I don’t know if observing the cloud with clarity leads to observing the psyche with the same clarity. Does one clear observation of a cloud automatically give immediate understanding of many things, including how the ego and the psyche work?
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Agreed.
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That is what I wanted to find out. 
What do you think?
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I recall somewhere (I think it is in his journals) where Krishnamurti talks about a looking in which the whole of one’s psychological state is revealed. If I can find it I will share it.
But in the absence of this particular reference, here are three very short video extracts (for whoever finds them useful or interesting) of Krishnamurti talking about the importance of
- sensitivity: of being able to look at something (a sunset, a tree, another person, or the sea) with all one’s senses, because it is the partiality of our looking which creates the self-centre;
- awareness: the distinction between awareness, the interference of one’s reactions (one’s likes and dislikes), and awareness without these reactions (i.e choiceless awareness);
- and what is involved in looking at an inward psychological reaction like sorrow.
This broadly corresponds with the different aspects of awareness we have been discussing: 1. outward sensory perception, 2. the difference between awareness with and without choice, and 3. the awareness of inward psychological states.
- (length: 3 mins, 57 secs)
2. (length: under 1 min)
3. (length: under 1 min)
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If some questions don’t interest you or you have your answers to them,
does it matter where they come from?
Yes, it matters, because my response will be different in one case or another.
When a topic is intricate and one wants to find a way to make it straight, one solution is to proceed step by step. It’s like walking in a path with many crossroads, you can’t explore all of them at the same time but only one at a time. Then you have simplicity and clarity. And without simplicity you cannot have clarity.
In this case the first step is to estabilish who you are addressing to those questions.
Hi Voyager. Well, I don’t know the answer to this question and we probably agree that a purely intellectual analysis is pointless. As far as I can see, we perhaps all get glimpses of observations where there is no division/separation. Glimpses are probably not enough to have a profound effect on the psyche, but they might, at the very least, make us reflect on how we behave and treat others. Perhaps they help shine a light on the inner workings of our minds as well. What do you think?
Isn’t it the same initial (or immediate) seeing which sees the cloud - or the leaf 
; the colour 
of a leaf, the drops of water 
on the leaf, the veins and texture of the leaf - which also sees that I have images in relationship, or that I am irritated, hurt, anxious, or bored, or feel the pull of desire, etc? That is, the same quality of seeing which sees both outwardly and inwardly?
There is no significant ego involvement in our initial seeing of something - the observer is absent in K’s language. So the initial seeing of something - before thought intrudes, before we have a secondary reaction to it - it is this initial seeing which has the quality of choiceless or nonjudgmental seeing. This initial moment of seeing is what we have been calling the beginner’s mind.
That is, we have been talking about this quality of our initial seeing of things, and finding out whether this quality of initial seeing can be there whether we are looking at clouds, trees, animals, other people - or looking at our discomfort, our desire, our fear, our suffering. Right? It is the same seeing in both cases (outwardly as well as inwardly).
I think this is what we have been talking about. So this quality of initial (or immediate) seeing - the simple objective and immediate noticing of things as they happen - if we can move with it wholly, naturally, as it takes place, may have the potential to cover the whole (by which I mean the whole of the mind, as well as the whole of existence). Right?
K:
If you are aware of outward things—the curve of a road, the shape of a tree, the colour of another’s dress, the outline of the mountains against a blue sky, the delicacy of a flower, the pain on the face of a passerby, the ignorance, the envy, the jealousy of others, the beauty of the earth—then, seeing all these outward things without condemnation, without choice, you can ride on the tide of inner awareness.
Then you will become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies.
From the outward awareness you come to the inward…
When you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced.
(Choiceless Awareness)
It is very important to understand that the act of seeing is the only truth; there is nothing else. If I know how to see a tree, or a bird, or a lovely face, or the smile of a child—there it is, I don’t have to do anything more.
(The Awakening of Intelligence)
When you wander among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and to the ending of it.
(The Second Krishnamurti Reader)
Useful videos thanks. Homing in on the first one and speaking from personal experience, it’s true that I rarely look (listen, usw) at things with my full being: senses, heart, soul. In fact, when I intentionally try I often experience a kind of short circuit and go blank. It’s as if I don’t know how to look fully, listen fully, be fully with what I am observing. Feels like there’s some form of primal resistance going on, irresistible resistance, try to break it and it just gets stronger.
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May we look, listen, sense, perceive, experience with our full being, rather than just our mind?
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This is why I wonder if it is not more a matter of riding the wave 
of our initial seeing of things.
It is disarmingly simple to look at a neutral or pleasant object - like a flower or a leaf - 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 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 ?
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.
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).
Is the idea to simply rest in ‘nothing special’ or to discover the ‘truly special’ via ‘nothing special’? A subtle but key difference!
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… 
) 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.
I don’t feel it is a matter of resting as such, but of being carried by the wave of attention/awareness/seeing. We don’t know in advance where this wave 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 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.
Openness is needed to ‘tap into’ the unknown. Open-ended openness, truly free exploration.
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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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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 
, 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 
, or that the leaf is green .
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 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…
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?