Paul - you asked a question of someone who answered you eloquently.
Now you judge the answer? What game are you playing?
There is nothing eloquent about suffering. Itās not a game; it is obvious enough.
Are you not using the complaint of being theoretical here to distract from what is actual? If I truly consider someoneās words to be hypothetical I can look at things directly for myself this very moment. Experiencing the full extent of isolation, fear, sorrow, or disturbance is what matters. No one can do anything about denial, suppression, evasion or avoidance practised by someone else.
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This is still a theory. Letās do it in practice, which means we have to do it together in relationship now. Psychological suffering can never be separate from relationship so when we understand the one we understand the other at the same time.
Experiencing in relationship is only with you, and is only valid when validated by you? Where do you feel you may have come by this highly abusive notion of relationship?
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No, relationship means what is happening now. It doesnāt matter who is involved.
And this relationship informs you everyoneās suffering is theoretical?
Of course it is not suffering itself which is eloquent. But there is such a thing as eloquence. As I see it, eloquence comes from clear observation, unburdened by ideas and ideals. This clarity engenders understanding, passion and compassion - which are aspects or facets of intelligence. It is seen that at the deepest levels of consciousness, suffering is not just the lot of one particular human being or another, but of all mankind.
To me, there have been many others throughout history who have spoken eloquently about the human condition, about suffering, goodness, and so on. For example, as I see it, the āTeacherā in Ecclesiastes (quoted below) is eloquent in his expression of suffering. His words clearly evoke the experiencing of suffering, the common lot of Man. That clarity awakens a passion in the reader, it seems to me. The writer, the Teacher, is not playing games. It is his honesty, clarity, passion and compassion which awaken the same qualities in the reader. The impact of such eloquence is a shock ā as I see it. The āTeacherā is not trying to convince, he is not expressing an opinion. What is pointed out is seen or not seen by the reader. If it is seen, the very perception of it does its work.
Ecclesiastes 1 [written c. 450-180 BCE (Wikipedia)]
1 The words of the Teacher (Preacher), son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 āMeaningless! Meaningless!ā says the Teacher. āUtterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.ā [translated elsewhere as āVanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.ā]
3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, āLook! This is something newā? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind!
14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, āLook, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.ā
17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
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No, just yours and mine.
Yes, but it is a second-hand passion when it is awoken by another. K can give you exactly the same kind of thing. It is just a cheap thrill.
Can I know for sure that what another feels is a second-hand passion that is awakened by another; that what THEY feel is not legitimate? Even if it is so, I canāt tell anyone what is inside them, I cannot tell anyone that what THEY feel is a passion which is based on thought. If I try to do that, then arenāt āIā trying to awaken my own version of the truth in YOU ā a second-hand passion in YOU?
It is clear that one can read the words of K or Lao Tse or Marcus Aurelius or Martin Luther King, etc., and react to those words according to the content of oneās consciousness, guided by that content. But isnāt there also an altogether different kind of flowering, a totally different kind of movement or passion. It is not for me to tell another that what he or she is feeling is just a cheap thrill, as I see it.
Now, passion and lust are two different things though they are both forms of desire. You must have passion. To live with something beautiful or with something ugly there must be passion, otherwise the beauty dulls the mind and the ugly thing distorts the mind. Passion is energy; and merely suppressing desire does not bring about this extraordinary sense of intensity, of passion. Of course, if desire identifies itself with an idea, with a symbol, with a philosophy, it does bring about a certain kind of intensity. You know the people who trot around the world doing all kinds of good work, trying to tell people what they should be and what they should not be. I do not mean that kind of intensity; because if they were to stop talking, stop doing good works and all the rest of it, they would find themselves caught in their own miseries, their own travail. But there is an intensity which comes into being when you understand desire and when you see the complete significance of all suppression, sublimation, substitution, escape.
So my awareness of your suffering is theoretical?
Human beings have suffered on this earth since time immemorial. We live with this suffering, the causes and the effects, from the day we are born. How do we deal with it? How do we meet it? And how do we meet with another who is caught up in the same problem? Only a direct, intense and sustained passion can possibly make any difference at all, both to our relationship now and to the rest of our lives. This passion cannot come from any book, from any person, from any place but from our own hearts. An immense challenge demands an immense response, not just a few kind, clever or profound words scattered over the page to soothe our troubled minds. It is the heart and mind working together that will meet this challenge. When we both this see this clearly, we are equipped to meet suffering; and then we can turn our back on it forever and discover the deeper significance of relationship.
When we talk in terms of my awareness or your awareness, isnāt it already theoretical? My awareness is limited by my experience. Therefore what I donāt know, I invent. Thatās actually my awareness of the world: it is mostly invention, theory. Suffering is also part of this invention because of the reliance on my experience to fill in the gaps left by sensation.
No itās just a linguistic convention whose limitations everyone here is aware of.
When I call suffering an invention, or a gap in sensation, I am merely moving the goal posts around, and why would I be doing that if I understood what suffering actually is, and could look directly at it?
Thatās what I am saying: it is limited.
