A beginner’s mind

Kinfonet Discussion
130

This is a valid point.

However:

if you have watched the clip of K I shared a few posts ago (“Silence is not separate from sound”), where he talks about listening to the “sound of insecurity”;

and then watched the clip I just shared with you of K saying that the ending of sorrow can only take place when we know how to “hold that sorrow, that pain, look at it”, until we can see the “beauty in that sorrow, depth in it”;

then you might be open to seeing or understanding that there is possibly a way of listening to this dissonance (of suffering) in such a way that it ceases to be dissonant. This seems to be what K is suggesting.

You may simply reject this as rubbish, in which case there’s no point in even discussing any of this.

But if one is open - not gullible, not superstitious - then one can listen to what K is pointing out and consider it. This is all I feel I was doing in my post.

Rather than argue with you about me and you, and what I should or shouldn’t have said etc, I would rather spend energy looking at this basic question K has posed for us: can we listen to the sound of sorrow or insecurity? Can we hold these psychological states so that we can begin to see the beauty and depth in them (which may be the beginning of their transformation)?

131

The content of the water in the river has already changed (from yesterday) - but I hope this doesn’t put you off getting back into the water at some point :slightly_smiling_face:

132

Ha, ha. Thanks for the nudge James! I really appreciate it! There are so many interesting points on this thread to be picked up.

The point about seeing one thing with complete clarity (a cloud, let’s say) being the key to seeing everything, including internal states of sorrow etc. with the same clarity, seems worthy of deeper exploration. I’ll have to go back and re-read to make sure that is what K and others are saying but that really makes a great deal of sense to me. Let’s continue this soon.

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133

Our tuning systems, in which we perform our songs!

There is also the frequency of the great ugly human beings, like Putin and Trump, and the frequency of more gentle human beings, like Jane Goodall and the Dalai Lama. The frequency of great artists and musicians, with all their peculiar eccentricities and sufferings, the different kinds of minds they have.

And beyond all this, there is perhaps the frequency of intelligence, insight, compassion: the kinds of frequencies that one may be able to contact through meditation or moments of catharsis, awakening.

There you go! Tonal modes of personality, mood, situation, mental activity, spiritual being.

134

The system here consists of a guitar body and six strings. Both the body and each string has a fundamental frequency (lowest freq it can generate) and a set of overtones, which are frequencies that vibrate at relatively high amplitudes/energies. Say the average string has 10 audible overtones and the average guitar body 5, that’s a total of about 65 audible frequencies (with some doublings) that the guitar system favors energy/amplitude wise.

Think of those as the jewels of the harmonic Indra’s Net of a guitar. Every jewel reflects (resonates with) every other jewel, some dramatically, some very subtly. It’s a big interdependent web of harmonic energy. Everything you play on the guitar, single notes, open strings, chords, body taps, harmonics affects the whole Indra’s Net, the full set of fundamental and overtone frequencies.

there was an amplification of the sound due to the silence

Note: When you hear the foreground sound as being louder-amplified when the background sound/noise is lowered, it may be the lack of competition, audio and cognitive, between foreground and background sounds, not actual amplification.

when we observe silently our reactions, fears or whatever, the peculiar quality of the silence in the mind makes the perception clearer

Sounds right!

I really like using resonance as a metaphor for interdependence and connection. As musicians know, sounds that result from resonance can be amazing and totally unexpected! It’s a-liiiive!!!

135

Agreed, whatever may have caused its universality, it’s universal.

Do you suppose that a person who has eliminated his/her conditioning and sorrow will not resonate with the sorrow of another still conditioned individual? To me it seems just the opposite, all true religious figures, and K is one fine example of this, showed compassion towards the less fortunate persons. And compassion is not resonance?

Interesting question. I don’t know how a person who is free of conditioning relates to the world, what the term ‘compassion’ means for them, or what happens when they encounter suffering.

136

I had no idea of how complex it is the system of a guitar! Thans for the info.
For what concerns K teachings and our orientation in the realm of perceptions I prefer to stick to the metaphor of the drum. At least it’s something I can observe daily and it helps me to disentagle my mind from the moltitude of futile thoughts and emotions which -being an empty drum - I receive from outside.

