Yeah, okay, I can see that. If there weren’t an I, would there even be sorrow?
Intuition, hearsay (Advaita mostly), and fruit of meditation. None of these would qualify as ‘objective’ proof, that’s why the jury is still sequestered and debating.
This is what I understand Krishnamurti to have meant by the statement “I am nothing” - yes.
“There is sorrow” isn’t very useful as a verbal communication. We all know there is sorrow - the Buddha, of course, very clearly stated the reality of suffering 2500 years ago - but what we don’t seem to be aware of is our actual relationship with suffering.
Suffering (sorrow) is not ‘outside’ of us. We are literally that content we label “sorrow”. So we cannot play with sorrow ironically, with speculative detachment.
As K has said (with respect to fear, but also with respect to sorrow):
Before, you acted upon it; now you are no longer the actor. You are that; you are both the actor and the act. What takes place when you are that?
This is part of meditation. Look at it very carefully. Take it in your hands like a precious jewel, and look at it. You are that when all movement stops. (Ojai, May 15th, 1983)
It is a linguistic pointer to the actuality of our relationship to sorrow (i.e. that we are not a separate entity relating to sorrow as something separate from us, but we are sorrow); and to see what happens (experientially, directly) when the mind ceases to perceive sorrow as ‘other’.
What makes you ask this? Apparently it is because of
The only modern Advaitins I have really been able to take seriously are Nisargadatta Maharaj and Jean Klein.
And for both of them the loose sense of “I am” (that they sometimes use as a linguistic pointer) can more accurately be described as the immediacy of awareness, or the simple fact of awareness.
In this awareness there can be an identification with
but there is also another possibility they mention, which is to be simply aware without content (which is why I brought this up with you a few days ago).
An awareness that has no content would be similar, if indeed not the same thing as, the state of nothingness that Krishnamurti talks about.
So, Nisargadatta says that
The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing… A vague memory remains, like the memory of a dream or early childhood. After all, what is there to remember? A flow of events, mostly accidental and meaningless. A sequence of desires and fears and inane blunders. Is there anything worth remembering? The person is but a shell imprisoning you. Break the shell. (from I Am That)
When the shell of self (which is also the shell of suffering) is broken, then what happens? what is there?
This would be the nothingness that Krishnamurti is pointing to.
Intuition, as I tried to explain earlier, we can rule out, unless you mean something other than I feel that I exist because I feel that I exist.
Advaita: Is the concept of what the “small self” is clear in your mind? And is the concept of the Magical Advaitan big Self clear? If so, are they the same concept? And if they are not, which self (me, you and our desires and confusion) are we inquiring into?
Fruit of meditation : Maybe this is a good reason, but you will have to indicate what you are referring to. (if you want it to be considered as evidence, not because I am your boss - of course you are entitled to keep secret evidence up your sleeve)
This is why I feel that the Advaita ‘communication’ (i.e. it’s use of language) lacks clarity and leads to all kinds of unnecessary misunderstandings.
In the original Sanskrit (of Gaudapada and Sankara) there is at least a clear distinction between the mini-me and the biggie-me; but in general the atman concept has always been murky and ambiguous, which is why it has been subjected to nearly 2500 years of Buddhist critique!
This does not mean that one cannot hear Advaitic resonances in some of the statements that Krishnamurti has made, but such statements ought always to be understood in the light of the kinds of criticisms of self that Buddhists have always made, and which Krishnamurti made too.
Though did you also not say that the One Mind, or Buddha nature is considered the only unchanging, non-codependant thingy? Whats its big difference with Ultimate Brahma-Atman?
Also, are the Zen concepts of the “one Mind”, and “true Self,” synonymous? (any thoughts?)
Just to keep in the theme : In any case, just as the feeling of being me is in no way especially mine. I don’t see how we can reasonably claim that I am somehow these Mega Self concepts.
There is some cross-over, yes - although (from what I recall) the development of these traditions is complicated and diverse.
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One arc of development goes back to the Yogacara tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. In this tradition - which apparently grew out of meditation experience - the place of the mind is crucial, and they developed an idea called Storehouse Consciousness (alaya-vijnana), which is basically an entity-free flow of energetic changes (taking place in a kind of universal mind). This is supposed to account for the world, the universe, and everything in it (including ourselves).
