I understand. I felt it wanted mentioning, the risk of navel gazing vs. doing the really hard and frustrating work. But I don’t feel it wants over-mentioning.
I do feel resistance to exploring it openly, it’s an uncomfortable topic.
But I feel way more resistance to actually doing it, staying with what-is.
The urge for escape is definitely in my DNA, as it is I think in all of our DNA.
This is precisely why I feel it is worth looking at a little. It is a similar situation for all of us - isn’t it? - and so there’s no point in avoiding it.
However, I accept that it is very difficult for us to do, which is why I think it is helpful to listen to someone who seems to have actually done this themselves. Right? You may think K is just blah blah blah, but he does have some useful pointers about what is involved in remaining with a fact.
So I am sharing two or three video extracts where he goes into this topic (the examples he uses here are sorrow, loneliness and conflict, but they could be any psychological state, as the advice is very similar). I have also included transcripts of the video extracts.
(length: 5 mins, 58 secs):
The very word ‘sorrow’ colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it.
So to observe it, to live with it without the word, without the remembrance, without the idea of going beyond it, just to hold it completely, wholly together.
If one does that, what takes place? I hope we are doing that together now.
What takes place when you remain with a fact, and not translate the fact according to your prejudice, to your want, your desire, without any motive, what happens when you remain with a fact which is pain, and not allow thought to come into it?
That is, when you give your total attention to the fact, and we do not give total attention when there is an escape, when there is interpretation, when there is rationalisation, when the word becomes all important. You understand? You are following all this? Is that possible at all?
To so wholly remain with that pain of tears - you follow? - the great depth of it. Because thought is very superficial, pain is not. But when thought colours that pain, that very thought becomes an abstraction, and therefore it destroys attention, it wastes energy. So to remain with the fact is to give total attention, which is to give all your energy to that.
When you give such attention, with that total energy, that fact is transformed.
That is, the fact is not different from you. The fact is you. The fact of sorrow, self-pity, the loneliness, the despair, the sense of being abandoned, all that is you. You are that.
But thought comes along and says, ‘You are not that. You are different.’ I don’t know if you are following all this? So there is a division between the you and the object - the fear, the pain, the loneliness, the despair, the depression, - all that, is something different from you, for you to control it, for you to overcome it. So there is a conflict in this division, which is false because that which is taking place is you. You understand?
So the observer is not different from the observed, sorrow. The observer is the observed…
But when one realises very deeply that the observer of sorrow is sorrow itself, that is a tremendous revolution. Because we have been brought up that the observer is different from the observed. To break that whole cycle of tradition is to live with that sorrow, pain completely without a single movement of thought.
(length: 2 mins):
All human beings go through this sense of complete isolation in which there is no relationship with anything. [When] you are completely lost.
And most of us never remain with it, understand it, go into it, but run away from it.
That is, to look at loneliness and not move away from that.
You know when you have great pleasure you don’t want to move away from it, do you? [You do] everything you [can] do to hold it. You live with it.
In the same way to live so completely with that loneliness without a movement away from it.
Then out of that living with something which you don’t understand, which has got tremendous meaning in one’s life, then that begins to flower, come out like a beautiful flower and wither away.
But if you run away from it or try to force yourself to understand it, go into it, you are destroying the flower. Whereas if you remain with it completely it is like a thing that flowers and withers away. You understand this?
(length: 6 mins, 20 secs):
You have a problem, which is conflict.
Can you look at it, not only listen to the problem, the tones, the content, the subtleties of the problem, can you look at it without trying to resolve it, without trying to give it any direction, without any motive?
When you have a motive it gives it a direction and therefore you are distorting the problem. Vous avez compris? So can you sensitively be aware of conflict? Not act upon it because you are part of that conflict. You are conflict. So if you act upon it you are further creating more conflict.
So look at that conflict - the little one and the whole human conflict, the personal and the global, look at it. Listen to its story, don’t you tell what the story is, let it tell you the story.