That is what I had thought too. However, even if it’s not a real amplification the subjective perception is what that counts. In describing my experience at the beach I wanted to point out the switching between a state of our mind of no resonance (when sleeping) to a state when resonance takes place (a kind of “Morning has broken” experience, or beginners mind). There is a sense of freshness and immediacy which makes our perceptions “meaningful” (I cannot find another word in this moment but I guess you can grasp it).

This is a rational statement. It might come from just the intellectual level and yet it could be true. My approach is irrational, or overrational, I think I feel what compassion means to them, and I think that my feeling has to do with the drum resonance.

137

I hope you don’t mind if I insist in something I have already said, but I think it needs further development and both your quotations above concern this point.

To me the key, or the “starting point”, is the realization that one cannot avoid the impact with reality and so to resonate with it. When someone says that he cannot listen to the dissonance because is utterly unplesant, he is simply saying that is not aware of the impact this dissonance has in his life. That is, he has put his head under the sand and feels safe there, ignoring the danger which is coming upon him. This futile battle against reality is the essence of stupidity and there is no other remedy to it than opening the doors of perception (to quote Aldous Huxley). So, yes Sean, seeing one thing with complete clarity is the key to seeing everything. And I think that seeing one thing with complete clarity means to see it as if for the first time (“Morning has broken like the first morning…”). And the first step is the last step… The immediacy of a clear perception brush away the fogs of time, no other step is required.

138

As always with a good thread, it is difficult to know which points to pick up and respond to and which to provisionally neglect.

I think there are two things here worth looking at in a bit more detail.

1. The first is your point about

In your “Resonance” post you similarly wrote:

I grasp what you say intuitively, but I don’t think we have discussed this “already-ness” of the “impact of reality” before, so maybe we can bring this out, unpack this point, a little more?

We seem to be saying that the “impact of reality” has already impacted the mind, or one’s consciousness, at an unconscious level (I don’t mean to start a whole separate discussion about the unconscious: I am just using this word in a casual way).

For instance, one may have been hurt deeply (in childhood, through neglect, or because of certain incidents in the past), which has created “dissonance” (the dissonance of hurt, suffering, insecurity, etc). And yet one may not consciously be aware of this hurt. The hurt has informed one’s reactions and attitudes, but the conscious persona may be unwilling to look directly at this “impact” of hurt, or is insensitive to this hurt for one reason or another. - Yet the hurt is still there, whether the person admits it to themselves or not. The “impact of reality” has already taken place.

Is this at least part of the meaning we are attaching to the phrase “the impact of reality”? (We could similarly say that the impact of the sea and the sand, the voices of other people on the beach, etc, are also “already” there before one becomes aware of them).

2. The second point is the one that Sean has mentioned:

The issue for me here is the exploration of what is involved in a single perceptual event, like looking at a cloud (or a tree, a flower, an animal, a face in the crowd - or listening to the sound of the sea, the voice of another person, etc). In this act of perceiving the cloud (etc.) there is the potential for the whole mechanism of the mind to expose itself.

For instance, when I look at the flower :rose: (etc.) there is not only the visual perception to take into account, there is also my mental state to take into account - this being my resistance to looking, or my mental verbalisations in looking, my mental conclusions of one kind or another (“that’s a flower”, “that’s just a flower, so what?”, “I like it, I don’t like it”, “I’m bored with looking”, etc). And also my background mood, the psychological context of my looking - such as having leisure or being in a rush, having a moment of quiet or feeling distracted (feeling hungry or uncomfortable for one reason or another), feeling cheerful or moody, sad, etc.

This mental state, all the background, is in essence one’s whole thought process, one’s ego (the observer in K’s language). Unless this mental activity is somewhat retired, somewhat silent or in abeyance temporarily, it is impossible to actually look perceptually - with any clarity at least - at the flower :rose: (or cloud, etc). So the whole essence of the mind is implicitly involved whenever there is a simple perception. We are not usually aware of this whole background to perception, but - as with the “impact of reality” - the whole gestalt is already there in every act of perception.

Is this part of what you are wanting to bring out or unpack about “seeing one thing with complete clarity” @Sean ?

139

It occurred to me that in essence we are wanting to achieve a state of harmony with things, with reality.

