Can I Watch and Listen Without Motive?

Kinfonet Discussion
1

When the question, “Can I watch and listen without motive?” is asked, one is motivated to find a satisfactory answer, or one realizes one can’t do anything without motive because action is response to stimuli. So the question is , “What constitutes motive?”. What moves me to do what I do? Is it always conditioned response, or is it sometimes an instantaneous response to what actually is? I’m usually operating on the basis of what past experience has imprinted in memory, but there are times when attention responds immediately to what is, before I know what I’ve done.

There will always be conditioned response because it’s practical, necessary for survival, and we know that responding defensively or aggressively to that which does not support or reinforce our self-image is neither necessary nor practical, but quite the opposite. So when someone asks whether I can watch and listen without motive, the answer is, Only when my self-image is not threatened or challenged. And since my self-image is always under threat and sometimes challenged, the answer is Sometimes, but not often.

2

Responding aggressively in order to reinforce our self image is necessary? Why? (or by necessary do you mean : seemingly impossible to avoid?)

Even before seeing the statement you make here - I have been wondering what it is we think we are achieving by being able to produce a satisfactory conclusion/definition or body of (intellectual) knowledge.

Or maybe I should first ask : what is the most effective way of finding out?

3

If your self-image is of someone who takes no guff from anyone, it’s necessary.

4

Is it understood that the self image is thought, and this is a division? Look at oneself and see there is thought, self image, and this stands in division from actuality, or from a natural effortless being not lost in thought. It is this division which is the basis for motive.

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5

By necessary, you mean unavoidable? It is determined, we need to do it.

So my motive is self-protection? For the self this is necessarily so.
Therefore being without motive means freedom from the self, freedom from fear, freedom from death, not dependant on self?

6

This seems to be true. If a Woodpecker landed on a tree trunk as I was walking in the forest and it started drumming on the trunk, I would probably observe, at least for a very short time, before thought started to operate and label and interpret what I was watching and listening to. However, can I watch and listen to the Woodpecker for a longer period without motive and effort coming in?

7

Once attention has identified what’s making the noise and determined that there’s no threat, one can watch and listen without urgency, without motive and effort.

8

We can’t live without motive, so we’re talking about having no motive that involves an imagined self.

9

The imagined self is me. We must be willing (able) to let the imagined self die.

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10

The imagined self is me. We must be willing (able) to let the imagined self die.

Dying is for the living. Self image is not alive. The mind is just imagining itself as I, me, and its content as mine. Is this inevitable, or can the mind be aware of its activity so that its imaginings are never mistaken for anything but imaginings?

11

The point is you feel like you are alive -you definitily are part of what we call life.

If you wish, instead of death, use the word dissapear - but your life feels real at an emotional level - your fear of dying is extremely powerful - clever words just wont be enough.

There are no ways to trick ourselves - there must be powerful intent to see (lots of energy/motivation) - silence, and hopefully insight will be granted.

12

Motive exists only when there is will, which implies self and observer.

To question - actually - does not contain a motive; when the action is whole, there is no thinking. And yes, our conditioning in logic by education and the rest is demanding an answer, conclusion, a finite end to a question.

When we see this conditioning as part of our mind, and pay attention to its movement, what takes place is an innocent sense of wonder (used here to express a polite question or request, a feeling of curiosity). From this place a motive has no meaning, since the action (questioning) is all there is without choice and separation.

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13

Hopefully…

15

Do you speak from experience or from your knowledge of the teaching?

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16

I speak from observing the fact. Seeing conditioning of the mind (the structures and processes and traps), there is wholeness which is choiceless action or Insight.

Making it into an experience would be silly, because that means putting myself back in the prison of thinking.

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17

[quote=“jmsaario, post:16, topic:1229”]
I speak from observing the fact. Seeing conditioning of the mind (the structures and processes and traps), there is wholeness which is choiceless action or Insight.
[/quote and

Congratulations on your enlightenment. I know nothing about “wholeness which is choiceless action or insight”, though I’m quite familiar with the concept and I can imagine what it might be like.

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18

Hopefully - as in there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee, I don’t know why or how the insights or changes in perception occur, and they are definitely outside of our control

19

What is the genesis of thought??
Thought comes into being or existence as result of experience using sensory organs, and then store the information from the experience into memory, which brains has capacity to do, then store it into memory, which becomes knowledge. Thought originates from knowledge.

Is motive a product of thought? Are Motives stored in human brains by birth. Are they result of inattention, not being aware, not being in present, not being sensitive, not being secure, not being free from past, are being to indifferent etc. And consider motives is just normal behaviour.

When one is in complete attention the observer, thinker, the centre and the “me” comes to an end - By JK.

Centre means - epicentre of psychological knowledge, which is recorded during interactions in human relationships. When a boat anchored to a shore, can never be able break the shackles and be free to move and navigate the world of ocean. It is constrained by chains to move freely beyond a point.

By observing limitations of thought actually, or , by actually seeing, one can see all the actions of thought shall inevitably produce conflicts with no exception. Becuase, when one uses thought for an action, it inevitably gets recorded in the brain, the next actions again uses, what is recorded in the brain and then every other actions is result of what is stored in the brain. It is like recycling actions of one’s own, becomes an extension of past actions. So there is no fresh action.

In life, the absence of thought ( the past) in human relationships, all are those moments which are like flowing of water without any trace back to any origin, hence become beautiful moments, with no foundation for motives.

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20

Are you sure? Knowledge is what I know to be true because it is always self-evident or demonstrable, and there is knowledge that isn’t self-evident or demonstrable, and may be just assumption, belief. None of this knowledge, be it true or false, is possible without thought, the means by which experience is articulated. So it seems to me that knowledge is nebulous until thought makes clear what is supposedly known.

21

Can you please try to think of something that is not experienced before by sensory organs.

There must be or might be some knowledge that have been handed down genetically or by way evolution. Excluding this, I ask you. Example: A bird knitting a nest. A mother cuddling a new born. Swimming by Animals.