A beginner’s mind

Kinfonet Discussion
100

This is why I wonder if it is not more a matter of riding the wave :ocean: of our initial seeing of things.

It is disarmingly simple to look at a neutral or pleasant object - like a flower or a leaf :leaves: - and to just see it for a few seconds as it is in itself, for itself, with no internal commentary about it.

Anyone can do this. In fact it happens all the time in daily life - but we hardly notice these small acts of observation, noticing, being aware, seeing.

The Christians have a story about a mustard seed - the Buddhists also have a story about a mustard seed, a different one… The mustard seed is tiny, and yet it can grow into a plant much larger than one would anticipate given the size of the seed.

Similarly, I wonder if much more comprehensive states of awareness, attention, or even insight, have their origins in this simple capacity of the mind to notice things as they happen - i.e. the initial turning of one’s attention or awareness towards something that we see or hear or smell or touch (a leaf, a cloud, a the faces of people one sees from a bus window, the sound of a bird calling, the smell of ground coffee, the sensation of warmth or cold, etc)?

And to move with this wave :ocean: of initial seeing/hearing/smelling, etc?

Yes, this is the question: can we respond with several senses, with multiple senses, all at the same time (in the initial moment of perception)? - and move with this sensual-sensitive movement as though riding a wave :ocean:?

101

Worth experimenting with. I’ve been letting go of the desire for anything special. Things tend to go flat when the yearning for fireworks is gone. But it makes room for intensity to seep in.

102

I like the Zen approach here. They say what is important is nothing special. And yet within this ‘nothing special’ - i.e. of daily seeing, ordinary seeing; of one’s initial perception, initial awareness, initial sensing of things, etc - is potentially everything that is necessary (for something that may be truly special).

103

Is the idea to simply rest in ‘nothing special’ or to discover the ‘truly special’ via ‘nothing special’? A subtle but key difference!

104

Yes, I agree with you. Actually I didn’t mean an intellectual analysis but I thought that perhaps you could share some direct experience of it.

I think James gave a more articulated answer to this but I haven’t yet read it wholly. (I’m just back from a day by the sea-side, watching clouds… :grinning:) On the whole I have the same feelings as you, those glimpses of observation are important and they are an antidote to the folly of our society, and in my view they create in our minds the right state or attitude for an effective inside exploration. However, taking into consideration one basic feature of K teachings, that is: there is nothing which causes the insight, we cannot say that the outer observation leads to the inner, I mean there is no relationship of cause/effect between them. It might happen or it might not. One can be fully aware, silently aware, or choiceless aware of the physical world around us and yet be completely blind to one’s inner habits, conditionings and the effects those ones have on our psyche. Again this is not an intellectual speculation on my part but something I have experimented so far. So what I can say is that to really be aware of all the major causes of suffering, etc, one needs to observe oneself in relationship, during our dayly routine, and for this purpose we must have a swift mind.

But James says something that intrigues me: The initial moment of observation is what is important, in that moment we have the beginner’s mind and the possibility to find out something that was hidden. But I have to read the whole post.

105

I don’t feel it is a matter of resting as such, but of being carried by the wave :ocean: of attention/awareness/seeing. We don’t know in advance where this wave :ocean: will take us. It may take us nowhere. Or it may carry us all the way to the shore.

Of course, if we have the attitude that the wave :ocean: must take us somewhere special, then this means we are not actually riding it - we have already fallen off it (if you see what I mean).

So, in answer to your question, I think the nothing special of everyday sense perception (of one’s initial awareness or seeing or sensing of anything) can include, is inclusive (at least potentially) of the truly special - but one ought not make the truly special (which is really only a projection of one’s ideas, one’s thoughts) the focus or intention of what is there to be seen. Do you follow?

Actually, on an old post Voyager already touched on this point. He wrote:

We may not finish there - listening to the sound of the river may be the beginning of a psychological journey, into sound, into sensation, into the nature of the mind. Or we may just listen to the sound of the river.

So the attitude is one of openness, not closure, not drawing conclusions around what is seen/heard/sensed, etc.

