NAMAS
KĀLA-MAHĀVIGHNĀNTAKA-KĀYAYA
Please consider reading through this essay if you are familiar with one or more of the following: algebra, spreadsheets or databases, and/or Tom Cruise's holographic computer desktop interface as shown, via special effects, in Minority Report.
All the same, please feel free to ignore the next two paragraphs if not familiar with linear algebra and/or an OOPL.
Habitual patterns (Tib. bag-chags) can be understood by analogy to algebra and object-oriented computer programming. Habitual patterns are like data in a five-dimensional matrix. Or, they are like a database in which each of a limited number of data objects must be referenced as index of five row/columns: x, y, z, t, and R (R=rig pa or awareness) and where each such object instantiates a unique type.
As an abstract of that database, imagine a spreadsheet document, where for each sheet there are three rows (x,y, and z dimensions) and one column (t, or time). In each box is a bit of data -- a value, or (thinking as object-oriented programmer) an object that is identified as a coordinate of values x, y, and z, and t, and whose default value derives from some arbitrary function of values contained within the same matrix. Understand also that defaults change as a function of t which means some (but not necessarily all) objects in the superset database from which our document's present data derives will modify at each successive t and therefore also the properties of related objects in it. For this reason, the values on our sheet abstract are also liable to change, but only never all at the same time, and moreover, we assume their liability to change fluctuates according to cycles and epicycles.
Imagine that our personal karmic timeline spreadsheet document is navigable through an interface like Tom Cruise's in Minority Report. The document has 365 sheets, which are arranged in a circle or torus shape, through which one can browse at will and observe the changing data-objects in each cell. Each sheet has 86400 pages for its t or Time column, corresponding to the number of seconds in each day. A knower of three times (dus gsum mkhyen pa) can browse such a document and its 365 sheets ad libitum for any time, place, or being.
The three dimensions of (objective) material-spatial data contained in each such document derive from the kun-gzhi or ground-of-all (alaya) as karmic potentials, and from the fourth dimension of data structure which is instances of time. Though cyclical time, each instance of time is recorded after its occurrence with a constant value, and as a data object, contains a history of its own genesis to that moment.
So time has everywhere the same value in each moment, but not each moment of present time has the same value as the next or previous moment. The fifth dimension of this matrix, if any be reckoned, is timeless awareness (rig pa'i ye shes or R). Extending our implicitly mathematical metaphor, the value (=meaning) of time generally, or in any specific instance, is understood as a function of awareness. Awareness (rig pa) is potentially a function of timeless awareness (ye shes) which means awareness admits of two phases or degrees: (i) awareness (rig pa) as functionally equivalent to apperception (rang rig) and realized to be timelessly so in its every instance (so so rang rig pa'i ye shes), and (ii) awareness as not functionally so, which is unawaress (ma rig pa). Unawareness (ii) is functionally equivalent, for present intents and purposes, to every particular instance of possible experience (so so'i rnam par rig pa). In other words, in having a particular experience, we have awareness with a degree or functional capacity of unawareness. Particular instances of experience are glossed variously as "dualistic perception" (dvi-vijñāpti), "consciousness" (vijñāna) and so forth
When there is awareness (i), the value of time is timeless, hence the expression 'timeless awareness'; when there is unawareness (ii), the value of time relates to future and past time, and instantiates as habitual patterns or karma.
Timeless awareness, and karma taken together as a whole process, are like Tom Cruise with the mind of an accountant, browsing the toroidal 365-sheet data matrices of cyclical time that belong to any and every sentient being, seeing who owes what to whom, and then making them pay up somehow, the more painlessly the better.
The variance of time's value at each successive moment recorded in the sheet is a function of the relative presence (rig pa) or absence (ma rig pa=avidya) of awareness as the moment occurred. Since the strength or relative presence of awareness can fluctuate, so can the value of time in successive moments, and with that, the relative strength of karmic affect subject to awareness.
Understood (more or less) thusly, the supposition that every moment in time is equally a moment--yet every moment has a greater or lesser value in the scheme of repetitive cycle overlaid with epicycles of value-flux--provides a context for understanding what sri (pronounced 'C') means in Tibetan medicine, psychiatry and astrology. Of course it would beg the question of what we really mean by 'value' since mathematical or computer-programming-based metaphors aside, the value of time is unquantifiable due to its pure subjectivity --that is, either awareness or unawareness. Otherwise put, in the time frame of individual moments awareness is a Boolean data-type.