Like a child who is sitting on your lap whom you love, is telling you a story. You don’t interrupt the child. You are not rude to it, you want him to tell you all about it. In the same way let this conflict tell you all about it, only you have to have ears to listen to it, not only with hearing of the ear but also hear inwardly the nature of it.
Can you so listen to it, giving your whole attention to it, without any effort? When you are with a child who is telling you a story, you are not making an effort and saying, ‘I must control myself, I must be more patient’. You are listening because you love that child.
In the same way listen, and then you will see the problem flowers, grows, it shows its whole content. And when it has shown all its content it passes away, it is finished. You understand?
That is the flowering and the withering of a problem, which doesn’t take time. It is only the impatient mind that has time, that says, I must solve this.
But a mind that is listening very carefully, sensitively, alert to all its tiny movements, and its very, very subtle movements, when you listen to it, when you give your complete attention to it, and you cannot give complete attention if you have a motive, if you have a direction, if you say, I must do this - then nothing will happen.
But if you give your total attention the problem shows itself fully and so dissolves, like a flower. In the morning the bud is there, in the evening it is withered.
This is what I find so strange about these conversations. We are supposed to be serious, or at least interested in finding out what it means to be serious - that is, possessing the quality of mumukṣutva (for dyed-in-the-wool Advaitins) - and yet we do not seem to question or put aside this resistance to facing ourselves as we are. We aren’t even open to looking at the topic like mature adults.
Apparently we want to talk about anything and everything except the actual psychological situation at the heart of our lives.
I feel like I am preaching now, but isn’t this actually true?
Why have we cultivated this purely rationalistic and intellectual space where we can talk about the self, the ego, conditioning (as Inquiry does endlessly), or about harmony and dissonance in music 
(which I accept is an interesting topic in its own right); and yet we are never open to exploring or discussing what is involved in actually doing something about it directly: which means opening our hearts to the subject, getting out of our stupid heads, admitting that we have an interior life - fears, hurts, conflicts - which we have never given our full attention; and asking ourselves what is involved in doing this?
I feel that this business of remaining with inward psychological states gets to the heart, not only of what Krishnamurti had to say, but of our own lives. If we do not take time to face what we are, to look at what we are, to feel out - from the inside as it were - what we are, then all our words must be hollow. What is the point of discussing whether there is a universal harmony, or a hidden dimension to life - something unknown, something absolute - if we aren’t even interested in facing ourselves, living with ourselves as we are (not as we should be)?
We seem to have become cynical, defeatist, bored with the inner. We have already tried that (half-heartedly), and we feel resistance, and so that’s that. Or we think we have resolved one petty hurt, one aspect of neurosis, and this satisfies us.
But a beginner’s mind - at least in the way I am using this phrase - isn’t satisfied with such lame answers. It is willing to look again at life, and at one’s actual inward experience, to listen anew to the story it has to tell.
If we don’t have this openness to looking and listening, then what’s the point of our words?
I’m saying this, btw, as much to myself as to anyone else - so please don’t anyone say that I am excusing myself from this challenge being raised.
What does it mean to be serious about the inner?
The only difference here - i.e. between climbing a mountain and dealing with the inner - being that when it comes to remaining with ‘what is’, the doing is a non-doing; the action is a non-action.
So this non-action of remaining with, staying with (looking at, listening to) ‘what is’, is the only expression of seriousness that matters.
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Yesterday, reading the latest posts here, on one side I could see the truth of what has been said (James made a fine job) but on the other side I had a feeling of incompleteness, of not seeing the whole picture… K’s teachings are so ample, so many things to be considered… and we are trying to pin it down, so to say. I have been doing it for many years… and it doesn’t work.
This does not mean that we should not try to understand all the involved factors…
I remember something a Zen master said to his disciple: “If you think to achieve it (satori) through thinking you are wrong. But if you think to achieve it without thinking you are equally wrong.”
Imagine the desperation of the disciple!
The problem is that thought is linear, that is, we always try to put together all the factors in sequence, and this of course is time. Even if we could manage to create a complete list, we will not arrive at anything… Real understanding is never linear. Then what can/should we do?
