How do you know? Are you “living the teaching”? If you are, why are you here?
To live the teaching, the brain must be free, unlimited, selfless, so why would such a brain limit itself to a Krishnamurti forum?
Christians don’t know what “the correct dogma” is. Christendom is a collection of individual and conflicting interpretations of what Jesus meant by what he supposedly said (assuming Jesus was not a fictitious or composite character).
In this space, the exploration of dependence on this experience, what is it that earns you bonus points?
Don’t know what you mean. Please explain.
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Knowing I am dreaming is lucid dreaming. Why wouldn’t I remain in the dream to see where it goes, seeing as how it’s only a dream?
Usually, though, we don’t know we were dreaming until we awaken, whether as a reaction to a disturbing dream or having slept enough.
Yes, K. also seemed not to have been happy with that title too but continued to use it, preferring to describe it as the ‘teaching of life’, I suspect to leave his person out of it.
But on one of his last statements, he spoke ‘I am still the teacher’, right?
How do you know? Are you “living the teaching”? If you are, why are you here?
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My question is, on a K forum where we are inquiring into “freedom from the self” (ie. exploring our dependence on our experience) whether it is enough to simply react to opinions as if my conditioned interpretation and reaction was necessarily correct and adequate.
Or whether some kind of awareness or attention to the process of self (eg.that I am in motion) could be possible as and when we are experiencing what we take to be actual reality.
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here is the answer:
QOTD:
" When the mind seeks safety, security - i.e. something concrete on which it can anchor - it has recourse to a conclusion or to a hypothesis. Experimentation does not lead to conclusion; the experimenter keeps on watching, looking and observing. To understand what is taking place in the experiment, he is in a receptive mood, quiet and sensitive like a photographic plate, without criticising or condemning. So also should be our attitude if we would understand the full significance of a marvellous scene, a picture, or a poem."
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Let’s say you choose to remain in the dream out of curiosity, enjoyment, learning, whatever. Is knowing you are dreaming = being free from the dream? Or is freedom = waking?
What I’m (awkwardly!) getting at is: Does knowing self is imaginary free you from self, even if you keep playing the role?
I think we’d all agree that freedom from the self doesn’t mean the self is totally absent, rather that when the self manifests, it has no hold over us, just floats by like a cloud in the sky.
Is it the same with psychological suffering? Freedom from suffering doesn’t mean suffering is totally absent, rather that when we suffer, we don’t suffer that we suffer.
???
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If I begin to understand the ‘mechanics of suffering’ it changes. A thought arises that portends a possible dire scenario in some near or far off ‘future’. That thought can create fear and psychological suffering. Unless there is an awareness at the initial arising, the ‘thinker’s’ reaction to it can dwell on it, expand on it, seek solutions etc until it wears itself out.
The brain can never have the security it needs as long as it believes it is this ‘individual’ facing all the unknown possibilities awaiting it in some imaginary ‘future’. Hubert Benoit called it the ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging above one’s head. Real total security seems to be in its being still, empty and silent? In being “nothing”?
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Is psychological suffering an inherent aspect of being human, written into the contract, or is it a bug that is caused by ignorance and misunderstanding?
Is the self a natural aspect of being human or an unnatural glitch?
The evidence that “self is imaginary” is preponderant and we are convinced, but until/unless perception is direct and awareness is choiceless, we don’t really know anything…all we have is our conviction, our certainty, i.e., belief.
I’m here to study K’s teaching to be clear about what he meant by what he said and wrote; to get the message he was conveying and not my interpretation of it.
It may or may not matter if the self remains if it “has no hold over us”, but as long as we are identified with it, we can only speculate.
Is it the same with psychological suffering? Freedom from suffering doesn’t mean suffering is totally absent, rather that when we suffer, we don’t suffer that we suffer.
It seems possible to me, but me is just thought.
I think K’s point is that the ‘self’ (me and mine) was a ‘wrong turn’ in human development and that it can and it must be gone beyond (ended), if we are to survive.
The self with its characteristics of pride, greed, ambition, competitiveness, desire etc make cooperation difficult if not impossible.
What we interpret as glitch is also known as mutation, or change - in nature that which does not aid in its own demise will persist for a while.
Is “seems possible” just thought? Can something seem possible if there is no me present?
Yes, if practical thought survives the “death” of psychological thought.
In retrospect it was a “wrong turn”. But at the time, the power of suggestion (belief) must have felt like what made our species superior and entitled to do every horrendous, destructive, anti-biological thing we’ve done since and continue to do now.
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