I was speaking metaphorically - but of course, you are right. There is always a chopper. It’s like we are caught in a recursive loop.
If only we didn’t know what else to do, That would be the end of it, I think. Time would come to an end.
It is because we don’t know but think we can know that we keep on moving from the past into the future, bypassing the present.
If we could actually see we don’t know how to be still, the seeing would be the doing in that we would remain with the moving. Like K once said, the world is full of sound and you seek silence.
I feel there is something to not knowing, but I don’t know how to not know that.
Yes the ‘reality’ is that we are ‘alone’, separate and divided etc. My comment was from the insight that the ‘actuality’, not from my reality, is, that ‘we’ are the world and that ‘we’ always have been and always will be…the brain/mind is entranced by thought and its separate observer but breakthroughs are possible. “Freedom is at the beginning” he said, which to me means that it is always, ever here. Thought / time has placed the brain in ‘darkness’, the darkness of false division, the darkness of loneliness, fear, violence, suffering…and its attempts to find a ‘way’ out only serve to maintain the false reality, the sensation, that it is divided and alone. The K ‘story’ is simply that “there is no division”.
Is this why Krishnamurti talked about the fact of inner and outer divisions all his life? We would of course prefer the ‘story’ of no division. Some people like to believe they already live there! But, as with all stories, they come to an end when faced with actuality. True non division - if it exists at all - is not a story.
Dan, you do realize that the word ‘story’ means something made up? I can’t imagine that someone as drawn to Krishnamurti as you appear to be could seriously consider the teaching to be a “story”. Events, real or imaginary, relayed for the purpose of entertainment, having no concrete relationship to reality, to the actual affair of one’s life, yours and mine.
Am I missing something here? Are you using word “story” with some personal, unconventional meaning? If so, in order to avoid conflict due to mis-communication you need to clarify that, no?
Dan is referring to a single line of K’s where he was in a public meeting or dialogue and he was challenging people to find out why they attend his talks, what their motive or interest is, etc. He said that he was clear about why he was attending the meetings - and, after being pushed, he said, “I want to tell you a story”. He said it with a slight smile, so one can take it that he was talking a little bit poetically. He clearly didn’t believe his teachings were just a story in the ordinary sense.
So Dan is perhaps making this into something that it isn’t.
‘Story’ can be understood in different ways in different contexts. Krishnamurti uses this word to mean exactly something being revealed to you when he says: ‘let it tell its story’. But Krishnamurti himself is a fantastic storyteller enticing people with his meanders of thought, for example. Krishnamurti spoke to different types of people and he used both facts and images giving them life as if they were characters. Krishnamurti wouldn’t choose an audience in advance, and as we know after all these years not so many people are able to stay with ‘the teachings’, whether they take them as stories or not… and people have to have the right to say what they like and what they don’t like about the teachings!! It reminds me here of what D Bohm told his wife after the first day he met Krishnamurti: ‘the sky looks wider!’ I find this a beautiful inspiring story… and it isn’t made up!
All this may be. I’m not proposing a ban on the word “story”, or saying that we ought never to use the word in a suggestive or poetic way (such as when we talk about letting a wound or hurt “tell its story”). As I mentioned above, K talked about wanting to “tell people a story” during a public dialogue. I interpret him to have been poetically saying, “I want to tell you the story about who you are, what life is, what consciousness is, how consciousness can be emptied, wiped out, so that there is no more suffering and conflict and pain, but only a sacred mind, a religious mind, the fact of love” - or words to that effect.
My point was simply that this poetic use of the word “story” ought not, in my view, mislead us into thinking that K viewed his public teaching as a form of story-telling, and that he did not vigorously intend to communicate (through the limitations of language) literal truths about life, consciousness, thought, time, self, conflict and suffering, etc. To believe this - to my mind at least - would be to miss the wood for the trees.
Hello, James. The problem is you understand that Krishnamurti has a poetic approach talking about important matters of our common life, but you try and scold other people for being poetic on similar matters. It is not correct, it simply cuts off any exploration, if it is that you meant to do. As the thread goes, this should be a ‘safe place’ where people are not put off just out of the blue!
I am simply distinguishing between the poetic and the truthful, because the poetic can be used to cover up or conceal the impact of the truthful - as I feel some people are doing. If pointing this out is “scolding”, then I am happy to scold. But I don’t feel I am scolding, I am merely pointing out this distinction.
I wonder, Jess, why you never actually seem to be interested in exploring K’s teachings, but concentrate only on side issues and criticising me for my interventions. Is there any aspect of Krishnamurti’s teachings which is of interest to you and that you want to explore on its own terms? Or do you feel you have learned all you wish to learn about what he said?
You know, James, I have my own sources and my own ways and timings, but, anyway, thank you for being interested in my participation here. Look, I’ve only criticized you so far, as you say, because I felt the atmosphere was becoming toxic based on questionable and unfair assumptions about other people, as you well know.
We all of us, Jess, have questionable and unfair assumptions about other people - yourself included, if I may say. These assumptions are our images about each other which we each of us bring to our relationships here, as we bring them to our relationships everywhere. Are these images that we have of each other facts, actualities, truths? Or are they stories which we have made up out of our thinking and observing, which blend observation with thought?
The problem, as I see it, is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world. This is something we all do. So is there a distinction between the stories we tell and the fact, the truth of what is?
Hi, again, James! Now you talk of stories! Very well, you decide for yourself about your stories, nobody can do it for you and you’d better not interfere with other people’s stories if they are adult intelligent people.One must respect other people’s autonomy in order to contribute to a society without conflict.
Jess, how am I not respecting other people’s autonomy? By questioning what they are saying - just as you are questioning what I am saying? You don’t seem to see that you are doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing. You don’t see this?
This forum, for me, is a place to articulate for oneself what one thinks or feels Krishnamurti has said; as well as to question each other about what each of us thinks or feels about what Krishnamurti said.
So that we can help each other and ourselves to discover - through discussion - what Krishnamurti meant by what he said.
In this process we are confronting ourselves with what we think Krishnamurti said (which may be mistaken), as well as what other people think he said (which may be equally mistaken). The purpose is to expose, through expression and dialogue, what we think and feel Krishnamurti said so that we can objectively observe it, critique it, dismantle it (if it is wrong), and perhaps - though I grant this is very difficult if not highly improbable here - to have an insight into what he said, or an insight into ourselves (which I take to be the same thing).
If a person has no wish to do this, then part of their autonomy involves admitting they are not interested in this. This is up to them.