Addressing the original question, if you see all ideas/utterances as ultimately stories (as I do), then the question whether it is adequate/helpful to see Krishnamurti’s views as stories is moot. They are stories for you, period. But if you see some ideas/utterances as more than stories, other than stories, then I think it’s probably not adequate or helpful to see Krishnamurti’s views as stories.
It depends on the spirit with which one does this, doesn’t it?
If one has heard, read, listened to or watched Krishnamurti, and has honest and earnest questions about what he is saying, then there is no reason why one shouldn’t doubt, be skeptical, ask, question, and reason out to the best of one’s ability what he (K) has talked about.
But if a person (any person I mean) simply wishes to be contrary, to debunk, to be constantly obstructive, unwilling to accept or yield about anything Krishnamurti has said, even after years of debate and discussion, then one can surely ask whether such person is sincere in their interest to find out and clarify for themselves what Krishnamurti said.
No?
Isn’t the difference obvious?
Jeez, Dan. You have completely skewed the manner in which I used the word personal above, taken it out of context.
Of course, the teaching is ultimately about human consciousness and in that sense it is entirely personal. As I tried to communicate in a previous conversation we had where you took issue with the fact that we are alone.
By not being personal in the context of the forum, I mean what is important is what is being said without regard for who is saying it. It is the images we have of each other and cling to that are destructive and shut down self-inquiry.
I am not saying we can be free of images. I am alerting us to the fact that they exist and are a clear and present danger to being able to fully consider what another is saying. Something we need to strive to overcome, or at least put aside temporarily, as best as we are able, for the sake of the discussion.
1 Like
That sounds right. If the questioning is respectful (of both Krishnamurti and forum members) and the motive is to get at (closer to) the truth, all is well. If ulterior motives drive the questioning and questioners, the process is distorted. And if the questioning is driven by authority worship and longing for stability and answers, the process is also skewed.
Yes. If a person is more invested in their own theories and authorities than in attempting to sincerely grasp the spirit of Krishnamurti’s teachings, then this will create distortions.
I think it is quite clear.
If I were on a Buddhist forum, I wouldn’t try to undermine or debunk Buddhist beliefs and ideas. I would be attempting to ascertain the truth of what the Buddha is supposed to have said, so as to be able to live it out in my daily life.
The problem I have with Buddhism isn’t the Buddha, but the fact that we can never know what the Buddha truly said. We probably know bits and pieces that have been kept alive through oral accounts and transmissions. But the actual word of the Buddha is lost to us now.
But Krishnamurti’s words exist on film and audio. We can actually listen to a Buddha and hear or watch (or read) what he had to say. So I don’t approach him thinking I know better than he, or that my teachers or books are better informed than he. He is a Buddha, so I’m going to listen and learn, try to understand and capture through my own intelligence and insight what he is talking about.
This, for me, is the correct spirit of questioning. To question the Buddha.
This doesn’t mean I throw out reason and logic. This doesn’t mean I don’t tear what he says to pieces and think for myself. But the spirit is one of deep respect and seriousness. This is the difference for me.
Yes please forgive that but when I saw the word it reminded me that all the K talk is for naught if you don’t ‘change’, radically change.
K said that there won’t another brain like his for a hundred years so let’s stop comparing my, or anyone’s else’s ‘insights’ to his. If you don’t ‘believe’ what I say here, leave me alone in my ‘delusion’ and I’ll leave you alone in yours.
Take the log out of your own eye type thing. (It isn’t just my house that’s burning 
)
Me too but my way of getting at the truth usually involves “Neti, neti!” type negation. I poke hole after hole after hole in the view and see if it still holds water. Dev: “Tear it to pieces … to see if it still stands.” Negation is a huge part of Krishnamurti’s approach, I think it should be a perfectly valid inquiry mode here. And nothing should be off-limits, not even Krishnamurti. But if extreme negation is off-limits per the rules of the forum, I’ll steer away from it. Rick 2.0. 
There’s nothing wrong with doubt, with negation. But doubt must involve intelligence, not just doubting everything. One also has to doubt one’s motives in doubting, doubt one’s authorities, one’s beliefs which may behind one’s doubting. One may be doubting because one wishes to maintain the status quo. One may doubt because one has invested oneself consciously or unconsciously in some unexpressed belief, because of a conspiracy theory (which has not been exposed to doubt). Or, if someone wants to doubt endlessly everything that Krishnamurti has said, then they are probably doubting from a fixed centre of belief (otherwise why would they even bother?).
Different religious traditions - Hindu, Buddhist, Jain - have their own parameters for doubt. One doubts within the confines of the canon, the particular school, or in accordance with the correct authorities.
There are also people who doubt the objective existence of wars, the objective facts of nature. Such doubts may be even sanctioned by certain religious traditions (or mistakenly interpreted religious traditions).
Doubt of the wrong kind, the unintelligent kind, can also become a mental disease.
