Time, Space, Knowledge and Creative Inquiry

Transcript, including graphical montage, summary, questions explored, and key takeaways

Summary
This conversation explores Time, Space, Knowledge (TSK) as a way of deepening inquiry and loosening fixed assumptions about reality. It also looks at how creative practice, everyday work, and spiritual study can become experiments in seeing differently.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is the TSK vision, and how does it open up spiritual inquiry?
• How does creative inquiry differ from approaches that rely on fixed beliefs or explanations?
• What happens when we question our assumptions about space, time, and personal experience?
• How can ordinary work and daily life become a practice of deeper understanding?
• What role do variation, perspective, and language play in transforming how we know?

Jack Petranker is the founder and director of CCI and regularly offers programs and online courses. A student of Buddhism since 1973, he is also the director of the Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages and a faculty member at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute. He served as Dean of the Institute in Berkeley from 1988-1991 and as North American Vice-President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists from 1988-1992.

He is the author of When It Rains Does Space Get Wet?: Learning to Live the Time-Space-Knowledge Vision (Perspectives on Tsk) (Dharma Publishing 2006), and has written numerous academic articles in consciousness studies, organizational change, political transformation, and the value of work as a spiritual practice.

Jack holds a BA from Stanford in political science, an MA from the University of California at Berkeley in political theory, and a JD from Yale Law School. He has been a member of the California Bar since 1971.

Other books:

• Light of Knowledge: Essays on the Interplay of Knowledge, Time. & Space (Perspectives on Time, Space, and Knowledge)
• New Way of Being
• New Kind of Knowledge

The Center for Creative Inquiry

Interview recorded 3/8/2014

YouTube Video Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction to Jack Pertranker and the Center for Creative Inquiry
• 00:02:26 – Creative Inquiry and the TSK Vision
• 00:04:33 – The Nyingma Tradition and the Wealth of Practices
• 00:06:45 – The TSK Vision and the Center for Creative Inquiry
• 00:08:43 – Fishing in the Same Ocean
• 00:10:48 – Tapping into a Deeper Source of Creativity
• 00:13:08 – The Buddha’s Dilemma: To Teach or Not to Teach
• 00:15:02 – Layers of Conceptual Assumptions in Understanding
• 00:16:47 – The Value of Variations
• 00:18:34 – Leaving Dry Land
• 00:20:04 – Introduction to TSK (Time-Space Knowledge)
• 00:21:22 – The Fundamental Notion of Inquiry
• 00:23:32 – The Interconnected Nature of Inquiry
• 00:25:45 – Two-Way Sensing and Questioning Assumptions in Self-Knowledge
• 00:27:14 – Challenging Assumptions in TSK
• 00:28:43 – The Life Drain in Routine Work
• 00:30:41 – Happiness in Occupations
• 00:34:35 – Living with an Open Heart in the Face of Tragedy
• 00:39:30 – Expanding the Perspective through Space
• 00:47:07 – The Earth Does Not Move and the Nature of Experience
• 00:52:40 – The Possibility of Personal Experience
• 00:58:05 – TSK: Everyday Teaching and Practices
• 01:04:07 – Becoming aware of space and questioning its relationship with objects
• 01:08:17 – Questioning Assumptions about Knowledge and Time
• 01:12:09 – The Dynamics and Structures of the Self
• 01:14:32 – Writing Plans and Challenges
• 01:16:26 – Stretching Capacity to Understand
• 01:18:18 – Exploring Different Perspectives
• 01:20:18 – Global Engagement and Language Diversity in TSK
• 01:22:13 – Concluding Remarks
• 01:23:47 – Discussion Group, Donation Button, Email Notifications and Audio Podcast Subscription