Of course, one can modify one’s reflexive judgment, be less judgmental, but the conditioned brain can’t be free of judgment because that’s all it really has.
Everyone is welcome Charley, no-one is excluded. My only wish is for people on the thread to be generous with each other, that’s all.
I’m a bit ill at present (not seriously, just a head-cold), so I can’t contribute much - but I appreciate the attention being given to attention and non-judgmental observation!
For me, the words awareness, attention, observation, etc imply some kind of intelligence, some element of non-mechanical activity of the mind (used in its ordinary sense). So one ought not reduce awareness or observation to some kind of mechanical thing. For instance, I doubt that one can deliberately be non-judgmental. Some form of understanding (or perception) is necessary for a person to voluntarily drop a strongly held judgment. But this doesn’t mean that an averagely conditioned brain isn’t capable of being choicelessly aware in a given moment - otherwise our situation would be completely hopeless (by which I don’t mean that we need to have hope). Awareness is a natural capacity that the brain has - e.g. to be aware of the sun overhead - but that we are conditioned to disvalue because of the importance given to mental objects. The kind of intelligent awareness we can have of danger, or of dripping taps, etc belongs to this natural kind of awareness we all have access to. But this is not to say that there may be certain frequencies of awareness - perhaps what K calls ‘attention’ - that require a great deal of freedom from one’s background conditioning, and so go beyond what is ordinary and common (a different ‘animal’ altogether).
However, any attention is better than none.
1 Like
How about freer of judgment?
That’s whum talkin’ about: Degrees of attention, freedom, intelligence, whatever. Yay degrees!
I am reading a book on mystical experiences and near death experiences right now. In it, one lady who had a near death experience wrote this:
“Now I live with very little attachment to the earth, which doesnt mean that I dont like it, but that I know someday I will be leaving it behind. The only thing you can take with you when you die is the contents of your consciousness, because earthly attachments and material things are worthless.”
I share this here, not because I agree or disagree with what she said, I dont know, but because it was interesting how she used that same phrase Krishnamurti used, “the contents of your consciousness” but in an exactly opposite way I think. I havent seen that phrase often used, except by K, so just found this intriguing and interesting.
2 Likes
In the Yogacara or ‘only mind’ school of thought, they say that the contents of our consciousness is all there is, even when we’re alive. All that we are able to relate to anyway.
1 Like
May I ask you if you have wondered why she speaks of her detachment from earthly things, but not of her detachment from the “content of her consciousness” which she seems to intend to preserve in its entirety?
In the Madhiamika-Prasangika school of thought, they say that even that content is empty. By the way, those who have never heard of these terms (Yogacara, Madhiamaka-Prasangika), both are Buddhist schools of thought.
It’s difficult of course to know precisely what the lady meant by this - she probably means that the essence of all one’s experiences is carried over into a future life, perhaps through reincarnation - but in a weird way, this is also what K says. He says that unless the contents of consciousness are emptied, consciousness will carry on; it is part of the stream of human consciousness that has its continuity in the brains of new people as they are born. Of course, for K, this is not a personal thing - there is no personal continuity, because consciousness is not personal to begin with.
There are different kinds of Yogacara, but the way that Yogacarins use these words is a little different from K’s.
The Yogacarins have an idea of a ‘Storehouse Consciousness’ - the alayavijnana - which ‘remembers’ the impression of every action, every thought, every movement (which, in theory at least, includes the residue left by anything that happens anywhere in the whole universe), and continues this content through to the next moment. They use this to explain the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth without a continuous self-centre.
For K, on the other hand, the contents of consciousness are purely psychological or mental (i.e. suffering, fear, pleasure, belief, etc). The universe has its own actuality (and is not mental), even though it may be part of a universal mind (that is also not mental). So for K, the ‘mind outside the brain’ cannot be conflated with the contents of consciousness - they are totally different things.
