of the path. Many others can tread your path. That`s the meaning of shanga, or community so others use that path.

The shamatha experience, the slow process of mindfulness that takes place on the beginner`s level, allows us to be available to ourselves. The starting point of shamatha practice of meditation, in which we begin to catch ourselves being a nuisance to ourselves. We find all kinds of problems, emotional hang-ups, physical problems ....with meditation.

First step is to make friends with yourself  accepting and acknowledging yourself. Work with subconscious gossip, fantasies...everything. And everything that you learn about yourself you bring back to the technique, to the awareness of the breathing, which was taught by the Buddha. Having made friends with yourself , you feel sense of relief and excitement.

Next is the experience  of vipashyana, which is a sense of fundamental awareness. Such awareness acknowledge the boundaries of non-awareness, the boundaries of the wandering mind.You accept the whole situation as part of basic awareness.

Not only are you aware of your breath, posture, and you thought processes, but you are fundamentally mindful and aware. There is a sense of totality. You are aware of everything in the room...cushion, furniture, rugs, aware about yourself...the color of your hair, eyes, what you did that day. You are constantly aware of all things. Beyond that there is non-conceptual awareness that does not talk in terms of facts and figures. You have a fundamental abstract level of awareness and of being. There is a sense that `this is taking place.




Something is happening right here`. A sense of being, experience without words, without terms, without concepts, without visualization which.takes place. It is unnamable. We can`t call it `consciousness` because that implies you are evaluating or conscious of sensory input. We can`t even call it `awareness`which could be mis understood. It`s a state of being.


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Being what? It is just being without any qualifications. This may sound vague, but not at all.There is a very strong energy . A powerful thing that is taking place. There is a shock, the electricity of being pulled back into the present constantly; here, here, here. It`s happening. It`s taking place. Interesting dichotomy, one hand we don`t know what is happening, on the other hand an enormous understanding.




That is the state of vipashyana, the state of realization or insight.You begin to see inside you mind on the level of non verbal awareness. Non verbal cognitive mind is functioning. You hear, see all, but you don`t hear , don`t see all at the same time yet many things are happening .That`s totality  taking place. A very precise something or other is happening. That is the sate of vipashyana.It`s nonverbal and non conceptual and electric. It`s neither ecstasy or state of dullness. Rather a state of `hereness` is taking place in Tibetan Buddhist literature it`s know as `nowness`.

Nowness is referred to as the 4th moment.




You have past, present, future, these are 3 moments Then there is the 4th moment. A state of experience that does not belong to the `now`. It belongs to a non-category. That is the state of vipashyana or the state of non-ego the term in Tibetan term, `ihakthong dagme tokpe sherap`, which means `the knowledge of egoless insight`. It is a very real experience in which nothing can be misunderstood, an overwhelming experience.The experience comes at you. You experience it precisely and in great detail.

With that point of view, you are able to work with yourself and your life situations because there are constant reminders that are taking place in your life, all kinds of hassles arise, family, bills, health commitments that demand attention.You can`t afford to forget about them....all kinds of past and present are happening. There is a constant state of turmoil. Problems happening constantly.






If you look closely at where the problem came from and and what it is all about, you begin to experience the 4th moment. Problems come, problems go but still remain problematic. That is the state of the 4th moment. It`s not that the devil is against you, trying to destroy you. Rather the world is very powerful , and in  its subtle way trying to remind you that you should remember your 4th moment- the fourth moment.  That what is happening in vipashyana experience. Experience becomes so real and precise that it transcends any reference.You are practicing life, in fact ironically you feel that life is practicing you.

Experiencing the 4th moment is an important point in the process of spiritual development. You actually realize that you are on the path, and everything in you path begins to haunt you. Sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful. A ghost haunting you all the time, you can`t get rid of it. That state of insight and the state of being simultaneously is the  experience of the 4th moment.

The state of hauntedness is the state of the ego, actually. Somebody in your family, some parts of your being, is beginning to complain that they are getting uncomfortable messages. In other words the vipashyana awareness of the 4th moment cannot materialize unless there is a slight tinge of being haunted by your own ego. The hauntedness and the sense of insight work together. That is what creates the experience. The experience cannot happen unless there is a black and white, sweet and sour working together. Otherwise you are just absorbed into the black, or into the sweet, and there is no experience. You have no way of working with yourself at all.

When we talk of the  experience of the 4th moment, we are not talking about a programmed predictable experience as such. We are talking about an experience that comes from the unconscious mind. In terms of the underlying consciousness or the unconscious, we are referring to an abstract state of mind, a state of literal thinking that dosn`t have logic formulated yet. You just have a sense of ape instinct or radar instinct. In fact we don`t know where the experience comes from. It just comes. Maybe from God, Adam or as in Buddhism, You are just you. So it dosn`t come from anywhere.  No point in trying to trace it back. It simply exists.

The present is the 3rd moment, it has a sense of presence. I can feel the presence. The 4th moment is the sense of totality. Basic awareness is taking place that dosn`t need any particular reassurance as such. It is happening. It is there. You feel the totality. The 4th moment is a much larger version of the 3rd moment. Without the experience of the 4th moment, there isn`t enough intelligence taking place. You are just accepting naively, and that naivete may become the basis for spiritual materialism. Naivete is believing in something that dosn`t exist, which means that is becomes a sense of ignorance or stupidity.

Whenever there is a reminder, it is part of the 4th moment. If there is a reminder everything becomes very real. If you don`t have a reminder , you are just at the mercy of chaos, samsara. That is why the sitting practice of meditation is so important. It all boils down to that.