Continuing the discussion from How to have a sane mind:
Seeing what is going around in the world, I too might have asked : is this all there is?
But i think it is the wrong question.
I ask myself : what is it that caused all this travail, this misery, this unjustice, this violence?
And by doing so, by asking myself this fundamental question, i am left with a tremendous responsibility, knowing that it is me, that my daily actions do matter.
And yes, K pointed this out in his teachings.
If your answer to this question is that you’re as responsible as every other human for “all this travail, this misery, this unjustice, this violence”, doesn’t that obligate you to undergo a radical transformation from what you (we) are to what you (we) must cease to be?
Only if it is see clearly that I am the cause of suffering, and I refuse to be the cause of suffering.
If I see clearly that I am the cause of suffering, I can’t refuse to be what I am, and I can’t deny that I am the cause of suffering because it’s obvious, so clearly, I can’t see clearly.
We know when there is clarity, mainly because of the evident lack of confusion.
Clarity has a peaceful, appreciable feeling of obviousness.
And when this clarity pertains to self, I suppose that means that there is no more fear
And psychological death is automatic.
That’s just confidence. We can’t be sure about anything when we can’t stop thinking - and we can’t - so all we can do is assure ourselves.
And when this clarity pertains to self, I suppose that means that there is no more fear. And psychological death is automatic.
So, if you’re not fearless and psychologically dead, you don’t know what clarity is.
Confidence is an extra feature, rooted in fear and the self, thus it includes a slight tension - which is not necessary in clarity.
Clarity has no defensive needs (unless one ends up identifiying with what is seen - which is a secondary movement). The calm is more a feeling of accepting something obvious.
I don’t know what clarity is, so I can’t assume it’s “a feeling of accepting something obvious” because what’s obvious is neither a feeling nor something I can accept or reject; it just is.
Have you understood the fundamentality of relationship?
Or are you commenting on a fundamental reality separate from your experience?
I don’t know what you mean by " the fundamentality of relationship". Please explain.
That all we can really be sure of is the experience that arises from whatever is happening.
All we can really comment on is our experience. So “obviousness” is an experience that arises in me (a feeling describes it well I think) - I am postulating that it arises from the interaction (relationship) of stuff outside of our experience.
There is no such thing as “obviousness” that exists without the interaction of everything else - the same goes for me and my experiences
I (and my experience) arise from everythig else. Everything else also arises in the same way.
Yes, if what you mean by “the experience” is that all we know are our reactions to stimuli; that “whatever is happening” is determined by our reaction to it.
So “obviousness” is an experience that arises in me (a feeling describes it well I think) - I am postulating that it arises from the interaction (relationship) of stuff outside of our experience.
Huh?
There is no such thing as “obviousness” that exists without the interaction of everything else - the same goes for me and my experiences…I (and my experience) arise from everythig else…Everything else also arises in the same way.
This isn’t clear. I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
I’m just commenting on your relationship to things. Those things (like clarity, truth, obviousness, chairs etc) are not real things out there - they are projections arising from you (aka opinions - which we often take to be actual reality - and which thus dictate our actions and beliefs)
Reality is what we experience. Our experience is a relationship between what we project, our reaction to the projections, and the rest of the universe (universe which is not obvious to us)
If what you mean is that since one can’t know what “actual reality” is, can know only what it seems to be, all one can do is find a way of interpreting, translating, the unknowable into what best serves one’s purpose.
I am making no such conclusions.
Conclusions which would necessarily be an error, based as they are on the assumed infallibility of my experience.
Is this all there is?
Hugely important question, for me in any case. The content of our consciousness (as Krishnamurti might have put it), the world of form or vyavahara (as Advaitins might say), is that it? IT? Is anything ‘beyond’ that imagination and wishful thinking and fairy tales? Is there no ‘other bank’ save for the bank we conjure up to mitigate the suffering we experience where we are? Interestingly Vedantins wouldn’t say “This is all there is” rather: “Not this! Not that!”
Where K is concerned he has definitely said so, hasn’t he?
But there’s no ‘path’ to follow.
Paths are “fairytales”?
How about the following passage from The Ending of Time:
K: … is there something beyond all this?
DB: Beyond the energy, you mean?
K: Yes. We said nothingness, that nothingness is everything, and so it is that which is total energy. It is undiluted, pure, uncorrupted energy. Is there something beyond that? Why do we ask it?
DB: I don’t know.
K: I feel we haven’t touched it - I feel there is something beyond.
DB: Could we say this something beyond is the ground of the whole? You are saying that all this emerges from an inward ground?
K: Yes, there is another