Yes. For Madhyamaka Buddhists the content is empty. There is a very succinct 20 mins video on this topic put out by the Let’s Talk Religion channel on YouTube (which I highly recommend for top quality content!):
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing, @James. A truly very well explained introduction of Buddhist emptiness, which contrary to what some may think here on the forum, is totally related to K’s teachings.
I think perhaps it would be interesting to start a thread with no words other than the video, and let people on the forum watch it and express later their views/questions and in what way Buddhist emptiness might or might not be related to K’s teachings.
I’m absolutely sure it would raise a VERY interesting discussion!
BTW, Lower Vehicle = Hinayana 
.
One reason we might classify stuff like fear and pleasure as the contents of our consciousness, and not chairs and uncles - is that the concepts of chairs & uncles actually relate to some pattern out there in the real world - whereas fear & pleasure are processes that exist purely within our consciousness.
1 Like
I shared that small quote of hers, to just share, to generate any discussion, questioning, looking, exploring about the topic of contents of consciousness if anybody was interested.
It was just a few pages in the book I was reading and what you read is what I read. However, the context is she believes in life after death and thinks consciousness and obviously her contents of consciousness will continue on in some form.
So to her what really matters is content of consciousness, especially the content of love and knowledge/wisdom, those kinds of things are what is important to her after her near death experience. Things like materiality are not so important and cannot be taken with her. We all agree that we cannot take anything physically with us at death, but most NDEers feel, she is not alone, most of them feel they are able to take their consciousness with them. So that is why she is now more detached from earthly things, for she sees little value in them and their transitory nature.
You ask why she is not detached from the content of her consciousness, as already explained she thinks it continues on in some form, so why would she be detached from that? Not everyone has read Krishnamurti nor agrees with him on his take about contents of consciousness and the need to empty them.
But the question you raised is why I posted this, to see this in a greater light, detail, and explore both sides of this, detachment or ending of contents and also preserving them …
2 Likes
There may be some intuitive truth in this. I guess the question would be, are love and intelligence still contents of consciousness? or are they beyond the contents of consciousness?
In K’s language, they would be beyond consciousness. This means of course that they are also beyond time, so are not subject to death in the same way that the brain is subject to death. Where there is love and intelligence there is no fear, no time, no problem.
So if this is what the lady intuitively felt, then she would be in agreement with K (although K himself was suspicious of NDEs because he believed there is likely to be a large amount of projection going on in such experiences).
Yes. Fear and pleasure are the creations of our thinking (not the chemistry of fear and pleasure, but their psychological cause); whereas the wood that makes up the chairs and the organism we call ‘uncle’ are not created by thought.
1 Like
So, to continue the thread inquiry from before…
Part of the problem is that thought is limited, which leads to divisions between people (when we identify ourselves with our thinking); but the other part is that we take certain thoughts to be real, to have independent existence of our thinking about them, without realising that this is what we are doing.
So, for instance, nationalism.
There may be an argument to be made that human societies need to operate in small-ish networks, because our brain is not vastly different from the brains of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Some scientists say that the maximum friendship or active kinship group for a human brain numbers around 150 people - anything more than that is difficult for our brains to coherently accommodate.
But even if this is the case, we now live in a world of fluid networks. The family and friends we have in childhood are generally not the friends we continue to interact with right throughout life. And there is nothing stopping a smallish network of immediate contacts from continuously interacting with countless other smallish social networks - through communication technology, administrative need, economic necessity, scientific research, etc. All societies are interdependent these days, all industries, economies and scientific institutions are interconnected. We are a global society.
The point is that the definite and arbitrary lines that divide one social network from another - such as nationalism - are obviously fictions. They have no reality outside our thinking about them.
China ‘sees’ Taiwan as part of its own historical territory and is threatening a future invasion of the island society (so as to absorb it within its own clearly demarcated limits). What is going on here? Does China really ‘see’ anything? - Or is ‘China’ an idea, an image, kept alive in the minds of millions of people through daily propaganda? And it is these brain-washed citizens - or at least those who are in positions of power - who ‘see’ Taiwan as belonging to ‘them’.
