A beginner’s mind

Kinfonet Discussion
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Mini-tangent

I see the term ‘awareness’ having two distinct meanings:

  1. the perceiving-sensing of things (the everyday meaning);
  2. the ground from which (apparent) things rise and fall (the transcendent meaning).

These get mixed up in ‘nondual spirituality’ conversations all the time! And it’s the source of great trouble and confusion. That’s why I like using capitalization to clarify:

awareness = perceiving-sensing
Awareness = the ground

Note: I realize this is different from the Krishnamurtian use of ‘awareness,’ so please feel free to ignore should you find it unhelpful.

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My understanding of ordinary awareness (perceiving-sensing) is that it may run deeper than the senses (and so is potentially the “ground”, in the language of Dzogchen). So the word awareness can include both these meanings.

But the critical words here are “may” and “potentially”.

Unless one has actually contacted the ground of the mind - aka as total attention, absolute awareness, insight awareness, undivided attention, intelligence beyond the mind, the mind outside the brain, compassion beyond sorrow, etc - then talking about awareness with a capital “A” is merely speculation, right? Even if this speculation is being done by a tradition one might respect (such as Dzogchen, Chan/Zen, Kashmir Shaivism, Ramana Maharishi, or even Krishnamurti).

The problem with going off in the direction of speculation is that this detracts from the actual awareness we have immediate access to, the actual sensory and psycho-physical perceptions that are already present to feel and to perceive, etc. In other words, it may be a trick of our thinking which makes us feel that we are getting hold of a deeper, broader level of perspective - when we may in fact be neglecting the nearer facts of our own direct experiencing.

This is why awareness is not capitalised for me. If the other kind of awareness makes an appearance, one’s life, one’s existence will be the only capitalisation that matters!

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Unless one has actually contacted the ground of the mind - aka as total attention, absolute awareness, insight awareness, undivided attention, intelligence beyond the mind, the mind outside the brain, compassion beyond sorrow, etc - then talking about awareness with a capital “A” is merely speculation, right? Even if this speculation is being done by a tradition one might respect (such as Dzogchen, Chan/Zen, Kashmir Shaivism, Ramana Maharishi, or even Krishnamurti).

For people who have not realized the ground, it is a concept, an image, an inkling. But as you say, the inkling is backed by teachers and teachings that we (rightly or wrongly!) trust. Just like the inklings we have of the possibility of being intelligent and unconditionally free are backed by Krishnamurti.

The problem with going off in the direction of speculation is that this detracts from the actual awareness we have immediate access to, the actual sensory and psycho-physical perceptions that are already present to feel and to perceive, etc. In other words, it may be a trick of our thinking which makes us feel that we are getting hold of a deeper, broader level of perspective - when we may in fact be neglecting the nearer facts of our own direct experiencing.

I understand. I really value the ‘actual sensory and psycho-physical perception’ approach to exploring reality, but I don’t see it as the only way in.

This is why awareness is not capitalised for me. If the other kind of awareness makes an appearance, one’s life, one’s existence will be the only capitalisation that matters!

Existenz! :slight_smile:

I like the idea of awareness (low a) spanning the full range of what the term means (in circles like this). I just think it leads to endless confusion, level mixup, a nasty trap to fall into. Think of all the dialogues here that have haggled about the meaning of awareness! Would they have benefited from distinguishing between everyday awareness and transcendent Awareness?

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It’s only a mix up for people who are approaching this question of life from an abstract, intellectual, or ideological point of view.

If one doesn’t accept ideas as a replacement for actual awareness, then there is no level to mix up: the world as it is, and oneself as one is, is a field of potentially unlimited exploration. This is the beginner’s mind.

There’s a quote from K I like which expresses this point well:

The moment you have achieved anything you cease to have that quality of innocence and humility; the moment you have a conclusion or start examining from knowledge, you are finished, for then you are translating every living thing in terms of the old.

Whereas if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty, no achievement, there is freedom to look.

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I have done this, constantly - but I seem to have been ignored!

I would say it is the people doing the “transcending” and capitalising who are responsible for the general mix up :wink:

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And the moral of the story is: When we write about things that can easily be misunderstood, clarify!

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I don’t feel I deserve lectures on clarity from anyone on this website! :wink: I am almost always the person who is asking others for clarity and being ignored!

I would say that of all the people who regularly post here, I make the most effort to be clear about what it is I am referring to when using words - which is why I end up writing much more than I want to, and more than most people have the time or desire to read!

Part of the challenge is that we are - or at least I am - usually attempting to explore or inquire into something. So this means that our definitions of things have to be somewhat provisional. This is why, on the ‘What is awareness?’ thread I tried to make scope for all the different ways that the word ‘awareness’ can be construed.

But if you read my interaction with Adeen - who I felt was using the word awareness in a very black and white, dogmatic sense - I tried to help him make a distinction between awareness and attention, in the manner that K sometimes did.

There is room for nuance in these discussions. There is space for distinguishing between, for example, sensation, perception, seeing, awareness, awareness without choice, attention, total attention, insight, total insight, etc. I feel that I am probably the only person on Kinfonet who goes to such lengths. But there is also space for using language in its more ordinary, more fluid way. And I do this also.

Generally what I find is that people are fixed on a single view or conclusion they have arrived at, and even when one explains the nuances to them, they ignore this in favour of their fixed view. These fixed interpretations may be personal, or the result of exposure to other religious or philosophical traditional usages of similar words.