At the level of matter and energy - i.e. at the level of physics - we are already in harmony with the universe.

But at the level of our psyche - our psychological thoughts and feelings, our egoism - we are out of sync with reality, we are dissonant.

So we are asking what will make this dissonance, harmonious? What is the factor that will transform disharmony into harmony?

The suggestion seems to be that it is awareness of disharmony - the (total) awareness of dissonance - which has the potential to transform the disharmony into harmony.

140

Yes! Definitely so. But also at the conscious level. That is: I was conscious of the impact of my resistence towards something (I hate living in a city) or someone, but somehow I had decided to ignore it. (Is not that stupid?) In that moment I simply realized that I could not avoit it! I had to aknowledge the responsibility of my choice.
And by the way, this means to be vulnerable. (Do you see how everything K said fits in its own place?)

141

Thanks Voyager. This helps to contextualise your point about the “impact” a little bit more. By “the impact of reality”, by the way, I am assuming we can also use K’s language of “what is”. What is actually happening can be temporarily avoided, suppressed, ignored or rationalised away, but this does not stop it from being an actual fact of experience (something that is actually happening, whether I like it or not).

So one could say that there are things which are happening which I like, other things which are happening which I am neutral about, and other things which are happening which I do not like.

The things I do not like I try to avoid, or ignore, or run away from, or suppress (this is the “stupid” response you mention - stupid because they are unavoidable, they are actually happening).

Of course, some things which I do not like I can avoid - like annoying people for instance. One can avoid them if one is not related to them or forced to work with them. - But I cannot avoid all annoying people forever! At some point we will be forced to interact with people who are annoying, and then this is “what is”. We must be able to be vulnerable to this fact, and meet it intelligently.

Right? Is this what you are saying?

This is also true of unpleasant situations or facts which one cannot avoid - e.g. one lives in a city, one doesn’t have enough money to go on holiday this year, one isn’t as handsome as one was when younger, etc. There are objective socio-political facts that cannot be ignored even though one doesn’t like them: wars in various parts of the world, populist politicians threatening to bring authoritarian leadership to society, gross ignorance and prejudice among ordinary voters, etc.

And, similarly, there are also emotional states (in oneself) - or facts of life, such as death - which cannot be avoided forever, and which need to be met intelligently.

So all this - both the conscious and unconscious happenings - is part of the “impact of reality”. Correct? And part of our stupidity is that we are often insensitive to these things. We are not vulnerable to life. We are self-protective, and therefore out of sync with life as it is, with the “what is”.

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Yes. Stay with “what is” is valid both with internal and external reality.

…and all the rubbish, the lies you read in the papers, the climatic crisis which no one is facing, appaling wars and the indifference of politicians towards the massacre going on… the impact on us is very, very heavy… I cannot blame the trend of the people you see around yourself to escape from all that heavy impact… there is a widespread sense of impotence… and yet escaping is not the solution.

Back to the beach, what I really felt was that I was conducting a personal war aganist reality, I had my own constructed reality which mattered more than actual reality, and I had the stubborn pretention that reality had to give in or comply to my wishes! …and I realised that I was paying a price too high for this pretension.

Correct.

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143

In the book To Be Human there is a really helpful grouping together of some of the things K has said about this quality or action (or non-action) of staying with ‘what is’, living with ‘what is’ - as it pertains the inner. To look at the inner, to stay with the inner, as though one were “looking at the moon”.

Here are some edited excerpts:

There is an ending to sorrow if one remains with it completely, holds it as one would a precious baby, holds it in one’s heart, one’s brain, stays with it.

And you will find this extraordinarily arduous, because we are so conditioned that the instinctive reaction is to get away from it.

But if you can remain with it, you will find there is an ending—totally—to sorrow.

My instinctual response is to run away, to explain, to act upon it. Now I realize the futility of that, and I don’t act. I won’t call it despair, sorrow, or anger, but I see the fact is the only thing—nothing else. Everything else is nonfact.

Now what takes place then? That’s what I want to get at. If you remain with what you had called despair without naming, without recognising it, if you remain with it totally without any movement of thought, what takes place? . . .

Can I face the fact without any sense of hope or despair, all that verbal structure, and just say, “I am what I am”?