Nations, like religions, are creations of thought. They are not real like tigers and lions, like trees and rivers. If sufficient numbers of people could simply forget the dogmas of Christianity or Islam, those religions would simply cease. So nations and religions are kept alive through remembering and continuing on with that memory.
Our human problem is that we are not aware that this is going on, and we continue to believe in the reality of what our own thinking has created - ‘seeing’ these thought-made realities as real, when they are not real.
This is what Bohm called “incoherent thought”, and Krishnamurti called “psychological thought”. When explained, the difference is clear, but when thought is operative, we can’t/don’t make the distinction.
Is it enough to know and understand the difference between these two types of thinking and which one is the problem, for one to be aware of them as they arise? Or does this knowledge have no effect on one’s thinking because psychological, incoherent, thought is what sustains and perpetuates my self, and being self-centered, nothing matters more?
Hey! Hallelujah! I can understand this. So either this narrative/explanation is not over, or they are simplistic examples of actual personal delusions that I hold (but am not aware of), or I am free!?!
Anyone on the off chance got an example of a really sneaky delusion that some of us might actually hold as true? Or is the problem really just other silly folk? (that exist in the millions, and vote)
Money and Human Rights were 2 (maybe sneakier) inventions mentioned in the book “Sapiens”
I wouldn’t call the perception of reification “knowledge”, would you? Of course, in talking about it here, what we are talking about quickly becomes knowledge; but the thing being referred to in our talking (i.e. that human beings have a tendency to mistake their thoughts for objectively real things, which is incoherent) requires awareness or perception, right?
Bohm called this awareness of the activity of thought proprioception - an extension of its traditionally physical meaning (i.e. the natural awareness of the body’s own movements). Such proprioception is not knowledge, but - where it exists - an active, present-tense awareness of the activity of the mind (as it is acting).
Yes, Sapiens (and its follow-up Homo Deus) are very good at highlighting some of these human thought-made fictions. Corporations are another well-known fiction that he talks about. Interestingly Harari is very sympathetic to Buddhism, and goes on annual meditation retreats. So, for him, another “sneaky” fiction is of course the ego.
One has to be careful not to ditch the baby with the bathwater of course. In highlighting the fictional legal nature of “Rights” one shouldn’t forget that human rights (and animal rights) are merely externalisations of an implicit perception we all have (if our brains are healthy): human beings and animals are sentient, and so they deserve our respect, they ought not be mistreated or subjected to abuse (ahimsa). “Rights” are a legal language with a long history; but a living thing is its own ‘right’, simply because it is living.
1 Like
He’s a follower of Goenkaji (R.I.P.) the main promoter of the Burmese Vipassana system, which got really popular 20 years ago. I fell into that movement, which meant going on a 10 day silent retreat with hundreds of other participants - We got simplistic Theravadan video teachings : Be good, be constantly aware of your state of mind, do the meditation technique (constantly sweep your body with a circle of awareness) - and you will become enlightened.
This was my first experience of meditation - however, conditioned as I was by K’s teachings, I spent the whole retreat in constant rebellion (internally) and doubt. Great times, I went back 3 years in a row, before swapping over to zen sesshins.
Haha, yes - one of the retreats I attended was a Goenka retreat, and I had a similar experience. There are different kinds of vipassana retreats, and some of them are much more non-dogmatic, secular, ecumenical if you like. But Goenka’s approach is both rigidly Theravadan, and method-centric, which perhaps reflects his personal roots in business - “Give fair trial to this technique”, he would often repeat, like a vacuum salesman pitching his wares!
The retreat as a retreat was wholesome enough, but I hated the psychological brainwashing that participants had to endure - i.e. of having to listen to recordings of his awful, tuneless chanting every morning!, and being forced to listen to recordings of his meditation instructions when all I wanted was to sit in silence and discover meditation for myself.
One time was enough for me!
1 Like