It is not a good or a bad place; it is where I am, like it or not. So when we put this question together, ‘What is it?’ we are already at the same place. Because what we see will determine what we do; and how we look will determine what we see. It is only the totally quiet mind that can look without any distortion. Otherwise, what happens is that any question we put to one another gets answered very quickly and shortly by the noisy elements of the brain. Those answers then separate us from the question and from the feeling behind the question. And the feeling is: here I am in this place, but what is this place? Are we free to look at it? Or is some noisy element of fear preventing us? Fear always takes us away into the future; and once we are concerned with what may happen over there in another time, everything around us here is lost.
I am exposing it as a description. It may be a totally wrong description; I may have missed something.
Paul, you said it is a good place to be alive and I asked "What is it? I would like to be at “the same place” you are at. You replied by saying “any question we put to each other gets answered very quickly and shortly by the noisy elements of the brain”. So, how do I talk to you?
Are you saying that unless I have a quiet brain and you have a quiet brain we can’t inquire together into anything?
I have not said it is a good place. I am saying it is the only place we have. If I have a noisy brain, that brain too is neither good nor bad; it is the only brain I have. So the only logical enquiry is to look at and listen to these noises, which are all the noises of fear, both the most superficial fears and the deepest fears. You said you are afraid of dying, which is the brain thinking about a future event. From thinking about the future must come many images; those many images are then responsible for generating more thinking. But why are we thinking about the future at all? Let’s forget the word ‘fear’ and put it in terms of time. Why do we think about tomorrow?
You might have said so when you published it.
I don’t view dying of the body - in itself - as a terrible thing. As you have said, it is what it is and it is neither good nor bad. Thinking of this situation is not a personal fear of tomorrow. I am viewing it as a human condition the way this is portrayed in the Buddha story when Siddharta was awakened to the mortality of his body.
If awareness of one’s mortal reality is the same as thinking of tomorrow, then let’s be in the “same place” together and listen to this noise of fear. I hear it telling me that I am nothing but a servant of the body until it dies. What do you hear?
We think about tomorrow because human existence involves foresight. Even when we’re dying, we think about what, if anything, our demise will mean to others.
Forgive me; I never knew we were tied to such rules.
Nothing at all. I refuse to tell myself anything about myself because mostly I am wrong about it. Apart from the noise of myself, there is no other awareness.
Forgive me, but it is not about Siddharta, Buddha, K or anyone else. It is about death and life, not someone else’s view of it. Death is related directly to the way we are living; they are not two separate events. Thought has divided them; and in this division is the whole activity of thought, in which there must always be conflict.
You are not really answering the question. I think about tomorrow in order to control it. That’s all it means. There is very little I can control: just my finances and my property, which is then in the charge of a legal process.
Are you saying that self-reflection is pointless because you are mostly wrong? Then, self-inquiry is pointless, in your view; and if all of us in this forum are together at the “same place” with you on this, then all we are doing is listening to noises of ourselves.
I have never considered K’s view or your view as someone else’s view just because it is not how I see it. I do what you advocated in your thread: try to “be together at the same place, at the same time with the same intensity” (J. Krisnamurti).
I don’t view death as you do. There is only dying of the body and this process of physical distress and deterioration can be experienced. Therefore, dying is my only concern. Call it fear, if you want but it is what it is, as you have said. Nothing I can do about that.
Death, as in my own death, however, is an illusion. Krishnamurti did ask, ”who is it that dies?” I discovered that, apart from the body, none of us ever dies. And the reason is because death is an idea that can never be experienced. We can experience sleep through our ability to wake up again the next morning when we recover our consciousness and be aware of “sleep time” by looking at the clock or the morning sun. There is no waking up from death for the experiencer to say, ”my consciousness ended just a few minutes or five years ago when I died.”
Can you please be together with me at the same place on this, Paul Dimmock?
So are we aware of those noises? They are what separate us from each other. Unfortunately or fortunately, I have no view of death. I am saying only that death is related directly to the way we are living. Our view of life determines our view of death. And we live through limited views, opinions and beliefs. But why do we need any view on life or death? Is it not enough that we are both here now?
If being aware of how others may misconstrue your words is a “rule”, awareness rules.
Regardless of how little thinking about tomorrow can do, it’s better to do it than do nothing.
Quite. It’s a regardless activity. That’s why we accept a quick conclusion.
I wouldn’t call the examination, contemplation, and analysis of one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions the churning of noises. The project of self-inquiry could well be a mechanical thought process – analyzing ideas - that goes nowhere and keep us apart from one another. Surely, we are not beyond redemption. Krishnamurti didn’t appear to think so. He spent his whole life to the very end appealing to us to inquire, to find out, about what we are. He was practically begging us to come back from the brink, keep fighting to stay alive, and not slip away into eternal oblivion. You need to be in the same place as Krishnamurti, Paul. Don’t dismiss it all as anything but noise no matter how disheartening our situation is.
Of course, being alive - here and now - is all that matters. I know that. But the conscious present encompasses the remembered pains of yesterdays and the imagined fears of tomorrows. In this one drop of water – namely, you at this moment - is the entire ocean of human suffering since time began. Are you in the same place with me, or not?
Are we aware of the noise? Not just the noise of all those thoughts and feelings, but also the noise from the analysis of those thoughts and feelings. It may be all the same noise. While that noise exists at any level, how can we even begin to think of meeting each other?
You have been responding to my posts which were in response to yours. You understood what I was saying; otherwise, you won’t be having this conversation with me. There has been a meeting of minds at this verbal level, right? And yet, you are pointing to a “noise” interfering with a sharing at a deeper level between us and blocking my meeting with you.
Communion - that cuts through the noise you refer to - between two people at a level beyond words could be possible. “Sympathetic pregnancy” is a condition when a man manifests symptoms of his partner who is having a baby. Are you saying that I don’t have empathy, that I can’t understand and share your feelings about the possibility to live entirely without fear?
No, that is not what I am saying. Are we gathered here as two human beings who are free from the shackles of the past? Then we don’t need to talk about empathy. Or are we tied to something which we find difficult to drop such as a belief or a self-image? Let’s put it another way, which may be simpler: Are we coming here to bring something in or to take something away? Or we are just here together and free to explore?
If anyone here thinks he/she is “free from the shackles of the past”, he/she is playing the role of teacher.