Let’s first remain with the fact and let it tell its whole story…

Can I watch a wound which I have received from childhood and let the whole thing flower, without you making it flower or my denying, controlling, loving, holding on to it? Let that thing flower and see what happens…

There is this fact. I am confused. There is an awareness of that confusion, and to remain with it, not twist it, not try to go beyond it, is to be silent with that confusion… not trying to do something about it.

Remain with it in silence, let it tell you, you are part of it, be open, be sensitive. It will flower.

Try remaining with the feeling of hate, envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition… Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. Can you? …

You will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not let the feeling alone. It comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its dos and don’ts, its everlasting chatter.

You have done something, which is a fact, and you feel guilty, that is a fact, and you stay with it. You stay with it like a jewel, a rather unpleasant one, but it is still a jewel…

When you stay with it, it begins to flower; then it shows itself fully, all the implications of guilt, its subtlety, where it hides. It is like a flower blooming.

To stay with fear means not to escape, not to seek its cause, not to rationalise or transcend it. To stay with something means that.

Like staying with looking at the moon—just look at it.

When you are greedy, envious, is that envy different from you? Or you are envy. Of course you are. But when there is a division between envy and you, then you want to do something about it, control, shape, yield to it, and so on. And when there is a division between you and that quality, there must be conflict.

But the actuality is that you are envy. That is a fact. You are not separate from it.

You are not separate from your face, your name, your bank account, your values, your experience, your knowledge.

So when one realizes this truth, that you are not separate from that which you feel, which you desire, pursue, or fear, there is no conflict.

Therefore, you stay with that; you don’t move away from it, you are that…

You stay with it as though you are holding a precious jewel in your hand; you look at it, watch it, play with it; [then] there is such a sense of release, of freedom.

[So] what is important is not to escape, not to make an effort, just to remain with ‘what is’.

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144

Sounds like you are saying the irrational and the overrational are the same-ish? Please elaborate.

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Hi Voyager. Yes, I think you have expressed this well. It is very easy to go through the day without paying much attention to what is happening around and within us.

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Hi James. Yes, I think it’s interesting to explore this looking at a tree, mountain, flower etc. and the possibility of actually seeing the thing with great clarity. It seems clear that thought will interfere with this looking so mood might well generate thoughts. Is looking with absolute silence something we can actually do, for more than a few seconds?

147

Interesting! Does ‘harmonious’ mean consonant, i.e. pleasing to the ear and stable sounding? Or does it mean a balanced interplay between consonant and dissonant? They’re very different! The first is static: always pleasant, always stable. The second is dynamic: consonance and dissonance interacting with each other, dissonance resolving into consonance, consonance devolving into dissonance. The universe seems to work the second way, creation alternating with destruction.

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I’m not a music boffin, so I’m not sure how this works out in actual music. All I am saying is that, as a metaphor for inward dissonance, I think there is such a thing as dissonance bring resolved or transformed into consonance in music, right?

So, for example, a dissonant or jarring chord - which introduces tension or disturbance - can later be resolved into a consonant harmony, which is felt to be pleasing and satisfactory. I don’t know how technically the Bachs and Beethovens of the world do this (and, as a non-musician, it is not my current interest to know exactly how), but I think we’ve all heard it be done, right?

The question is how does this musical metaphor apply inwardly, psychologically.

Inwardly the suggestion is that psychologically discordant states - such as confusion, envy, suffering, etc - can be resolved when they are illuminated by choiceless or nonjudgemental awareness.

This is the proposal being made here. I don’t claim to be an expert on this, but I think the proposal is coherent.

In a piece of music this resolution may be introduced by a second theme in the composition (I don’t know if this is technically true). In psychological matters the resolution seems to be provided by the ‘second voice’ or second theme of actual choiceless awareness. Do you see what I am driving at?

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149

All of these K quotes say the same thing: resistance is futile and prolongs agony. Surrender now.

But unless/until one is ready to hear this, ready to respond intelligently, resistance is indomitable.

We’re here to talk about our resistance to what K was communicating because if it was clear to us, we wouldn’t need to be here.

We haven’t given up the ghost of self, the illusion of I, me, mine, because (for lack of self-knowledge), we don’t really know why, and by talking about what we don’t really know, we might find out.