I think one has to start the journey without a complete equipment or preparation. Actually, we have to start the journey unprepared and face all the difficulties we meet along the way alone. If we wait to start until we feel ready or prepared, we will never start. This is why K said that truth is an uncharted land. Here we are trying to draw a chart of the teachings so that we will be able to travel safely… we always want to be secure… “there is no security” (K).
I think that most likely this is the reason why many of us here never really started the journey and so never changed. We want to have the whole picture before adventuring in these uncharted waters.
I wanted to stop here and give time for reflection… but there is something swirling around in my head which needs to be addressed and understood so that our boat won’t be shipwrecked as soon as she’s out of the safe harbour. What is the difference between “staying with insecurity” and “realizing we are insecurity”? I mean how do I know when the first has become the second? Furthermore, what is the difference of staying (or reverberating) with a thought, feeling or whatever and being absorbed or even overwhelmed by it?
My navigation brought me to the waypoint where to go on I had to differentiate between the mere process of thinking and the content of that thinking. If my focus is on the content then I’ll be absorbed by thought and there will not be awareness. So, I didn’t give importance to the content and shifted to the awareness of the “sound” of thinking. Is that what K meant? (“Listening to the sound of words and not only to the meaning of them”). Any clue?
P.S.
I realized now that I had written “viewpoint” instead of “waypoint” (Sic). In maritime jargon a waypoint is a point (marked in the chart) along the way where the vessel must change her course in order to avoid a danger or overcome a cape.
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I think we have moments of mature and open looking, but fall back on what we know, the familiar, the manageable, pleasurable, comfortable. Our conditioning. And do the best we can within the limits of that conditioning. It might be as futile to compare ourselves to Krishnamurti as it is for a reasonably accomplished pianist to compare themself to Mozart. Otoh maybe we are all budding Mozarts, just need the right nudge to realize it. Who knows?
It is not a matter of comparing ourselves to K. It is, as I was saying to @voyager, that we resist, for very human (all too human) reasons this non-action action of remaining with challenging inward psychological states. It is because of emotional immaturity, fear of losing control, shame of perceived weakness, fear of emotional intensity, an instinctive withdrawal from what we feel to be unfamiliar or uncomfortable, etc - which are all things that we can question, challenge, refuse to accept.
Anyone who has faced grief know that it is possible to challenge these immature reactions. Such reactions may be dominant, but they only become immutable and fixed if we thoughtlessly accept them as though they were laws of nature. They are not.
As you say, we tend to fall back on
But the difference between you, Inquiry and myself is that I do not see psychological conditioning as something fixed, immutable, rigid. It is malleable, subject to change. The constant doubling-down on how fixed our psychological conditioning is, is merely a form of personal defence, for the all too human reasons already mentioned. In my view, it is a form of stupidity to get locked into this way of thinking. And it inevitably makes any genuine inward inquiry impossible.
I would be very surprised if there was even a single poster here who did not hold an image of Krishnamurti and regard that image’s image-ined intelligence as a kind of ideal to (subtly but passionately) strive towards and consciously or unconsciously compare themself to and find themselves sorely lacking.
But the difference between you, Inquiry and myself is that I do not see psychological conditioning as something fixed, immutable, rigid. It is malleable, subject to change.
I won’t speak for Inquiry, but of course I see psychological conditioning as malleable. The limit of its malleability is the issue. I see the probability of a relatively low limit (baby steps), you see the possibility of a higher limit (revolutionary transformation).
My point Rick was that this is a wholly secondary matter. The fact that I keep having to point these things out is exasperating.
The question we are looking at is why we resist looking at the inner, why we resist remaining with challenging psychological states. This has nothing to do with Krishnamurti, and everything to do with our own personal and social psychology. As you say, this psychology is not fixed, it is malleable. But we will not find out how malleable it is until we relinquish our obvious and immature resistance to even looking at the issue.
I think it’s primary, but almost always hidden, lurking. It’s the framework in/through/by which the forum does its thing. I’m just drawing our attention to it. But I’ll back off now, I don’t want to harangue.
