I’m working on a book: Krishnamurti Without the Carrots.
Subtitled: The Promise of Hopelessness
And yet one can see how difficult it is to even agree on this first step. For some of us it isn’t a casual belief that we are somewhere else, we really seem to believe we are somewhere else! And so when it comes to looking at the real issues, the central roots of the problems we face, we are already divided into those who are here, and those who deeply believe they are somewhere else. What can one do?
Everyone has read/listened to Krishnamurti, but it’s as though everyone has assimilated their own version of Krishnamurti. For some of us Krishnamurti is asking us to look at what is, at our conflict, our images in relationship, our suffering, our subtle egoism, our relationship with thought, etc.
But for others Krishnamurti is saying there is the immensity, there is no-thing-ness, there is no division, the self doesn’t exist, there is just immensity, silence, etc, and this is what we ought to accept/embrace/believe.
So it seems we are divided between different ways of understanding Krishnamurti’s message.
I should clarify that I am not anti- the immensity, I am not anti- silence, I am not anti- the sacred. I don’t reject these statements of Krishnamurti’s.
It’s just that I am sensitive to the fact that these have to do with aspects of experience or life or consciousness that are beyond what I can presently ascertain for myself, and can easily become hopeful beliefs - and so I personally dislike being casual about their usage (which does not mean I reject them or deny them or refuse to consider them).
Didn’t think that for a second. I probably lean more towards blasphemy than you do.
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I would like to respond to the postings that addressed my carrots comment, which had nothing to do with disparaging Krishnamurti or pursuing pleasure, but Dev has once again threatened to kick me out if I continue with my train of thought/exploration. I don’t think that is fair or intelligent, but maybe you all do? Please let me know, presuming I haven’t been booted. If I do get booted, please think about what that means for the Kinfonet forum’s freedom of speech. If I get booted, think about saving this message, which I’m sure will be deleted, and reposting it. Or not. But above all, think about what this means for the forum.
It was a shock to me also when I read that “trying my patience” business. (And probably to a few more who watch what is going on here.) …anyway good to have you back Rick!
Stick around for a while, this all maybe headed south…but let’s see.
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I don’t know what the issue is with you and Dev, all I can say is that it is very difficult to look at these deep psychological matters coherently together; and it seems we are all, in different ways, trying each others patience!
I wish there was a more natural way of sharing together so that we didn’t get snagged on all these myriad ways of misunderstanding each other. We are such a small family here, there must be a way of communicating more straightforwardly.
But the fact is we are all terribly different kinds of people - and we don’t much understand where each of us is coming from.
Not being able to grasp where each of us is coming from, sometimes we can only go by the external flavour of people’s comments - the taste of their words, the qualities that stand out. How different people’s words feel or taste for each of us is subjective, but we are still responsible for what we put out.
So, for instance, you can be playful, insightful, contrarian and serious, all at once. One person might pick up on the insightful things you say, while another may pick up on the contrarian things you say. Which aspect is more truly your own? Who can say?
So while I don’t think, in this instance, you were saying anything too contrarian, I can see why Dev may have suspected you of jumping into a difficult interpersonal situation with contrarian motives. I don’t believe you were doing so, but you’ve done so before, so I can see this is the danger of your own particular flavour.
Each of us has our own flavour that not everyone will tolerate indefinitely - for instance, I am aware that I continually rub some people up the wrong way - so it is part of relationship to figure out how and why we are doing this.
As I said before, I wish we could be more like family members, and be direct with each other without coming to blows. But this would take a degree of openness on all our parts, admitting our contradictions, the images we have about each other, the things we dislike about each other as well as the things we like.
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Thanks, I really appreciate that. 
If Dev boots me, I want to let you and the other regulars know that I really enjoyed our time together and learned a lot.
And we are demonstrating, for better or worse, that we truly are the world and all its sad flaws.
And that is a toughie for some people, they don’t know what to do with it.
I let my joie de negation go too far for the forum from time to time! But it was in pursuit of what I saw as the truth, what I still see as the truth.
This is not X. There is no unbridled freedom of speech rule here. This site has a single purpose - to examine Krishnamurti’s works critically.
By his own admission and as is evident by his contributions here, rickScott is more interested in back and forth intellectual banter than an earnest study of the teachings. It is hard enough as we have seen in this thread to keep the focus on penetrating study even with people who profess to have this interest, so yes I am out of patience. I am no longer willing to tolerate trolling behavior, not even a whiff of it, done hoping that the seriousness of what some of us are attempting to touch upon here will rub off.
I don’t care if only a few persons remain here, or if I need to close it all down, as I did with the Kinfonet dialog groups, though that would be a shame. I know of no other place with the potential to go into these matters as deeply as we have been doing on this thread - truth and comfort do not go together as Krishnamurti once said. I choose truth, hard and lonely as that is. I now dream of a community built on love. Love of truth, not my truth or your truth, but truth. Life is too serious an affair to play with.
