Are truth and comfort mutually exclusive? (I sure hope not, since I’m drawn to both!)
It seems patently obvious that one is acting as an unmovable barrier to the other. Or we could say that the need for one is much more powerful than any draw towards the other.
One could say that the truth is that my comfort is the whole of the law.
My entire existence revolves around a desperate haggling for profit; is merely about profit and loss.
If it is true that I am the movement of discrimination between good and evil, and if I see that fact, then I have bridged the gap between comfort and truth.
Truth is for pondering, comfort for experiencing. ?
Yes, and what the experience revealed is that we believe whatever we must to get what we need.
But when this becomes clear and we realize that beliefs provide a false sense of knowledge and security that quells anxiety and dread, we realize it is more reasonable to live with uncertainty than with belief.
Belief is a pacifier for an immature intellect. Growing up is becoming increasingly aware of how dependent on beliefs we are.
What we need or want?
The immature intellect needs to believe because it hasn’t matured enough to be reasonable. The intellect that doesn’t need to believe may not mind practicing self-deception to get what it wants.
Make-believe?
Yes…
What other ‘starting point’ is there except what is ‘happening’, what I’m feeling, defending etc. Since this is a Krishnamurti forum about his message, shouldn’t there at least be lip service to what he brought? Like for instance, the ‘I’ that is feeling defensive doesn’t actually exist but is a ‘trick’ by thought. Is that true? That there is no ‘explorer’ apart from any exploration, no ‘thinker’ apart from the thinking going on inside my head. No ‘me’ observing etc…This is ‘poison’ to the psychological status quo.
Surely this is key - the other path of accumulation of ideas and theories can only be for entertainment, protection, power etc…
Either we deal with whats actually happening, or we keep reaching for castles in the sky - and it doesn’t look like we can choose which path to take, they take us.
But if we are here saying : I think X. Surely the most important thing to share is why.
I’m in the process of getting a browser that will let me reply here rather than borrowing another’s to do so…in the process ‘Dan McD’ somehow became ‘danmcderm’!
Anyway I think that this forum is important and somewhat surprised that so few are here given the crowds that K spoke to over the years and how many have read his writings…but as I said it is a kind of poison to the status quo anthropomorphized version of nature and reality.
Guess I nudged the thread anti-K-wards, yet again. It seems to be my way, for better or worse. Please don’t hesitate to call me out if my postings seem inappropriate or offensive.
That may be true. But equally true is that we experience the I almost constantly and as vividly or more vividly than we experience anything. It’s a fascinating and maddening dilemma!
Well yes, but look around at what’s happening in the world. It may not ‘matter’ what we do to ourselves or others here or to the environment but the brain may have been something special, the human brain. It may have the possibility to “participate in the mystery” (I think is the way JK and DB put it.) Did it take a wrong turn and is its suffering a result of that wrong turn? Is it the “me and mine” belief that has to be seen through in order for it to be free…to be what it can be?
Our brain is a work in progress. It’s been evolving for millions of years and is still at it. Brain augmentation gizmos (implants, prostheses, smart drugs) will up the ante. Maybe its egregious flaws will be fixed by evolution and augmentation. (Or exacerbated!)
The key point of Krishnamurti’s message as I understand it, is that evolution will not and cannot take place in the psychological realm of the brain. The ending of suffering, division, fear, conflict can only come about through ‘attention’ and a choiceless awareness of oneself.
What do you think is the most fundamental aspect of the psychological realm that cannot be addressed and ‘fixed’ by evolution? The belief I am a real, substantial, independent self?
To be choicelessly aware is to be transformed. What Krishnamurti called “seeing” is not believing, and believing is what the conditioned brain does.
For the brain to be free it cannot choose what is true and false, right and wrong, good and bad. Freedom is not this or that, but direct perception, having no choice in what is perceived, no distortion due to having made up one’s mind.
The conditioned brain’s relationship with actuality is its awareness of its conditioned reactive response to awareness. Without the brain’s psychological conditioning, it is naked and vulnerable, innocently, choicelessly aware.
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The QOTD speaks to this idea that evolution will take care of everything…it may over time but do we have the time it might take?:
K. So, the brain must function in this world with reason, with sanity, with clarity; but inwardly it must be completely quiet. We are told by the biologists that it has taken millions of years for the brain to develop to its present stage, and that it will take millions of years to develop further. Now, the religious mind does not depend on time for its development. I wish you could follow this. What I want to convey is that when the brain - which must function in its responses to the outward existence - becomes quiet inwardly, then there is no longer the machinery of accumulating experience and knowledge, and therefore inwardly it is completely quiet but fully alive, and then it can jump the million years.
Saanen, Switzerlan | 9th Public Talk 13th August 1961
Sounds miraculous, but our species needs a miracle.
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