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As a human being, Rick - not as someone who wants to troll people with an interest in Krishnamurti, or who thinks they have some higher understanding because they have studied Advaita or Dzogchen or Ken Wilber or whatever - as a human being, how can you justify refusing to even look at this question of (what I am presently calling) the inner?
You must have your own inner demons. You’ve spoken indirectly about this before - what you have called the “shadow side”. Why, after even years of talking, do you still not open up your heart to these kinds of conversations?
You say it is too personal, too uncomfortable, we are conditioned to move away, by our DNA, etc - or that our conditioning isn’t malleable enough - and then move on to some other question or topic. None of this has anything to do with K - this is just you and your response (as it is, apparently, for Inquiry, and probably for most other people here).
But what is “primary, almost always hidden”? Isn’t it precisely the inner, the “shadow side” - our hurts, our envy, our pride, our vanity, our shame, our conflict, our confusion, our suffering? Isn’t this the actually primary thing?
And yet, even after years of discussing round and round, we never ever get to the heart of the matter, because you have made this off-limits, it is “too personal”, etc. But by making the heart off-limits, one is left only with words, ideas, concepts, external chatter. And this has no fundamental meaning.
I can’t believe you don’t see this?
Anyway, I am finished with having heartless discussions.
I have my way of getting at (closer to) the truth, you have yours. Sometimes our ways harmonize, and sometimes they clash. All that’s okay, par for the human course. What matters is how we deal with this reality. Harmonizing isn’t a problem, but when we clash, what is the intelligent and kind way to deal with it? For the good of each of us individually, of our relationship-gestalt, and of the forum. (I think we’ve gotten more skillful at navigating our little conflagrations, but we haven’t ‘solved’ the problem.) Any ideas?
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I assume you mean this in a sarcastic way? (Oops, the posting I was referencing was pulled!)
Your answer must be understood in its entirety so I think it’s useless to quote brief sentences. Nonetheless I’m putting quotes just to break your long explanation and so give me time to find a proper answer.
I’m not with you with most of what you say. It may be that I have not understood K and the main point of this discussion. In this case I’ll take your answer as an opportunity to improve my understanding. What I feel now is that I didn’t express myself clearly enough and so a misunderstanding has taken place.
I have no doubt about the starting point, and of course I agree that seeing is just seeing. It’s what I have said myself. Yet I feel that things don’t end there. You essentially are objecting to that. Correct?
Talking about the linearity of thought, I was referring to the whole of K teachings, or if you want, to the problem of understanding ourselves. We can’t deny that what K said is rather complex and can’t be grasped rationally. Also, the understanding of ourselves cannot take place through rationality (which is a product of thought), to point out that I quoted the story of the Zen Master. Are we together in this?
Now, as I said, what we have been saying in this thread about the priority of perception obviously is true, but we have also examined the possible reasons why many people (not only here) have never done the first step, and we have drawn the outline (what I called “the chart”) of the requisites or qualifications for this to happen, something K himself used to do in his talks. This is a linear process of thought which is always incomplete. We have to do it somehow, as K did, still it’s always incomplete. Do you see this point?
Let’s be honest: thousands of people have listened to K, and many of them were serious persons (I have met quite a few of them in Saanen or Brockwood) and yet we never heard of a single individual having done what K said completely. We may have had single little insights but not “the Insight” which makes the whole revolution. Those people meditated, and stayed with what is, but evidently that was not enough. I appreciate the effort you are making to clarify the most important points of K teachings, something very few are capable to do, yet don’t you see that in doing so you are making a linear process? So, what I am saying is not that the act of seeing is linear, but that the whole attempt to put it into words cannot help being linear. There are other things we have not touched, like love for instance, and we cannot talk about and see how the many factors involved are connected by each other. It’s something we have to discover by ourselves in a non-rational way. In my view the process is somehow circular, while the description of it is linear.
