Are we together?

Kinfonet Discussion
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Are we together?

For one reason or another, people come to talk about what K said. I have heard people say, the K gathering is to question what he says. That usually means questioning the person of a philosopher, or whatever he is thought to be, and questioning an abstract philosophy, as it relates to oneself, or to some idea of an individual.

When some thing is said or written, am I listening and watching? The usual approach we use is intellectual. It is digesting the words, ideas, information, and responding on that verbal, measured, basis. What we think is together, is a connection based on tradition, language, politics, religion, and all that knowledge. This is all a separateness.

Together is carefully, watching and listening, not digesting and repeating all that stuff of connections and disconnections. When there is fundamentally, togetherness, when there is listening and watching, then there is something to share. Opinion, contradiction, disparagement, all that stuff, does not arise.

To be thinking to solve this experience, this condition, of separateness, or to diminish its relevance, is the nature of the separation. Worse, is to think it is a matter to manage, to put in order. The disorder is the terrible nature of life on the planet we have made and cultivate.

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Are we together?

In these forum conversations, if a person is responding to the opposite person directly, then there could be a feeling of being together, I guess. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Very nicely put, @Peter.

This watching and looking together, for me, is the central teaching of K. I have only recently connected with people in the context of K, and have been a bit puzzled, how for many the teachings refer to quotes and “what K said”. I find this all a bit confused, since the man explicitly renounced authority and knowledge over and over again. Does it mean that these people have not actually done the work K put forward? Have they created another authority and image and ideology and theory and philosophy to explain away their pain and loneliness?

There is an immense wisdom in what K said, and it can only be accessed by finding it out yourself. Repeating words, or defending positions is moot.

Anyhow, I don’t like myself when I bring up this observation because it is not helping anyone or anything. We are always together, when I doesn’t exist.

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We come together, and we maybe have an idea about this coming together, or it is just something to do. Anyway we make a start and it all depends on levels of sociability, skill, expertise, knowledge etc. So at one level, that’s all there is to it. We find out about each others views, and exercise our differences, and present more views. It is just the usual interaction.
This is at odds with the fundamental context of this place where we are meeting. Do you see? The conflict is very basic. The conflict we find in each other, the conflict we find in the thinking, in the approach, is not especially here or with someone, it is a fundamental condition, which we cultivate. A deep matter of a psychological conflict which we don’t see in ourselves, except abstractly.
Or maybe we think we do see it, theoretically, intellectually, and want to express it in context? Why people disregard the conflict, I don’t know. Anyway, the point is, not to have the usual discussion, but to understand the fundamental conflict is in thought.

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I bring my puppy to a puppy group where they meet in order to learn about life.
We meet there together, owners and dogs, sometimes letting the dogs go wild, sometimes holding them back.

Here we meet together with our personalities/traumas on a leash : sometimes we show off our erudition (hoping for the correct response from our interlocutors : awe, acceptance, hilarity), sometimes our traumas run wild until they are flagged.

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We say, congregating, assembling, grouping, gathering, together, but this is based on some interest, idea, desire, belief, and is a social or herd instinct, maybe convivial, maybe a protest, and the separation from the whole unnamed is violent. Is there a together when I am sharing the nature of living on the planet, and there is a oneness with the whole planet, not thinking about this or that, not separate to some other, not labelling things, not making a point of my self?

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Togetherness is in opposition to separateness - togetherness implies the existence of things and their position in relation to others.

Many concepts need to be presumed for togetherness - which is why some unfortunate words like suchness and thusness have been invented. (Emptiness being too loaded a concept)

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I am using the word together meaning not in opposition, not in conflict.

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Silence? Neutrality?

Would it be helpful to pinpoint what it is that we are in conflict with?

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The whole whole way of life is in conflict. I am allowed to walk the streets with a rifle and when I shoot someone I am innocent? It is not my fault. I am legally allowed to be violent. What are we to do about all this craziness? Trying to fix this is a conflict with law, society, politics, religion, all of it. I can ask, is the conflict deep within my own psychology? This deep human conflict is what I am trying to solve when I turn to ideas about sovereignty, self defense, lawfulness, freedom, etc.

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One obvious observation seems to be that there is a conflict of concepts.
Humans, though they have benefited from the ability to imagine and share complex ideas are, it seems, at the same time enslaved by those very ideas.

Humans do not seem to be able to fully apprehend the concepts that arise from their own consciousness. We are not free of our own concepts because we probably don’t really know what thinking, thought and thinker are.

An example would be the idea of freedom (or the right to bear arms in your allusion) - there are people in conflict over the concept as it relates to their everyday lives - as if freedom was something that existed in a vacuum.

Ideas arise in our heads, and cause confusion and conflict with all the other ideas in our heads.

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When we see that we do not fully apprehend the structure and consequence of our ideas, and we see all the suffering, conflict and pain arising from it, would we not inquire to learn about the ideas and how they come about?

Maybe such learning can reduce conflict and suffering? If we do not want to look, we maintain and accept the pain in the world, and do not even attempt to be responsible.

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Emptiness is a loaded concept?

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:rofl:

Joking aside, yes, when we hear the word empty, our brain is triggered by notions that may not be intended - Its just a word traditionally used to describe ultimate reality, but shouldn’t.