If only K were as easy to understand as Mr Zimmerman!
Well, something is happening but you don’t know what it is…
Do ya, Mr. Jones?
Ha, ha! I can see you have many contacts (out among the lumberjacks).
Yes, but only to get me facts when someone attacks my imagination 
1 Like
I’m pretty sure you’ve been through all of Scott Fitzgerald’s books too.
1 Like
You know, it would be an interesting challenge to find out if any of K’s teachings can be found mirrored in Dylan’s lyrics (I’m not saying that Dylan knew about K, but just that there are maybe unconscious K statements littered throughout his lyrics in different places)
Don’t follow leaders; watch yer parking meters…
1 Like
How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see? (Blowin’ In The Wind)
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry? (Blowin’ In The Wind)
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans (Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred (Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)
Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round (I Threw It All Away)
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth (Forever Young)
My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence (Love Minus Zero)
In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all (Love Minus Zero)
Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone (Times They Are A-Changin’)
The present now
Will later be past (Times They Are A-Changin’)
They’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown (Desolation Row)
Everybody is making love or else expecting rain (Desolation Row)
Her profession’s her religion, her sin is her lifelessness (Desolation Row)
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t what they do with their lives (Tangled Up In Blue)
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere
He told himself he didn’t care
Pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside
To which he just could not relate (Simple Twist Of Fate)
People tell me it’s a sin
To know and feel too much within (Simple Twist Of Fate)
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore (Oh Sister)
Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore (Sara)
The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure
To live it you had to explode (Where Are You Tonight?)
There’s a million dreams gone, there’s a landscape being raped (Where Are You Tonight?)
Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more (Slow Train Coming)
Trouble in the water
Trouble in the air
Go all the way to the other side of the world
You’ll find trouble there
Revolution even ain’t no solution for trouble (Trouble)
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand (Every Grain Of Sand)
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please (License To Kill)
Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill (License To Kill)
We live in a political world
Where love don’t have any place (Political World)
I can hear the church bells ringin’ in the yard
I wonder who they’re ringin’ for? (Standing In The Doorway)
I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry (Standing In The Doorway)
I see nothing to be gained by any explanation
There’s no words that need to be said (Standing In The Doorway)
I’m drifting in and out of dreamless sleep
Throwing all my memories in a ditch so deep (Million Miles)
Well, there’s voices in the night trying to be heard
I’m sitting here listening to every mind polluting word (Million Miles)
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain (Not Dark Yet)
I ain’t lookin’ for nothin’ in anyone’s eyes (Not Dark Yet)
Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery (Highlands)
I got new eyes, everything looks far away (Highlands)
People are crazy and times are strange (Things Have Changed)
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much (Things Have Changed)
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity (Things Have Changed)
I’m not even acquainted with my
Own desires (Bye And Bye)
Well the future
For me is already a thing of the past (Bye And Bye)
I’m preachin’ peace and harmony
The blessings of tranquility
Yet I know when the time is right to strike (Moonlight)
The clouds are turnin’ crimson
The leaves fall from the limbs an’
The branches cast their shadows over stone (Moonlight)
The trailing moss and mystic glow
The purple blossoms soft as snow
My tears keep flowing to the sea
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief
It takes a thief to catch a thief
For whom does the bell toll for, love?
It tolls for you and me (Moonlight)
Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees (Mississippi)
Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere (Mississippi)
Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way (Mississippi)
We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I’m haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say (When The Deal Goes Down)
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours (When The Deal Goes Down)
I’m so hard pressed, my mind tied up in knots
I keep recycling the same old thoughts (Someday Baby)
The whole world is filled with speculation (Ain’t Talkin’)
We’re living in the shadows of a fading past
Trapped in the fires of time (Red River Shore)
It’s now or never
More than ever (Soon After Midnight)
1 Like
Quite a compilation. Thanks
The ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I’d ask him what the matter is
But I know that he don’t talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape
(chorous)
Granpa died last week
And now he’s buried in the rocks
Everybody talks about how badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew he’d lost control
When he built a fire on Main Street
And shot it fulla holes
A brilliant compilation James! The academic rigour with which you’ve researched Dylan’s lyrics shows you’ve gone to the finest schools alright (SOAS, Brockwood etc.).
1 Like
Thanks for this Inquiry. I would have replied earlier but couldn’t send a message - the post office has been stolen, and the mailbox is locked.
1 Like
“Attention”
(I recall this is the word K used when asked to sum up his message in a word.)
‘Attention’ to what, one might ask?
'Attention" seems to hit the nail on the head.
I understand that K was referring to both outward and inward attention. I never met K face-to-face, but on video, he always seemed to look highly alert and aware of what was going on around him. We can read his beautiful descriptions of walking in nature which give a sense of his observations with a silent mind, taking in everything that is going on around him.
Inwardly, K seemed to pay great attention to what was happening to him. For example, when anger arose in him, he seemingly had the ability to observe the whole process, leading to deep understanding.
Do others see things this way?
Hi Sean
My mind is the only mind I can observe, all conclusions, thoughts, opinions about what goes on in another’s mind can only always be speculation?
Hi Dan. What I mean is that K seemed to have deep insight into the whole process of anger (and many other things) including its roots. As far as I can see, he gained this understanding from close observation of himself. He communicated this understanding of anger and other things over many years. Perhaps we can observe anger in ourselves, as it arises, and learn. Or perhaps not. How do you see this?
Since I can’t bring about the end of anger, of conflict, of fear, of anxiety, of jealousy, of ambition etc in anyone else’s mind, it has to be in this one, the only one I can observe.
But the observation has to be as he suggests, “without condemnation or justification”. Choice less. Otherwise it is me as observer separated from what is happening?
‘Me’ cannot be choice less.
I think this is a misunderstanding of what K meant when he talked about the conditioned brain observing its own conditioned response, its reactions.
When he spoke of observation, choiceless awareness, and direct perception he was using different words for the same thing: the absence of I, me, mine, i.e., the observer. And since he was speaking to brains that were not free of the observer, he knew all they could observe is their conditioned responses, their reactions.
But students of K’s teaching seem to think he was saying that they must be able to observe without the observer, which of course we cannot do. We can only observe our conditioning, our reactions to what we can’t observe unconditionally, choicelessly, directly.
But observation of our conditioned response as it occurs is a radical departure from being mindlessly, contentedly, limited by it.
I understand the same here. What about observation with a silent mind? Surely judgement and choice operate through thought, don’t they? If you observe a tree or anything else with no movement of thought, what happens? Surely experimenting with this in everyday life is something we can all do. Or not.
As soon as there’s no movement, thought pipes up to announce it because thought is less interested in silence than in validating and vindicating itself. If this was not true, thought would go silent more frequently and for increasingly longer spans of time.
There’s no silence until/unless thought finds its place, and it can’t/won’t find it without losing confidence in itself.
Can thought find its right place from moment to moment? Is it similar to sensitivity? I mean, if I was sensitive in the past, even for a long period of time, it doesn’t mean I am sensitive now or will be in the future. Isn’t sensitivity linked to awareness? If my awareness dips, my level of sensitivity also goes down. Is thought finding its right place something that happens and everything changes from there, or is it moment to moment?