Why not address the point of dismissing suffering by calling it invention. Thereās a serious issue surrounding all of this. In human reality, in relationship, there is abuse, there is control. There is abusive and controlling behaviour practiced by human beings. All kinds of things can, and have been said about human reality - everything from all is maya, or illusion, through to āIā doesnāt actually exist, or as here, āIā is theoretical, and suffering is an invention. Not whatever the technical merits of such statements, behaving towards others as if nothing matters, because it is only happening to an imaginary being, with imaginary suffering, is an abuserās charter.
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Hasnāt the āsuggestionā that JK has made (and others) that this āconditioningā situation we live in has to be broken through, dissolved? Without that breakthrough, and perhaps the ending of psychological thought / desire, our suffering will continue albeit all the attempts to conceal , justify, rationalize , suppress and mitigate it? So, if I feel this is so and seeing the misery around me, in me, and the notices of it all over the world, what is one to do? It has been also suggested that there is no road to this freedom, time to āget thereā is part of the conditioning. Yet if there is not this freedom, humanity (me) will go on as it has but conditions will inevitably get worse as we are witnessing in our own lives.
Not to doubt the Creatorās motivesā but doesnāt it seem a bit sadistic to bring about a creature with a brain that can question āwhyā itās here and seeing the seeming violence of nature all around it, basically everything eating everything else, and able to be aware that it will one day meet itās own possibly horrible demise, and be terrified of what, if anything,comes after that momentā¦all the time trying to find something called āmeaningā in all of this when there may be no such thingā¦as in āall is vanityā??
Dominic, Dan, Paul,
Before I, the sufferer, can say that the situation or condition mankind lives in āhas to beā broken through or dissolved, it stands to reason that the condition must be crystal clear to me. As long as I think that I CAN dissolve it, or that I HAVE actually broken through, it stands to reason that this is still conditioning operating, it seems to me. As long as I subscribe to the idea that awareness can set me free (or any other idea, as I see it), as long as I hold to the conclusion (or any conclusion) that I DO see or DONāT see conditioning clearly, then conditioning is still operating, isnāt it. So that I only think or believe or conclude that the condition and implications of the psyche are clear, but they are not. The fact that I think, believe or conclude reveals the conditioning because to think, believe or conclude is not to SEE.
It seems to me that there might BE a perception of āsomethingā, of some small part of the process of conditioning, and yet the conditioning does NOT dissolve. The conditioned mind takes over and thinks IT has seen not only āsomethingā but the whole of it. It immediately says things like, āNo, I cannot have seen or understood anything or else the conditioning would have dissolved. If I HAD really seen, suffering would have endedā or āI HAVE seen the truth and now I must make others see itā.
Do I see that I am rebelling against what is, do I see that I had the expectation that āseeingā would liberate me? The fact is that I continue to suffer. So isnāt it the fact that my expectations, conclusions, hopes, desires, and so on, are still operating, that conditioning/memory is still operating?
As I see it, the only seeing that matters is the seeing that takes place in the moment, not the memory of seeing. If I do glimpse āsomethingā, what do I do when I must face the unavoidable fact that suffering has not ended? Canāt the fact be seen for what it is, without coming to ANY further conclusion at all? Does time have to enter into it in the form of such thoughts as, āObservation (or awareness) is supposed to set me freeā or āI am now freeā, and so on? If, on the one hand, I see or say that there is no road to freedom, but on the other hand, I have the unacknowledged expectation that awareness can set me free (or something similar), isnāt there unacknowledged disappointment? Isnāt that disappointment the mechanism of fragmentation still in operation? Can I have the patience to just observe suffering - my own suffering and the suffering of the world - without coming to any conclusions or holding on to any hope as to what should happen?
If I do NOT have the patience to observe every trick of the conditioned mind, donāt I become bitter, depressed, harsh, uncompromising, arrogant, and so on? Donāt I ascribe blame, either to myself and/or others? Is there such a mechanism of conditioning and am I aware of it? Is that the ignorance which keeps the circus in operation, going round and round?
Of course, life itself demands that certain actions must be taken in daily life. But weāre talking here about suffering and conditioning, and what is the action to take with respect to suffering and conditioning. If I see the human condition clearly and do not endlessly try to remedy it - for myself and/or others - am I āobligedā to do anything else? If I āmerelyā observe the process of conditioning in operation, isnāt the observation and understanding itself a new kind of action, an action free of time? I really donāt know.
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Hi Dan,
Hi Huguette,
Both these questions seem to be the kind of questions one could ask of oneself. Can the āIā do anything? Can the āIā observe a part of the conditioning - is the same as asking whether one part of the āIā can observe another part of the itself? So, does one realize that the very āIā that wants to resolve the suffering is the very source of the suffering? Is that what is being asked? As long as the āIā thinks or believes it can solve the problem of suffering (as if the part of the āIā that is suffering was separate from the āIā that asks), as long as the āIā doesnāt realize that it is the very source of the suffering, the suffering will continue. It seems to me to be crucial to come face to face with the idea/thought that the āIā believes/thinks/feels that it can do something, anything. All that the āIā knows is in the known. So, can the āIā really get it that it doesnāt know what to do at all?
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