One way to think of this Storehouse Consciousness is that everything that happens in the universe - at whatever level of ‘happening’ - leaves a kind of mark, and the Storehouse Consciousness remembers every single mark, continuing it into the next moment. It is impersonal and deterministic - there is no freedom within the alaya-vijnana.
This meant that for Yogacarins, the only way freedom can occur is through a ‘revolution at the basis’ of the mind - a kind of complete emptying of the mind - so that nothing can continue into the next moment.
This leaves open, of course, what this emptied mind implies, and what the resulting state is in itself. For instance, some later Buddhists - under the influence of Buddha-nature ideas - believed that an “immaculate consciousness" (or amala-vijnana) lay beyond the defiled Storehouse Consciousness. -
The other arc of development goes back to the Buddha-nature sutras (tathagata-garbha literature), which was mentioned in another thread. In China a highly influential Buddha-nature text, called the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (a 6th century Chinese text likely to be a work by its translator, the Indian master Paramartha). In the Awakening of Faith there is the notion of a “One Mind” with an absolute side (also called suchness), and a contingent or phenomenal side (having to do with the arising-and-ceasing of things).
Understood in terms of the arising-and-ceasing of things, this mind correlates to the activity of the Storehouse Consciousness; however, understood in terms of what is beyond the arising-and-ceasing of things, it is thought of as suchness or pure mind (rooted in tathagatagarbha doctrine). The Awakening of Faith teaches that “The True Mind is eternal, permanent, pure, and self-sufficient” - which is certainly reminiscent of certain Advaita statements that can be found in Gaudapada or Sankara.
And for Chan Buddhists like Tsung-mi and Huang-po it very much seems to have conveyed something similar - although the egoistic self was very clearly repudiated by them both.
So these seem to be the similarities. But the little self is given short-shrift by Buddhists and Advaitins alike.
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Bleedin’ 'eck, Guv !
The only way I can correlate the 2 is to say that it is conceptualisation that gives rise to impermenant phenomena. But that still means that unchanging Sunyata gives rise to the notion of separation and impermenance. (If we accept that us and our minds arise out of the one Mind)
Just to be clear: With “there is sorrow” I don’t mean “there is sorrow in human existence” rather “sorrow is present (now) in (my) consciousness.” Stating it this way avoids I-izing it, it reports sorrow without positing a sorrow-experiencer.
Along with whatever else is contributing to the present moment experience of self. In other words, we are sorrow, fear, regret, hope, tightness in the body, weariness of heart. We are the entirety of our conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings and sensations and … where’d I put that list of skandhas?!
My sense of Self is quite similar. (Though, again, I don’t purport to know how, or even if Self exists.)
Sounds plausible and provides a nice bridge between Advaita and Krishnamurti. But we’ll never know.
Sorry, I am not comfortable doing that. I’m happy to share a lot, but not everything!
Should you enter the priesthood, I’ll consider confessing it to you. 
Sunyata of course was developed most fully (as was also discussed on another thread) by the Madhyamaka tradition. These different Mahayana traditions (Madhyamaka, Yogacara, and Buddha-nature) are all in tension with each other - as well as with the earlier Nikaya (or Theravada) traditions. Buddhism is one hot mess, as they say!!
Yes - but you see you yourself have had to resort to saying more than “there is sorrow” just in order to explain what you meant by that statement.
And, in the explanation you have given you still continue to posit a separation between the reaction of sorrow and (my) consciousness.
So Krishnamurti’s condensed language of “I am sorrow” - in which the observer is not separate from the observed reaction - is still the most economic way to point to the phenomenological state he is interested in drawing our attention to.
What is being pointed to in Krishnamurti’s statement “I am sorrow” is the quintessence of a moment, of a reaction taking place in a moment. When there is actual sorrow the mind is wholly involved in it - it is not thinking of pleasure, future hopes, or what sensations are occurring at the back of one’s tongue, etc (except peripherally): it is wholly ‘with’ sorrow.
So the question being asked by Krishnamurti is: What takes place in that reaction of sorrow if we are genuinely free to observe it without resistance, without hope, without fear, without indulgence, without motive? Can one observe sorrow in such a way? And if we can, is there any longer a feeling of ‘me’ separate from that thing we call ‘sorrow’? And if there is no longer such a separation (i.e. when ‘I am sorrow’) what happens to sorrow then?
This is something experiential, to be done, experimented with in meditation, not a clever analytical game or argument.