106

Openness is needed to ‘tap into’ the unknown. Open-ended openness, truly free exploration.

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107

Hello James,
as I said to Sean I’m just back from a day out by the seaside, far from the confusion and ugliness of our civilization… those outings in nature satisfy my need for a different quality of observation and so for a different kind of relationship with the world and myself.

…and I found quite a lot to read and to absorb here… I’m slow at reading, especially in English.
If you read my last answer to Sean I expressed a kind of “not sure” attitude towards this issue of outer vs inner observation… then I read your post and it stroke a chord in me. Yes, I think you are right with that “initial observation”. And I was positively surprised by your quotations of K: O my! I had forgotten them! Thank you for reminding them to me/us. But what is worse I had forgotten everything I had written in my post “Start from here”, can you imagine? I see I have forgotten my initial nearly insight… and I know the reason for that… but that is another story.

But I have still in mind this problem of “no causation” about which K was very positive (see my answer to Sean) and which is also something that I understood from experience. Any clue?

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108

Isn’t this a question of moving with the quality of initial seeing which we can readily have with outward things, into the inward - but with the same quality of what I am calling initial seeing?

That is, it is easy to be choicelessly aware of the leaf or the flower :tulip:, but we do not generally carry this quality of choiceless observation into the inner (apologies btw for the emojis, sometimes they break the monotony of text for me!).

The inner being, for example, past hurts, past reactions of one kind or another, wounds, fears, anxieties, etc.

But the principle is the same. That is, to observe - if one can - one’s hurt, one’s wound, without the observer (the observer being one’s ideas about the wound, one’s conclusions about it, one’s theories about how one is going to observe it so that it ends), is the same thing as actually becoming initially aware of it as a sensation in the mind: just as one becomes initially aware fact that it is raining :cloud_with_rain:, or that the leaf is green :leaves: .

Do you see what I mean?

I don’t say that this is easy - as easy as outward seeing. But the two seeings are not actually different seeings.

So there is a possibility that one can ride the wave :ocean: of outward seeing, into the inner.

Clearly, if one has done this wholly, holistically, then one has ended psychological suffering - and so has the passion of compassion, etc. And I am not saying I have done this. But I see that the two seeings (the one I have to the clouds or to the faces of people going by on the street) and the seeing of the fact of my suffering or hurt, are in truth the same seeing.

So one’s existence, as I see it, is an experiment or opportunity to find out if these two sides of seeing can meet up, join hands, so that there is a seeing which covers the whole of one’s life, one’s mind, one’s consciousness.

But if one has this wholistic seeing as a goal, the danger is that one misses out on the seeing that is near at hand (and which is actual).

What do you feel about this?

I submitted my last post (this current post) without reading your most recent post, so perhaps you can let me know if this one is relevant to this question of causation you have just asked…

109

So there are cases where the question is all that matters, and cases where your knowledge/image of who/what posed the question matters most?

Does one dismiss a question because of its source, or see every question for what it is, i.e., a good question or not, regardless of its source?

110

How can one be “fully aware” and “completely blind” to any part of awareness? Wouldn’t that be partially aware, selectively aware?

this is not an intellectual speculation on my part but something I have experimented so far.

You’re very sure of yourself.

111

This formulation of the problem is what makes sense to me: no causation, just a possibility.
Finish. :man_mage: :grinning:

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112

When Your Lover Has Gone

When you’re alone, who cares for starlit skies
When you’re alone, the magic moonlight dies
At break of dawn, there is no sunrise
When your lover has gone
What lonely hours, the evening shadows bring
What lonely hours, with memories lingering
Like faded flowers, life can’t mean anything
When your lover has gone.

113

I don’t think Voyager was attempting to be scientifically or psychologically 100% exact in what he was saying. He was rhetorically posing a problem that exists for human beings.

He was - as I understand it - pointing out that one can be very sensitive outwardly, when it comes to one’s extrovert perceptions of the world, and yet, at the same time, be dulled, wholly ignorant, of large aspects of one’s inner being.

Anyone who has known artists can tell you that it is quite possible to have highly attuned sense-perceptions of a certain kind, and yet be very ignorant of many psychological facets of experience that another might be able to point out very easily.

