Do you see how it could easily create inner conflict ? In fact that would be the natural outcome of accepting an idea that conflicts with another idea that I hold.
What I know has always felt like an authority to me, and now I have this conflictual knowledge that I must be free from the known.
Not to mention the one that says ‘you don’t exist’!
Which then brings up the dilemma: who or what ‘must be free from the known’?
Its only a dilemna if we believe in the independant, intrinsic existence of individual, separate objects.
Its not “who” must be free - just that knowledge musn’t have the power to harm
When you put it that way, it’s a conflict.
But look at it this way: I’m in a cell in a prison with one little window, enough air, water and food to survive, and nothing to do but think.
Does knowing that the world outside is unimaginably different - the antithesis of life inside - create conflict, or does it just indicate that the life the human brain has chosen is a mistake?
Maybe I’m wrong to think of conflict as a contest between two contestants.
There is a conflict (of 2 contestants) in your example :
The world I can’t quite imagine (and desire) and the world I recognise (and wish I was without)
That’s oversimplifying.
i know I in my prison cell because it is what humans have been doing for a very long time, and I know its because the human brain has chosen this. This brain has converted from its innocence to the ignorant/arrogant condition its predecessors have imposed upon it. We are not contestants.
Are you saying that between the imagined “freedom from the known” and the actual “absolute dictat of the known” there is no contest?
As in we are bound to react? I have to act violently when pressed?
If so, (and it may well be) is this acceptable?
I don’t know what freedom is, so there’s no contest. All I know is my suffering and its cause, which is constant, continuous thought, how ever useful or vexatious it may be.
All I know is that thought is a runaway train that I can’t bring to order.
So if there is no ‘I’ to ‘bring it to order’, it’s awareness of myself, that is the only possibility isn’t it? And the one that called it a’runaway train’ is going to have to be included in the ‘disorder’? Aboard the runaway train?
It’s awareness of thought being both the cause and the effect of suffering.
the one that called it a’runaway train’ is going to have to be included in the ‘disorder’
Yes, but acknowledging this doesn’t dispel the illusion of I versus the constant streaming of thought because the problem is not thought, per se, but thought operating as the means by which the illusion of I is sustained.
Constant thought sustains the illusion of the thinker because that is what the brain is conditioned to do by the human that chooses to be its own authority rather than an illuminated brain, a light to itself.
i’m guessing that you’re not referring to outward-facing behavior, but perhaps the movements of thought or the thinker along these patterns?
we have a society where being knowledgeable or clever brings tremendous respect, and respect in turn has a tremendous impact on the behavior you attract from fellow human beings… add to that the economic and educational institutions, which are essentially extensions of the political system… i guess this structure of society is shaping our thinking and relationship patterns?
but on a different note, this structure cannot really capture the living quality that we all have, but limited awareness of the problem only erects a counter-structure and brings about strife
quite a punchline 
it’s quite interesting that sometimes its easier to travel the world (and in the future - outer space) than to find and take that one step…
Well, that’s what I said if you re-read my post carefully, i.e.: no dogma, no media ‘truth’, no tradition, in short no imposition (or self-imposition) of any ‘truth’ = no (possibility of) questioning. And no questioning = no awakening to the fact (whatever it may be). That’s all.
May I ask if you see any kind of relationship between an ‘inquiring that goes in the direction of trying to judge what is good and bad’ and a ‘[sporadic] spontaneous and organic inquiring’, regarding the self (bearing in mind that one belongs to the self and the other does not)?
I repeat the question: who judges and on what basis, and do the moments when ‘inquiring is spontaneous and organic’ have something to do (some kind of relationship) with that judgement?
And once again: what is the basis of this divisive mind that apparently has moments of insight into ‘what is’? And is there some kind of relationship between those sporadic moments of lucidity/clarity that the mind has and the moments when it judges and divides?
Thought would be the instrument if in those sporadic moments of insight into ‘what is’ that occur when he is questioning his reality, he would say ‘it doesn’t belong to me, and I’m not going to take it over’ and keep his word.
I am posting the following comment here due to the forum’s limitation of not being able to make 3 consecutive posts, not because they are related to each other (or maybe they are?)
Only when that suffering directly affects us or our loved ones, and yet that caring is not imbued most of the time (always?) with the full picture of what that suffering is and its actual causes.
p.s.: and since it’s late and I’d have to wait to post again, I’m going to bed and I’ll read you tomorrow. Good night (or good morning) to all of you.
If thought then is not the instrument that can do away with the ignorance of the truth, what is that instrument?
Why does our brains give so much importance to thought? Isn’t most of our actions done without thought? This can be seen by observing our daily activities. This would be a good place to start.
Someone once went to a lama to tell him that he had started to meditate but found it impossible because his thoughts kept talking and he couldn’t stop them, and that this had never happened to him before. The lama laughed out loud and finally said, ‘This has always happened to you, you just weren’t aware that it was happening to you’. And he told him to go on meditating.
The experiences we have are all projected via our brains, so thats what all our experiences have in common.
Insight usually means : seeing something clearly as if for the first time
Judgement and analysis (of said insight for example) will certainly arise once the shock (of the insight) has worn off - this is just the habitual movement of the brain in its momentum of service to security and pleasure (which is the whole basis of the suffering process)
It isn’t clear to me what you’re trying to say here.
Are you saying that a partial insight does not change the way the brain operates; that it’s just a shock the brain recovers from?
The insight sees through the ‘smog’ in the brain…then the smog rolls back in adding the memory of the insight to itself? Along with some endorphins?