Somewhere in our successive moments of time, there are precious times that bless us invariably, dreadful times that curse us whether we know it or not, and a great many moments that seem unavoidably neutral or useless, irrespective of our wishes. Unavoidably positive, negative or value-neutral recurring moments are due to previous karma intersecting with the timeline and circumstances of our birth, as well as our conduct in this life. Altogether these would be termed srid (also pronounced 'C'), or cyclic existence, within this particular life.
In the particular context of habitual, potentially unfortunate or unforseen, or recurrent, or perhaps also 'deja vu' circumstances, such recurrent moments are known as sri. When those recurring moments build up, or instantiate, in connection with ongoing affect of previous spiritual disasters, they are termed dam sri and so on, with reference to literal and metaphorical demons from the past.
Since 'psyche' includes awareness as well as intentionality, we should understand 'psychic' as functionally equivalent in meaning to 'energetic'. By 'energy' let us understand not only what chemistry and physics could measure in us, but also what we can experience via various accomadations of our limited physicality to our mental, or rather spiritual self-empowerment. That means at some point undertaking discipline, which leads to transformation of habitual patterns, primarily by bringing them to awareness via some method or another. If we move the energy of speech and body, it is only due to the energy of the psyche itself. The energy of body, speech and mind are naturally inseparable, which at the level of the Buddha is known as Svabhavikakaya or Natural Essence Body.
'Energy' thus understood is what relates most directly in nature to so-called astrology. Astrology concerns the logic (or rather, the analogic) of 'stars' which for astrology, are either planets that reflect sunlight, or suns that give light. Earth is reckoned implicitly as a planet which has its own version of astrological influence on us. That influence relates to the times of year, and therefore also the seasons, and therefore also the elements, particularly as those are aligned with the cardinal points of the compass. In that connection so-called 'astrology' is practiced, for practical intents and purposes, as geomancy or feng-shui.
The sun's annual path on its ecliptic, through the twelve astrological constellations, is the measure of time in our aforementioned mathematical matrix analogy; the sun itself stands for the 'fifth dimension', or timeless awareness, which illuminates all and is final measure of all.
The earth's native astrology relates most vitally to the cycle of the Sun, through solstices and equinoxes. The cardinal and intermediate points of the compass, and the several seasons and subseasons of the earth's solar year, correspond to the eight eight trigrams of the I Ching and their several arrangements in a circular pattern. Each of those eight can be derived for every day, hour, minute and second of each day of the year, for each year of the sexagenary cycle (consisting of 12 animal years combined with 5 elements). Each sexagenary cycle has its own index in history, with its own prophecy in previous cycles and providing prophecies of its own relating to future cycles. In the Tibetan rendering, we are in the seventeenth rab-'byung or sexagenary era since that cycle was adopted.
So essentially are as many seasons, astrologically speaking, as there are moments in a solar year. This is the basic understanding of Tibetan astrology, which combines (among other elements) the teachings of the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) Tantra, deriving from 10th-century India or Central Asia, as well as ancient teachings of Chinese philosophy and 'astrology' (e.g., the trigram symbols and their various uses).
The upshot of the Tibetan view of astrology is that every minute, if not every moment, in every day of every year of our precious human lives has an accreted personal character that is unique (due to our previous karmically conditioned experience of the same moment in previous years), as well as a universal character that is unique but also interpersonal and pervasive in natural phenomena. Based on the latter universal character, the various qualities of the various times and subcycles of time in a year can be predicted and taken advantage of, through calculating the coincidence of the twelve year-animals and five elements with those of a particular person, persons, time(s) or place(s).
Understanding and recognizing the peculiar character of those times implies opportunity for liberation to the extent that in recognizing patterns of circumstances as those coincide on outer and inner levels of experience simultaneously in different phases of time throughout the year, one can eliminate the traces of previous habit instantiated by our personal karma at particular times or seasons, due to the cyclical or repetitive (and universal, interpersonal) nature of those times or seasons.
In any case one may simply rest in a state of recognition as those moments in time come up that uncannily incite or aggravate previous habits in similar moments before, and see therein the timeless, or at least repetive nature, of subjective and universal time as they coemerge and coalesce in each moment. In this there is nothing to remove and nothing to add. Subjective habit is first felt as impulse, which is not karma or action, and at the same time, the context of impulse is just an adornment of (or, a dimensional matrix that is part and parcel of) the time itself.
Together they are primarily energy patterns so on the path their manifestation is either liberated as it is, as pure display with sheer awareness, or transformed -- optionally -- by increasing and transforming their natural expression in union with the expression of the path. In this way, various practitioners of the three yanas knowingly, or unknowingly, relate the repetition of personal habit and temporal precipitation of habit as external circumstance to the cause of suffering and the arising of suffering, and then, via recognition, avoidance and positive endeavor, make an end to suffering via the path.
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