The issue is that for almost all of us our awareness is partial. We are very sensitive in one or two areas of life, but neglectful and insensitive in others.

Our challenge is to have an integral awareness, integral perception of the inner and outer worlds, starting from wherever we actually perceive something true.

For person A this starting point may be the perception of a flower :tulip:.

For person B this might be the perception of suffering.

But the flower :tulip: also exists for person B, and the suffering also exists for person A. An integral or holistic perception can perceive both.

Do you see what I mean?

114

Frank Sinatra… lovely song.

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115

Hi Voyager. Your visit to the seaside sounds great! As you say, James has answered in some depth and he’s also posted some very interesting K quotes on this subject. I’ll read everything and reply tomorrow.

116

Yes. We choose to be specialists. We push choiceless awareness aside for the sake of our special interest: cultivating self, one’s signature identity.

What could be more significant, more pressing, than proving myself constantly? If I can’t prove who I am, I can’t be sure of anything because everything hinges on the question, “Who am I”?

When I don’t have a fresh, new answer to “who am I”, I don’t have a satisfactory sense of my self and I’m disappointed, depressed, anxious, and it’s because I don’t care to be aware of what-is from moment to moment. I care for what I-should/should-not-be every moment because if I can’t say with complete confidence just who/what I am, I am lost.

Until I am aware of the beauty of being lost, I am (like everyone else) chasing my tale of myself.

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117

Do we need to prove what we are, I wonder? Do we need to know with certainty - before we do know (i.e. through insight) - what we are? What is wrong with not knowing the answer to such a question?

Maybe we are nothing. Maybe we are everything. K says we are a bunch of memories. K also says that when we are not, love is, beauty is. But does having this knowledge - i.e. at an intellectual level - liberate us from our confusion?

For myself there is value in not having a complete answer to these questions. Because the part of me that has an answer is just a very small part of what the mind is.

So rather than having an explanation for who I am, isn’t it simpler, more direct, to give attention to whatever is most salient in our present experience?

What is salient is whatever it is that we are currently concerned about, moved by, aware of. Maybe it’s simply the fact that one feels confused. Maybe it is, as you say, that one feels disappointed, depressed, anxious. This then - whatever it is that is salient in the present - is who one (currently) is. This is the thing that requires one’s sensitive awareness, one’s care and consideration, one’s energy and intelligence.

Does this make sense to you?

Yes, this is what I was trying to say.

118

Resonance

Yesterday at the beach I had the feeling that I could not avoid the impact of reality, of actuality. It was always there regardless my willingness to resonate with it or not. It’s quite obvious, isn’t it? But feeling it is different than understanding it intellectually.

Then after lunch I had a nap lying on the sand. There were almost no people in the beach and they were far from me, so apart from the soothing sound of the sea the silence was perfect.

After a while I heard the voice of a lady saying something to her husband at some distance from me, a dim voice yet, due to the silence, it resonated in the air. It awaked me and again I felt the impact of actuality, again the sea, the sky and the breeze were there and I was resonating with them.

Back at home someone sent me a link to a record of Billie Holiday in you tube music, knowing she was one of my favourite singers, and among the many songs there was “When your lover has gone”. It’s a song which many jazz singers have sung, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, etc. but I prefer Billie’s version. Billie was an ill-fated woman, she spent a miserable life, all her lovers cheated, robbed and abandoned her. So when she sings “when your lover has gone” you can feel she‘s talking about herself. She ended her life as an alcoholic. And you can feel all her sadness in her voice… a very peculiar voice. I was resonating with her sadness.

While I was listening to it, I had a sudden feeling: I had to send the words of this song to @Inquiry. Will he resonate with them? Will he be moved by the simple feeling this song expresses? If he is human, he will resonate with the humanity contained in this song. This, I thought, is the best answer I can give to his questions. This song is not only telling of its author or singer, it tells of us and of course it tells of Inquiry too. I, you, us all are the main characters of the story it tells. The story of humanity.

Yesterday I didn’t think of all those implications consciously. I didn’t stop and think whether what I was going to do was appropriate, or inappropriate, good or bad. Take it or leave it.

