Can a conditioned brain see its own conditioning. Something that has remained unresloved for me. Can you please answer this.
Or is it what K said, mind is beyond brain and probably it is this mind that sees the content of the brain and negates it as put by you.
I don’t see how a conditioned brain can “see its own conditioning”, so it seems to me that the brain clears away its psychological content, silence verifies its absence, and only then does thought articulate this fact. Thought is always the last to know, so freedom comes before thought can acknowledge it.
Then you don’t care about what it means to have a global brain. You cannot therefore join in our dialogue. It is over.
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So we go carefully and slowly, patiently watching ourselves, checking that we are both looking at and seeing exactly the same thing as we go along. From this point on though there is something far more important than the topics we choose to talk about or the things at which we look. By behaving intelligently towards one another we are also inviting love into the room.
The pall you cast over kinfonet, Paul, is not over until you find some other K forum to poison with your presence.
I said it is over. There is nothing more to say.
Mahesh.
PS If you wish to take this any further privately then you are welcome to have my email address. Otherwise I won’t be responding to anything else from you here.
Speak for yourself, Paul. I’ll say what needs to be said.
I register the conflict, but ‘choose’ not to react to it (consciously).
You regard kindness and cruelty as different sides of the same coin?
Not having seen clearly ie. always seeing from the point of view of this confused deluded center of desire/fear - what I call the absolute is just part of the known.
Does the unknown have parts? Does it even exist? How?
I suppose the thing I was getting most riled up about is when we use what we know to make excuses for our own cruelty
Have you ever explored your own cruelty? Unbiasedly, sans moral code? I’m a big fan of daring to investigate the dark side, Schattenseite.
Oooh - thats a bit tricky. But If I acted cruelly to some and kindly to others - then Yes. Both would probably be due to the same selfish/tribal movement. (also if I used cruelty and kindness on the same person for the same motive - of power).
I understand the words, but cannot wrap my head around the concept.
No - how would one go about doing such a thing? Via imagination? Memory? If so, sounds like a lost cause (of getting lost in our own thoughts, our conditioned confusion)
nb. Hopefully not by torturing a squirrel
For human beings, thought is our universe. Let’s watch what is happening when we use even the word ‘universe’: something apparently separate from the rest of existence is using a word to describe the whole of existence. Thought says, ‘That’s the universe,’ and yet has instantly separated itself from the thing at which it is looking. Universe means all existing matter and space as a whole; and the word ‘cosmos’ came from the Greek philosopher Pythagoras to mean an orderly, harmonious universe. But because of the intervention of thought these words are now just concepts: universe, cosmos and whole. Therefore the concept denies or opposes the very thing it describes or points to.
So what is thought? This one question remains unanswered. If this question is now the whole of the brain as an actuality and not just one concept among hundreds of others, the answer that comes cannot be conceptual. Sorry to push the point, but we got side-tracked a little and we now need to face this. Otherwise, to go on to talk about intelligence, love and a few other things will be a mistake if we remain mired in concepts - and there is something much better than that familiar yet stale old mistake.
Makes sense methinks.
For the koan thread.
We would have to find out! Good point about relying on imagination and memory, memory is flawed and tied to the past, imagination can easily be fantasy. Maybe we are dealing with a similar thing as self, maybe our cruelty is ever-present like the self, maybe it’s the frame in which our drama unfolds? (Maybe not.)
Assuming this is true(ish), our cruelty is always there, always immediate, perhaps observable? Look for your shadow!
Unanswered by you because you think thought is more than just words and images manipulated by the intellect.
If this question is now the whole of the brain as an actuality and not just one concept among hundreds of others, the answer that comes cannot be conceptual.
Why would a stupid question be “the whole of the brain”? Why does your brain hold the belief that thought is much more than what it actually is?
The two questions - ‘What is thought?’ and ‘Can the rhythm of thought come to an end?’ - are really the same question put differently. It is all about the life and death of thought, which is me and you. What matters is our approach to any vital question, which in this case means keeping out of it altogether. Then the vitality of the question brings its own flame.
If we could simply see what the movement of selfish suffering is all about, the answer would be so evident.
Intellectually too, we only have to actually be interested in analysing what self and cruelty mean to see that they are part of the same processes. The all importance of this center and what that implies, the confused corruption that this movement engenders.
No need to get confused about stuff we cannot apprehend, when we ourselves are a mystery to ourselves.
nb. suffering is a form of cruelty (unless cruelty necessitates separation and agency - which is tricky to argue for)
The question about cruelty and evil that has always interested me is: Is intention required? For example, if a person performs an act that results in pain and suffering, but is genuinely clueless, had no intention to cause harm, is it cruel/evil?
This is your interpretation of what K said. The second question anwers the first.
Krishnamurti asks what thought is, and his answer is “rhythm”.
You believe thought can be aware of itself, that it has agency, but thought is just sound and rhythm and what ever meaning and significance one chooses to ascribe to it. You give it power it does not have, and by doing so, you empower your own thoughts instead of questioning them.
It seems to me that ,though thought is a process in brain and as such it can not be aware of itself, but when Krishnaji uses the word thought, he may be referring to ego /‘I’ created by thought process.
Does a mechanical process have a choice?
The brain produces thought. Thought is a product of the brain’s conditioning. And vice versa : the brain is made of thought. The brain is conditioned by thought (and experience which includes thought).
The 2 cannot be separated.
Now when the brain has been conditioned to believe certain concepts, these concepts will be expressed in the thoughts. (thus people listening to a lot of K might think : “thought is limited” due to their intellectual conditioning)
If the brain is affected by some “magical” insight (due to being forced to accept life/death) the thoughts it produces will also be affected - we can say that the insight has been realised, manifests, in thought - the transformed brain will also produce thoughts like : “thought is limited”