From Wholeness and Integration, Relax into presence, Practice, Path, Goal, and Mandalas in Empty Poetry
In about 2004 I noticed how many different interests of mine were centered on the experience of Presence. I sketched the diagram below, punched holes, and put it in my Geodex binder.
(Hopefully you’re reading this on a device that lets you expand the drawing. Here’s a link to a page that clarifies the words in the diagram).
Although Presence is most visible in the center circle, I also included the related terms mindfulness, awareness, and attention in smaller letters.
In early 2005 I typed up the first results of my attempt to clarify the closely related meanings of presence, awareness, attention, and mindfulness, using books I was reading by A.H. Almaas, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ken McLeod, and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.
I sketched this diagram around the same time as I made the 12/14/04 entry for Relax into presence in the Mantra Crystal section of my Progoff Journal.
When I read Rob Preece’s book The Wisdom of Imperfection a year later, in which he integrates his experience as a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and Jungian therapist, I was pleasantly surprised to see his circular diagram called The Cycle of Individuation. It had a circle in the middle with the word “Presence” in bold print and the words “Being, Suchness/no traveler—no path” in lighter print under it.
Reading David Hinton’s books about Chinese Taoism/Chan, Presence is always paired with the more fundamental Absence. This pairing shows up with different terminology in other flavors of Buddhism I’m into.
Presence and Absence
Relative and Absolute
Bearing witness and Not knowing
Form and Emptiness