As I have said the solution to this impasse is to start the journey anyway even if the whole picture is not rationally clear. This is the starting point. And this is what you/me advised to do. It has of course a great importance. As I said, I could have stopped there, yet I wanted to go beyond and talk of something else which I never heard of here or in K talks.
(For “going beyond” I mean talking of something which happens after you have done the first step)
Your reply is:
I’m not satisfied with the way I worded the problem, as I said perhaps it shows a lack of understanding on my part. Yet mine was not a theoretical question, a speculation, but something I experienced many times. Honestly, I can say that I stayed with what is, without looking for something else, and at certain moments I felt I had some insights. I always forget those insights after few hours only to find them again unexpectedly after some time. So, I cannot be sure whether they were real insights. Hence my questions. For instance, once I realized I was the world. After I thought, it’s so obvious and simple. What I had done was just to look with my whole senses awake (another point we have not touched). But I lost it. OK, no problem in that. But about the content of thought I feel the problem is real. If I focus on the ”sound”, the mere process of thought, I can feel the thinking process slows down and I start being clearly aware of the silence between two thoughts, while if I’m sucked in by the content of thoughts I feel I am feeding it, giving energy to it and it continues endlessly. So your statement
Does not help me. We started saying that we only need to see, to perceive, but here you introduce a further factor which we had not considered before: “holistically” (and this by the way proves that the “instructions” we had named before were incomplete).
I don’t know what it is to perceive holistically; factually I mean, even if I can understand it verbally. What K says implies the understanding of the process of identity. I cannot persuade myself that I am my feelings, I have to see it. Again, we are in presence of a circular process but your way of putting it is linear.
Your sentence: “If such a difference exists, it implies that we have not actually ‘stayed with’ that reaction (of insecurity, etc).” seems to say that the discovery of “I am my feeling” is kind of automatic and that I didn’t actually stayed with my feelings, reaction, etc. I feel this is not true in my case.
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Yes, but what we are doing when we flee (or flit like butterflies) from our anger, fear, sorrow, and other unwanted feelings instead of remaining with them, holding them like a baby, is resisting what we are instead of embracing it.
This instinctive resistance is what I’m referring to, and since you’re here with the rest of us, you’re doing it, too, so I think you’re mistaken to dismiss what I’m saying as being cynical and skeptical.
We’re not honestly being what we are, and according to Krishnamurti, the end of this dishonesty is revolting against our instinctual response to flee, escape, from what I am by remaining with what I am when fearful, anxious, greedy, envious, etc.
This is more than acknowledging that I have these feelings and impulses, but owning them by identifying with them as readily or eagerly as we identify with what we like or approve about ourselves.
We’re conditioned to feel better, if not good, about ourselves whatever it takes, be it dishonesty and self-deception. Embracing ourselves at our worst is revolting against what we are and have been for millennia.
I think now I have understood where the misunderstanding lies.
For “content of thought” I don’t mean the reaction. When I think of what we have been discussing yesterday here, for example, the content is all the meanings the words convey. So we have the word (or the thought)- a kind of container, which I recall in thinking, the substance or sound of the word, and its meaning (J. has said that, I can answer in this way, etc.) . We can say that the word, the process my brain is creating is real, I can feel it, but its meaning is a non fact, it’s just an association my mind is making. If I stay with the meaning then this interior dialogue with myself absorbs all my mental energy and it goes on indefinitely. I don’t think that is what K meant. To me it looks like being trapped into the illusion that the meaning of our thoughts is true. I can never go beyond thought if I’m giving importance to its meaning. You see my point? Of course I’m not trying to go beyond thought, but to me there is no other story it can tell me.
You brought in the word thought, not me. I have been talking about psychological content - such as fear, conflict, hate, loneliness, hurt, etc. I have been asking (myself) what is involved in looking at this content? K says, “listen to that content, let it tell you its whole story”. The content of sorrow doesn’t tell you about an
I don’t think this is what K meant either. It’s also not what I meant.
Yes, it’s disappointing to me too.
And perhaps our different linguistic domains mainfest a difference in our way of experiencig perceptions.
I see no solution to that.