Are You Serious?

Kinfonet Discussion
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How many of us here are serious about “getting” what Krishnamurti was trying to get across? Do most of us just want to identify with Krishnamurti because we feel he was for real, authentic - not just another know-it-all trying to hold an audience of sycophants large enough and/or wealthy enough to enable one to be a succcessful know-it-all?

Did Krishnamurti know it all, or did he know enough to know that knowing is overrated?

If awareness is choiceless and Krishnamurti was the voice of no choice, do we choose to keep listening to that voice, over and over, because we think we know where it’s coming from, and we don’t dare question what we think we know?

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I think you are in danger of stealing the famous tennis player John McEnroe’s signature phrase!

But, more seriously, everyone who participates on Kinfonet does so for different reasons. There is no one size that fits all.

All one can do is participate in one’s own way, and find out if it chimes or not with other people. Over time it becomes clear what different people’s styles are, what grabs their interest, what they want to get from being on a platform like this.

For myself, the biggest interest has been the clarification of things I have found confusing or difficult about Krishnamurti’s teaching - more or less as though I were studying the teachings of Buddhism, and attempting to make clear for myself what they actually are.

But I acknowledge that only a few people will appreciate this, because this is only one of many approaches.

People who are anti-intellectual seem to hate my approach! But I don’t actually see myself as an intellectual (though I acknowledge that I am more intellectual than many here).

I mainly want to get to the truth of a particular topic without getting sidetracked by secondary issues, and most people get sidetracked for various reasons. This doesn’t mean that they are not serious, it just means that they have a different purpose or way of participating. I do not understand their way of participating, but they surely have their own reasoning process.

In the end, I think a lot of the conflict between people just comes down to good old ego and pride. People take sides just like at school. Nobody accepts being wrong about anything. Some people just want to police the tone all the time, or defend a position they feel identified with. We - by which I mean most of us participating here - almost never meet at the level of content without some irrelevant ego issue arising that interferes in the enquiry. Everyone has images of everyone, just like in a family - and we stick to those images.

Getting beyond all this is only possible if both parties engaged in a discussion or dialogue have an equal interest in a particular subject, and are willing to put aside their images for the sake of pure discovery. When this happens - which it does occasionally - then we remember that we are part of the same human family after all. But, alas, this is such a rare occurrence. The rest of the time we are like parallel lines that never meet, as K often said about married couples.

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I know John McEnrow was a tennis player known for being a poor sport, but I’m not a sports fan so I don’t think I’d ever heard his “signature phrase”. What is it?

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“You cannot be serious!”

McEnroe was a great tennis player, but a terrible sport; he became famous for this rant.

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Thanks. But hadn’t the phrase been in use for a long time before he shouted it out so loud and aggressively?

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I’m not familiar with anyone else using the phrase.

But more generally, and away from this specific context (of John McEnroe being a bad sport!), I associate the lambasting of people for their lack of seriousness with the prophets of the Old Testament, or with Jesus’ saying “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”

Krishnamurti would often say on the platform things like “Oh you people, you’re not serious!”, or “What a strange generation you are!”, etc. So this just seems to be the way of the prophets.

(I hope we are not prophets, Inquiry! - Maybe we are just people who get a bit grumpy sometimes?!)

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I’ve read The Bible and I’m familiar with the prophets and Jesus. They had no choice but to do what Yahweh assigned them to do because they wouldn’t dare refuse (look what happened to Jonah).

But I hate to think K was doing what he was told instead of feeling it was his responsibility.

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As far as I remember some of the Old Testament prophets were genuinely moved by human injustice, by human suffering, and part of what fuelled them was a concern to wake people up. Probably Jesus, if he existed, had a similar concern.

By prophet I simply mean someone who points out the danger that people are in, and who feels the responsibility of compassion to wake them up before it is too late, even if no-one listens to what they have to say: “Let them who have ears to hear, let them hear.” I think Krishnamurti was a prophet in this more general sense.

Anyway, on a private note, it’s time for me to sleep. I bid you goodnight.

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This seems inevitable when relationship with another has something at stake that one doesn’t want to risk losing or provoking. Every relationship with another is risky because it may be fortuitous or regrettable…but that’s another thread.

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It is a serious question : am i at all serious about the teachings and closely related , with life?
It is a question that one should ask him/herself because nobody else can answer it for you.
It is not a question of numbers, how many of us?
It is said that the answer is in the question, depending on what?
It seems to me very important to find this out. Are you with me?

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How will we (I) find out whether I (we) are serious at all? Let us try …

It seems to me that life is a deadly serious affair and that it demands to be dealt with in an appropiate way (btw the word appropiate means to make it its own).
Do we do this? Or are we always keep sthg in reserve? So that we never fully deal with what is happening? Isn’t this what is meant by fragmentary?
We need energy to be fully aware, needn’t we? Where will that energy come from? Or better, what is the cause of our wasting energy? Maybe it is the fragmentation itself, isn’t it?
The question then arises is whether we can live without this fragmentation? Seeing that this fragmentation is the cause of the division, and automatically waste of energy.
But, please, don’t take this for granted.
Let us delve in it, because i will find out if there is truth in what i said.

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I think our problem in this forum is that we don’t move step by step. We take things for granted specially if it came from K.
What is important is to have an investigating mind that examines and doubts the psychological knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout the centuries.

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I was (am) asking whether we could go into the question " what it is to be serious"?
Why is this a problem? Wat is a problem? Moving step by step as you asked. The word problem means “sthg thrown at you”, a challenge that needs to be responded. Why do we need a challenge? A problem? To have a solution and then be satisfied, like being a little boy that has solved a mathematical problem and has been rewarded. Why do we (i) want a reward? Is this our conditioning? Reward and punishment? Like a dog being trained.
Ofcourse we repeat words and that might be the reason why they are also limited. And that’s also why (for the sake of investigation itself) we need not to be a slave of them.
Which brings me to a next step in the investigation: is this possible at all?
Because, as you mentioned, we seem to be trapped by knowledge and words themselves are knowledge.

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Krishnamurti’s Notebook P. 180: “There is a seriousness that has the quality of light whose very nature is to penetrate, a light that has no shadow; this seriousness is infinitely pliable and therefore joyous.”

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This might be so, but unless I can see the truth in it, it becomes so shallow and meaningless.
Just words …
I thought we were here to make an inquiry into seriousness so that maybe we might find for ourselves what is all implied in it.
Is s.o. interested in it?
Do we need K to do it?

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Are you the light that penetrates? Are you infinitely pliable and joyous?

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Seriousness arises when there is the realization that being free is essential.

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Well, to answer your questions : i really do not know and to be honest, sometimes I might think I am. That is the ordeal.
What is more important to me is and I am curious about : why do you ask?
Is this a serious question?

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I really do not know what it is to be free. Does it imply that i cannot question about being serious?
I do not understand.

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We can only be serious with regard to something in particular, no? After all, seriousness has no meaning in a vacuum.

For example, to be serious about understanding the nature of human consciousness, or about taking care to be truthful to oneself, or about practical matters like livelihood, etc. The more serious one is about something, the more energy is given to it. Naturally so.

For us here, for communication purposes, it make sense to see if we even have a common problem, a common question that we are all serious about, interested in. For everyone to ask and clarify for themself at the beginning and along the various stages of the journey, What am I interested in? Has that interest evolved? and so on.

It is not possible to speak fruitfully with another on.given topic if our respective interests do not overlap, at least to some degree.