You in particular Rick, if I may point out, tend to approach words with fairly settled interpretations that you have picked up from your own understanding of Advaita, or Dzogchen, or Madhyamaka Buddhism, etc. Similarly, both you and others - like Inquiry for instance - have in the past interpreted the phrase “choiceless awareness” in a way which seems completely foreign to me. That is, you seem to be unaware of the nuances and shades of meaning this phrase had for K himself, because K was not a systematic philosopher who always used words in exactly the same way.

Naturally, if one is using the word awareness in highly specific way which is not present in the things that Krishnamurti talked about, one may miss certain aspects of it. But this is a place where one expects some degree of K literacy. So that is not my problem, right?

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Anyway, I feel I am defending myself now, and I don’t feel that we need to get into arguments about what awareness is, etc. This is what has happened in the past, and it doesn’t seem to bring much clarity.

I think the main points about awareness, what it means to be aware, etc, have already been made, and I think there is even a basic consensus on most of these things. So I hope we don’t allow secondary considerations to obscure this.

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When we “deal with what we are facing from day to day, from moment to moment”, we face, not only the facts, but the way we’re facing the facts.

Am I confident that I can face facts openly, honestly, without bias or self-interest? If I am, I’m not really facing facts - I’m just doing what I believe I’m doing. How do I face that fact?

Can I acknowledge a fact for what it is, or do I put my own spin on every fact I choose to face? Who’s in charge here: the fact or the factor of self?

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K talked about “the other shore” and “the other bank” which I thought was a really nice way of expressing this.

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I think it all comes back to looking at the cloud which we never really see. “Reality” is surely all around us every day if we have the eyes to see it.

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The other shore may be this shore.

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Yes, it’s a nice way of expressing this and for convenience in the speech it’s inevitable to use it. But K also warned against giving too much importance to words - the word is not the thing - and he also often said that words are deceiving. So we must not take too literally even K’s words and focus on facts, and the fact we have in our daily life is just ordinary awareness,

Of course my answer to you could not be pertinent or relevant to your true attitude, yet it’s a danger we all have to consider not to make an image, a goal, of what K said. To me this is simplicity, which is a way to disentagle our mind from all intricacies of thought.

P.S.
After posting that above I read Dev’s reply. Yes, I remember K saing “perhaps there is no other shore.”

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Surely the clouds, and the mountains, the sea, etc, are part of our reality, but it’s a reality we don’t clash with or which does not make us suffer. Then we have the reality of our ego, of our psychological reactions, wich causes conflicts and suffering. Being aware of the clouds can be a fine way to shift from an agitated mind to a more quiet state which allows true perceptions (I do it often) but there is also a work that we must/can do (I’m reclutant to use the verb “must”) and is to be aware of everything is really important to us and which conditions our actions. When I say “everything is really importand” I don’t mean what we think it’s important but what turns out to be important when we observe our behaviour. For instance we may believe that non-violence is one of our values and so important to us and yet we may behave aggressively in spite of what we think.

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Are you asking those questions to yourself or to us?

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From the extract:

K: Sir, you are so impatient… You are not quiet to look, to listen, to feel deeply.

You want to get to the other shore at any cost and you are swimming frantically, not knowing where the other shore is. The other shore may be this shore, and so you are swimming away from it.

If I may suggest it: stop swimming.

This doesn’t mean that you should become dull, vegetate and do nothing, but rather that you should be passively aware without any choice whatsoever and no measurement - then see what happens.

I think this is relevant to our discussion here, isn’t it?

If we want to discover what is happening around us or within us, we need to stop (swimming) and look (passively), right? We need to be able to notice what is happening in the present moment, without judgment, without reaching after a perfect future tense mode of choiceless awareness, etc.

Which means ordinary awareness - whether of the cloud, or of one’s reaction to the cloud, or of one’s egoism, irritation, hurt, etc.

That is, this stopping and looking (aka sense-perceiving, being passively aware, noticing what is happening without judgement, etc) will answer the question of whether we are able to

This stopping and looking will reveal to us

This stopping and looking will expose the uncomfortable fact of

So this stopping and looking of passive awareness (or whatever we call it) seems to be central to all our concerns, right?

I think we all more or less agree on this, even though we may have slightly different ways of expressing it, or understanding precisely what it involves, or what it ultimate nature truly may be, or what it’s appropriate objects should be in a given moment, or how little or how much we are able to do it (with or without choice, with or without the intrusion of one’s conditioning, etc).

Then the next step - which is really every next step, from now until the end of our lives! - is to actually stop (swimming), and look! :blush:

To look, to listen, to feel deeply; to notice what is happening right now - any or every now - passively, without judgement.

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As I understand it, and I may be wrong, K gave great importance to observation without judgement or labelling. So in the simple, silent, observation of a cloud, a tree, a person’s face on the train, there is tremendous importance and meaning. In such observation, everything about our suffering, inner conflict, struggles, pettiness and violence is revealed and understood.

That is my understanding.

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That is exactly what I understand James.

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Ah! Now I understand what you meant.
I see or have understood things differently Sean, but I don’t know whether my comprehension is better than yours. Perhaps in examining the matter together we might arrive at some solid ground…

There is the simple, silent, observation of a cloud (or of anything present here at a certain moment). This has its importance, or has its place in our life. As I told you I do it often. And then there is the observation, equally silent, without reaction, of our psyche. Does the first lead to the second? Or perhaps there is a common ground or orientation which works in both the cases? Is that what you meant?

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Hi Voyager. Yes, I think we haven’t really been understanding each other. I think we probably agree on quite a lot here.

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