“…we can ask if there is a different instrument rather than that which we have used, which is thought. Like a good carpenter, like a good mechanic, he throws away something that has no longer any use. But we don’t. We cling to it. We say, show me the other instrument then I’ll give up the other. And nobody is going to show it to you, including the speaker, because this is a matter of great serious investigation.”
New York, USA | 1st Public Talk 9th April 1983
Why do we feel we must know something about this instrument instead of realizing that for it to be another instrument, it may not be anything like thought, the only thing we know?
If I say : “instead of me and my thought, there must be love (or honesty, compassion or care)”
You will reply : “how dare you say you are better than me, how dare you imply that you know so much about love! F@*k U!”
We just need to see that “me and my fear” is a useless instrument for banging in nails, in fact the whole construction site is a war zone.
I’m giving an example of how we can react in these discussions - have you not noticed that humans are more than capable of having crazy discussions like these? If we pay attention we can see that even Kinfonet is full of it
Its my reaction to your question : why we feel the need to know the answer? - my response being that just being in revolt to the revolting truth is sufficient.
Maybe I wasn’t clear but I was just repeating what Krishnamurti said: We say, show me the other instrument then I’ll give up the other.
Why, when someone says there is an instrument other than thought, do we want to reduce it to what we know instead of allowing for the possibility that the other instrument is beyond thought and that we can’t compare it to thought?
Sounds like habitual behaviour when we feel that there is some prize to be gained.
Also its helpful if we need to communicate about that other instrument.
the way you’re describing the problem, isn’t it also indicative of how we continue to live in the past? i don’t mean to imply that one should break away from the past, but i think sometimes awareness brings clarity that the world is no longer the way we saw it previously…
we have a world-view, which is like a home… the space of familiarity… it’s quite like a mental map where we hold opinions about so many external entities… sometimes even thoughts, concepts and processes are viewed as an entity - to be dealt with in terms of opinion and judgement…
it is also quite remarkable to notice our reactions to change or the possibility of change… i think we tend to classify flux or movement as risk or opportunity… within the scope of such a relationship with one’s own view of the world, one constantly tries to move - either in aversion or in approach… and in success and failure, one moves with pride, hope, shame and despair… at some point, one also begins to see a futility in all this and retreats into a kind of cynicism…
from my exploration of krishnamurti’s work, it appears that there’s a possibility of freedom from all this… and this freedom seems like a return to innocence and simplicity, and maybe also some clarity about the relationship between oneself and one’s context… but at the same time, there’s this constant seeking, including the seeking of freedom, clarity, and all that… it seems that the seeking is driven by past experience and impressions rather than the reality of what freedom and clarity actually imply…
For me, freedom and clarity are just enticing concepts, but escaping from the known seems to be real. I escape (supposedly) by finding out what I didn’t know until now. And for as long as I can believe I have found out what is new, I can believe I’m progressing toward freedom and clarity. But clearly, I’m just going through the motions of finding out instead of actually finding out.
It may be that finding out requires, first of all, losing the appetite for what passes for what’s new, i.e., self-deception, I can only remain with what’s old until it collapses of its own weight.