But today I thought that perhaps I had found the clue to understand something K had said and which may be relevant with the topic of this thread: resonance.

Perhaps what I’m going to say will appear granted for many of the people here… or maybe not.

I remembered that K had said that we are (or should be) like a drum, being empty it will resonate with every sound that happens to be there. Resonance is something which concern waves, vibrations… and after all the universe, matter, according to science is made of waves. Light is a wave, sound is a wave, and even subatomic particles are waves (I’m forced to enter into the intellectual realm here). So could not perception, both sensory and non-sensory, be just a matter of resonance?

Let’s go back to the voice I heard at the beach, the sound is a vibration and that vibration arrives at the brain and something in it resonate with that sound. So, we can say that we perceive something the moment we are resonating with the waves always there in the outside world. When I was asleep the waves (the sea, the breeze) were still there around me but I was not resonating with them. At the moment of awakening the resonance was re-established.

Now when we are dealing with people our resistance, our mental barriers prevent us from resonating with the other person. And another thought came to my mind, something I have read long ago somewhere, we can resonate with something or with someone because we are made of the same stuff. And love perhaps is just resonance. The Greek word “sympathy” means “together in sorrow”. I can resonate with Billie’s sorrow; I am together with her in that. I can resonate with something fine or with something ugly (if I don’t build a wall), staying with “what is” is resonating with what is and that means I am embracing it/her/him, I am allowing it to enter into myself. The word “comprehend” comes from Latin comprehendere which means contain in oneself or embrace. Understanding happens when we are resonating with someone or are embracing him/her, so perhaps even intelligence is resonance.

What if everything – perception, awareness, love, intelligence, compassion, can be simplified, summarized in this phenomenon of resonance? Surely life is resonance, and resonance is a way to embrace and so understand life. My hope is that if Inquiry can resonate with that song maybe that will lead him to get out of the isolation he has put himself in. There is no need to “look for one’s tail”, reality is always there around and inside us and what we only need to do is resonate with it. And as I have said, if we are made of the same stuff then we can resonate with another.

So my initial feeling at the beach of “we cannot avoid the impact with reality” can be translated “we cannot avoid resonating with life”, otherwise we are not actually living, there is no life in isolation.

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119

Great post Voyager. And very eloquent, considering that English is not even your first language.

There is more to respond to here, but I just want to briefly pick up one aspect of what you write about.

This ‘resonance’ you talk about - how everything, not only physical sounds or physical waves, but also psychological movements, can create a resonance which can be perceived (if one is sensitive enough to perceive it) - reminded me of some of the things K used to say about sound which have always puzzled me.

K used to say that one can hear not only the sound of obvious things like the sea, or the sound of thunder or rain, people’s voices, etc, but also the sound of a tree when the wind has died down, the sound of the tree itself as it were (the sound of its own sap?) - and even the sound of one’s own psychological states, such as the sound of one’s own psychological insecurity!

He talks about it briefly in the following video (length: 4 min, 40 sec)…

An extract from the video:

Have you ever sat under a tree when the air is very still, quiet, not a leaf dancing? When it is absolutely quiet. Have you ever sat under a tree like that and listened to the sound of the tree? If there was no silence there would be no sound. You don’t understand all this.

So, the sound of insecurity, the sound, makes us seek security because we have never listened to the sound of insecurity. You understand? If you listened to the implications of insecurity, which makes us invent gods, rituals and all that stupid nonsense, if you listen to the whole movement of insecurity then out of that insecurity there comes naturally security.

So I wonder if what you say about sympathy applies here?

That is, this resonance - at some level at least - really seems to imply the non-distinction between the observer and the observed. One feels that the other - whether the ‘other’ is a sound, a piece of music, another person, or one’s own psychological state - is not separate from ourselves. As T.S. Eliot - the American poet - said: “you are the music while the music lasts”.

So, similarly, if we are able to listen to our own confusion, insecurity, lostness or suffering, then this would seem to imply that we are part of that insecurity, we are ‘one’ with it; just as we are part of the music when we listen to it “so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.”

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