Many postings and entire threads only touch on Krishnamurti tangentially. Rather than work with that, you resist it and seek to change it to follow your ideal. I.e. you want the forum to BECOME.
That is unfair and grossly inaccurate. You don’t get me, you don’t see how passionate I am about the things I write about, the search for non-denominational truth. That’s your deficiency, your blindspot. And you are threatening my ‘privilege’ to be here because of it.
By Jove, I think you’ve got it!
Would you plz, both, get over it?
And by asking this to you both i feel kind of involved in it , don’t I?
I think there are two distinct areas or issues at work here that we need to be aware of and kept in mind:
1.
and
2.
With respect to issue 1:
We have to be willing to accept the bandwidth of this particular website. This is a limitation of freedom for sure, but it is the same on every Buddhist (and other) forum or website that I am aware of. The aim is - broadly speaking - to keep discussion within the stated interests of the website so that it doesn’t become an incoherent mess of incompatible and contradictory views. Even within such limits one can see how difficult it is for us to find coherence, but this has more to do with issue 2., which I will come to in a moment.
So, for the purposes of this website, one needs to have an open or declared interest in Krishnamurti’s writings/lectures/dialogues/books. This doesn’t preclude doubts, concerns, constructive skepticism, or moments of contrarian rebelliousness. It just means that one’s open interest has to outweigh one’s contrarian rebelliousness for the forum to fulfil its broad aims. Naturally, if one does not have an open interest in Krishnamurti at all, then why would one be here? So I think participation is self-selecting anyway.
With respect to issue 2:
We are the world here on the forum, for both good and bad. Sometimes this is good, often it is bad. So what matters is whether or not we are open to learning from it.
Each of us participating here has some aspect of self-interest or ego that interferes with clear perception, transparent dialogue. We hold personal views, we have conditioned beliefs, we have images of each other that distort our comprehension of each other, we take sides, we build walls, we have limitations of sensitivity, charity, intellect, we are insecure, we are proud, we are fearful, aggressive, petty, obstinate, conceited, closed-minded - and we are also insightful, curious, sometimes generous, sometimes affectionate, sometimes passionate and deeply concerned. We are all these things + our own distinct personalities, which often clash.
So, just as we can see in society at large, we have similarly yet to find a solution to our participation here on the forum. We bring the world with us, so to speak. So we need to have an interest in learning about this, asking honest questions about this, not building walls of resistance to enquiring into this.
It’s easy to accuse each other of being idiots! (which we are implicitly doing this all the time - though some of us are more frank about it!). It’s more difficult to try to find out what the roots of our conflicts are (or is), without trivialising it or retreating into one kind of dogma or another.
So, as I understand it, to participate here coherently we need to take into account both 1 and 2. None of us are saints, all of us probably deserve to be booted off the site sometimes. But so long as people are interested in both 1 and 2, then I think this website can have - and does have - genuine value in the world.
You are involved in it, from a Kinfonet-collective pov. That said, I’d be happy to hash this out privately, me and Dev and whoever else wanted to join in, rather than hold a thread hostage.
I agree that both have value. And a Krishnamurti forum seems the perfect place to discover how they may exist in harmony. If we can’t find a way to get along here, what does that say about us?
It says we are not very good at getting along?
This is obviously the same story everywhere, all over the world. It’s only that we are verbally and intellectually supposed to be more aware of it on a forum like this - but verbal and intellectual awareness do not resolve things (and the people who feel they have more than verbal and intellectual awareness can’t be trusted either!).
On a human level, it’s just a fact that on the forum we all have such different personalities and intentions.
I honestly don’t understand half the people here. I wouldn’t naturally be friends with many of them, just as they wouldn’t naturally be friends with me; we don’t get on casually, and we don’t agree much on anything. Whose fault is that? Is it my fault? Is it theirs?
They would say that I am at fault. While I would say that they are at fault. But this doesn’t resolve the problem either.
So what can one do about these human level issues?
I think being honest about them is a start. Being honest that we have images about each other, that we think other people are wrong and that we’re right. We don’t personally - some of us - like each other much. It may not be nice to admit this fact, but it’s a fact, isn’t it?
Then what’s the next step?
I can try to get on with the people I like, and ignore the rest. This is one strategy.
Or I can try to relate to the people I don’t like, finding areas of common ground and seeing if one can move beyond like and dislike. This is another strategy.
Obviously quarrelling endlessly doesn’t change anything in a positive way - but if one just ignores other people when they say things that seem to be open to question, this is not a meaningful strategy either.
Is there a different way of approaching this problem of our relationship here?
What do you think? (bearing in mind that we have to be able to include 1 and 2)