So doubt doesn’t mean doubting everything. Doubt, in the context of a forum like this, means (for me at least) to doubt anything that thought has put together - which includes what we call love, what we call self or ‘me’, what we call the psychological future, what we call our knowledge. To doubt inwardly what thought has put together as our consciousness.
This is my understanding of doubt.
My view ist:
Doubting the relative truth of everything is silly. Existence is filled with relative truths, things that are true within a certain context. You are reading these words now: true in context. But doubting the absolute truth of everything is imo perfectly valid. Seen through this lens all relative truths break down, reveal themselves to be not what they seem.
What’s the bridge between our views of the validity/usefulness of doubting everything?
As this is a Krishnamurti forum, and not an Advaita Vedanta or Madhyamaka forum, you will first have to clarify for yourself what you mean when you talk about relative and absolute truth, because these words have different meanings for different Buddhists as well as (I’m assuming) for different Advaitins.
You don’t seem to accept the bridge I have offered in the past, and which I have repeated elsewhere recently (on Inquiry’s ‘Concept and Actuality’ thread): that is, the distinction that K and Bohm made between reality, actuality and truth. I’ll try to explain it again here:
K didn’t like to use the words relative and absolute truth. He said there is only truth, not relative truth and absolute truth. But, in the context of his discussions with Bohm, truth is absolute truth. Truth is the ‘ground’, the sacred dimension, that which is not manifest. Truth is beyond all time, all thought, all description, all matter.
Actuality on the other hand - probably what you are calling relative truth - is anything that is actually taking place, or whatever is happening in the world: nature, animals, trees, stars; also wars, human suffering, death.
And ‘reality’ - in the specific and provisional sense that K and Bohm briefly used this word (which we don’t need to use in the same way except for present purposes) - is the world created by thought, by memory, by imagination, by the inner world of the psyche.
So, to return to your question concerning doubt: there’s no point - as you said - doubting actualities (the ‘relative’ truth), because they are actual. The bus is there, if you miss it you will be late for your appointment.
But one can certainly doubt what one has put together as thought, as imagination, as a projection of thought. One can doubt thought-created religions and thought-created philosophies. One can doubt one’s beliefs and conclusions and concepts. One can doubt one’s experiences - and so on.
But if you can doubt from the point of view of truth (‘absolute’ truth), then you don’t need to be on Kinfonet, because it implies that you are already beyond all time, all thought, all matter, all death! You have ceased to exist: you are absolutely nothing. And therefore everything. You are the ‘ground’ (according to K).
As this is vanishingly unlikely to be the case for any of us here, we don’t need to concern ourselves with this kind of absolute doubt. It may be a little boring to accept this. It means no intellectual fireworks of the kind one might enjoy with Madhyamaka theory. But it is realistic and down to earth I think.
Is this an acceptable bridge for you to walk on?
In short, I think the bridge is actuality. We don’t need to worry about absolute truth. Absolute truth will take care of itself. What we need to concern ourselves is with the reality that thought has created, which we take to be actual but which may be an illusion, something false.
Bingo! All that’s left is for me to realize it.
After mulling things over for a few hours, I agree with your notion that, though you can doubt anything and everything, in a Krishnamurti forum it only really makes sense to doubt the fruits of thought. Though I’d add that, as I see it, every thing (cognized object) is a fruit of thought.
I feel have talked about this topic too much already, but here’s a quick résumé of my thinking on the matter:
As far as I understand him, for Krishnamurti the mechanics of perception - that is, how the brain organises sensory information and processes it according to various biological and neurological activities - is not a subject of doubt or questioning. A healthy brain, perceiving or sensing in a healthy way, is adequate.
So while, for instance, a scientist may talk about a ‘cortical image’ when he/she discusses what is involved in visual perception (the science of optics), even he/she will not see the cortical image when he/she perceives (for instance) a tree. So the scientist sees a tree in the same way we do: i.e. as a straightforward visual percept.
K does not question or investigate the role that ordinary perceptual cognition - such as ‘cortical images’, Bayesian inference, the anatomical brain’s healthy perceptual functioning, etc - plays in perceiving a world ‘out there’. This he leaves for the scientists to do.
That is, K accepts our ordinary percepts and perceptions as relating to actualities. The tree that you see this second - unless you are drugged, ill, mentally deranged in some way, or subject to a visual illusion created by somebody else - is actually ‘there’.
Sense-perceptions can of course be completely mistaken, and there are limit cases where they break down altogether; but most of the time they are more than adequate in meeting the needs of the organism.
So this, as I understand it, is K’s attitude to the senses.
What Krishnamurti doubts or negates is the role of (psychological) thought in our lives, the place of psychological knowledge, etc: how thought interferes with perception or takes over a perception or continues a perception in memory.
So in summary:
-
percepts, perceptions, relate to actuality, and are not subject to serious doubt
-
thoughts relate to, are part of (and create) ‘reality’, and are the focus of K’s doubt.
In short:
Yes. Not equivocally.
1 Like