A relationship with thought

Kinfonet Discussion
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A relationship with thought.
I can understand some people don’t want to look into this, and put it down to platitudes, but what is this thing called thought? I can say there are memories, daydreaming, theories, ideas, etc, but what is this relationship with thought? Why am I wandering off in thought all the time, not really at peace with a quiet mind? I am not asking about day to day business, using thought to get jobs done, etc. It is a question of a restlessness, which is filled with TV, internet, phone calls, hobbies, coffee shops, browsing, chatting, and the like, just passing time.

Apart from using thought as a tool, are the idle thoughts and their responses, a fundamental reaction? I might think I have better life, controlling emotion, sentiment, and sorrow, with apathy or rebellion. This is avoiding the condition, if it is there or not. Is there an underlying human condition, which is in fact a reaction? Is what we have, a life in a reactionary relationship, managed and organized with thought?

It is said this reaction is based in what we are calling thought. The process of looking at things and naming them is a division, and this is fundamentally a schism between an observer and the observed. It is this break which psychologically we are trying to solve, to repair, and have adapted religion and society to address this division. What we call romance is one such false relationship we have designed to replace true relationship.

The disturbance is not the content of thought, memory, etc, it is the false relationship with thought. I will have an opinion, my perspective, theories, logic, knowledge, etc, and will stick with this, no matter what any one says, because self expression is the way of thought I am familiar with.

The thoughts are a habit. It is not a question of analysis and solving it. I don’t have to discover it, it has already been pointed out by someone. It is not cause and effect, and something I can avoid. It is there. It is a question of observation, and addressing the preoccupation with thought. Watching, attentively, seriously, see what happens.

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Sitting with thought; what I should or should not do, what I might do next, what is on the agenda, this is all giving direction to life.
This is Time.
Then, thoughts about some different feeling or experience, some different state of being, which may or may not arise, which is worth thinking about or not, having an answer or an explanation.
This is Becoming.

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When thought will not have its authority in our actions? :thinking:

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When there is awareness of its movement?

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Is it a question or your point on my question?

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Both? Being unaware of the thinking process as it moves along allows it to be the “authority “ . In the ‘light’ of awareness it can be seen for what it is , a movement that is ‘out of place’ in the mind?

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Okay…

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Hii Dan,

I think, there is some ambiguity in my question. I see that some actions require reasoning which is a thought. Your answer is still valid in some cases of a person’s life.

Some thoughts will just dictate our actions based on perspectives.

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Seeing is an action that doesn’t require thought, right? Intellect / reasoning has a place. Isn’t thought/thinking misplaced when it takes on the role of authority? Yet isn’t that what has happened? Thought with memory and its beliefs and knowledge purporting to ‘know’…but we actually don’t know, do we? We go about acting as if we do, but we don’t.

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okay…
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Can I be “at peace with a quiet mind”? Isn’t a quiet mind completely alone in relationship with actuality? Isn’t a quiet mind the absence of the “I” you imply should be at peace with it?

The disturbance is not the content of thought, memory, etc, it is the false relationship with thought.

So what is it that is in this “false relationship with thought”? Isn’t it the brain in which intelligence has not awakened? The unintelligent brain can’t help but be in a false relationship with thought because thought is substituting for the intelligence that has not, and may never, awaken.

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Someone said to me, and I think it was quoting K, there is a space between thoughts, and this is the meditation.

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This is like saying that freedom is the space between two enclosures. If K said that, he misspoke - can someone find a quote that might lead to this misinterpretation?

Meditation (or freedom from thought/choiceless awareness etc) is not dependant on one thing more than another - that would be separation and conflict rather.

The silence of meditation is from not knowing - the absence of fear - the absence of clinging and distinction - the absence of comparison - not a dependance on whether fear or thought are absent or present.

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I googled it, and it seems it is a well documented aspect.
There is a point to communication, which can be interpreted with thought, but the point is lost.
There are of course drops of water, but in the body of water, there is no distinguishable drop of water.

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Well I suppose that if meditation is defined as the space between thoughts - this points to it as a state of mind that comes and goes.
And it gives more importance to the space so that people like us hearing the message will give less importance to the thoughts - a means of teaching

I like to think of meditation as the state that is not bothered whether there is thought or space - that the thoughts are able to arise without taking hold.

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I think both things are related. Meditation being the understanding of oneselves and it being possible in the gap between two thoughts.

Since you ask for a clarifying quote, her is one :

Jiddu Krishnamurti – Understanding exists in the interval between two thoughts

Jiddu Krishnamurti : This is really a different way of asking the question, “What is meditation?”

(and further in the same discussion:)

Now, you will see that in the process of thinking there is always an interval, a gap, between two thoughts. As you are listening to me, what exactly is happening in your mind? You are listening, perhaps experiencing what we are talking about, waiting for information, the experience of the next moment. You are watchful, so there is passive watching, alert awareness. There is no response; there is a state of passiveness in which the mind is strongly aware, yet there is no thought – that is, you are really experiencing what I am talking about. Such passive watchfulness is the interval between two thoughts.

Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti Third Talk in Colombo, 1949/50

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In ‘The Only Revolution’, section Europe, chapter II, Krishnamurti questions:‘Is there space between thought and thought? Between remembrances? Between actions? Or is there no space at all between thought and thought? Between reason and reason? Between health and ill-health - cause becoming the effect. and the effect becoming the cause? If there were a break between thought and thought, then thought would be always new, but because there is no break, no space, all thought is old. You may not be conscious of the continuity of a thought; you may pick it up a week later after dropping it, but it has been working within the old boundaries.’
About meditation, in the same chapter of the same book, Krishnamurti says: ’ Innocency and spaciousness are the flowering of meditation. (…) It is these scars of experience that prevent innocency. Freeing the mind from the constant pressure of experience is meditation.’

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When I read the texts of K, I see it is not the content he is exploiting. He is looking at something, something which we have come to report in the brain, with memory, with ideas. Some experience, some method, some concept, which we take to be the actuality. The exercise is then to see what is the origin, its essence. He talks about what we commonly, falsely, think is the actuality of the experience; how we interpret the nature of experience to be the way we automatically analyse and describe it. Negating all this stuff, with thought, it shows there is an essential nature, which is not at all what we think and report, and that the content of thought is misleading the brain.

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This new human brain in its confusion as to what it is, ‘why’ it is… which it can’t satisfactorily grasp, allowed the thinking process to take the ‘catbird seat’. Thought then created an illusory ‘permanent’ entity apart from itself: the thinker. This is the ‘relationship’ that takes place in the brain, thought reacting to itself, conflict, fear, dread of what may happen…what can bring a halt to this? What can make thought assume its ‘proper’ role? Only seeing, listening to its movement without judgement or motive or condemnation or “choice”?

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He said this in 1950 and, as far as I know, was the last time he spoke of it. Any idea as to why he dropped this from his talks?