Then why call it Self? In the extract I shared from Nisargadatta he wasn’t talking about Self (with a capital S), but just about the immediate fact of awareness we all have.
Why can’t we just begin with facts of observation and move from there?
Must see Advaita TV:
Yes, if you recall, we spoke about this advaita trap before when we discussed Rupert Spira.
The trap is created by living in the premature assumption (based on some partial insight) that one has already realised or discovered true content-less awareness (i.e. the ‘witness’); and then, on that false basis, proceeding to rationalise away all the problems of the world as though they didn’t exist. “There is no me, only pure spacious awareness”, etc. Such people become intolerable bores!
That is why I personally reject all talk of Self (with a capital S). One is fooling oneself if one presumes to have emptied consciousness of all its psychological contents. These contents - like sorrow for instance - run deep. Very few human beings are capable of freeing themselves from the roots of suffering.
And yet - at least as I understand it - it is only when consciousness has been completely emptied of its suffering, desire, fear, loneliness, jealousy, etc - that something else may take place… Something else - compassion, intelligence, beauty, love - which is totally different from the contents we know. We have flashes of love, of intelligence - but so long as we are identified with our psychological contents, and have not resolved them, our love is not whole, our compassion isn’t true compassion.
So we can’t begin by assuming we already have intelligence or compassion - that’s just silly. We begin by dealing with our own stupidity and self-interest, our own suffering. This is both a simpler starting point, and a more authentic one at that.
But is sorrow a homogeneous state: pure unadulterated sadness? I don’t think so. Not usually in any case. Usually it’s a mix of emotions dominated by sadness. It’s like red in nature which, upon closer inspection, reveals the full spectrum of colors, with red predominating.
Self is familiar to me, a term that points at something I feel a connection to, intellectual and emotional. But I don’t feel an overpowering need to talk about it. It’s mainly just a habit I picked up along the way, and it will probably take me a while to get used to not using it so much here and with you especially.
How about we agree, both of us, to strive NOT use the jargon of any teacher or tradition (Krishnamurti, Advaita, Buddhism), rather stay with simple clear everyday language. Deal?
It’s a good joke. But can any of them truly be separated from the rest? So, although only one or two aspects are in view, when we look a little closer, the rest are also there. The self is a whole package.
I think this may be the nub of it because we seem to be able to focus on particular aspects of the self and yet have very little success in resolving the difficulty of focus itself, which must always be limited by the presence of a focuser. This focuser or observer has assumed he is outside the package looking in at the mess of it. But it is the limited nature of his own observation which brings this mess into view.
Therefore, is it possible to question the mess from the inside only, never breaking off to look at it from the hypothetical outside?
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Yes, but we were talking about sorrow. As Paul mentions above, all psychological contents are interrelated, so all contents are implicit in any content that arises. When there is sorrow, it is sorrow that is foregrounded. One doesn’t ask whether sorrow is a ‘homogenous state’ when there is actual sorrow - it is naturally foregrounded.
The question we were asking was how do we actually meet this sorrow when it arises? What takes place in the mind? Do we separate ourselves from it and try to control, suppress, evade or rationalise it? Or are we able to observe it, be with it - so intimately that the sense of ‘me’ observing ‘sorrow’ falls away, and there is only sorrow? This is still the main question for me.
‘Self’ means literally nothing to me, so you will have to find some secular language to communicate what you may mean by that term. I have tried to elucidate it with you over the course of many exchanges, and I am still none the wiser.
I am happy to use clear, everyday language, and for any ‘jargon’ that may come up to be fully clarified or else dropped. But I hope you won’t be offended if I remind you that this is the Krishnamurti Information Network (“a place to explore and discuss the meditations of J. Krishnamurti”)? If you are genuinely not interested in exploring the teachings of Krishnamurti, then that will inevitably impact on what we are doing here.
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Is it possible to be with sensation without the reaction of self : ie. good/bad, fear/desire?
Or at least not be completely submerged by intent/motive/avoidance of discomfort?
Yes - it’s the same principle really. If one can remain with any sensation choicelessly, without interference, then one can remain with sorrow. Although genuine sorrow, when it happens, is much more challenging to stay with.
With respect to the video - it is of course rather dangerous to set oneself up as a ‘joyologist’ or ‘momentarian’!! - because one is neither in control of joy nor of what happens in the moment!