Yes, I agree with this. But then you say
Why do you say this? On whose authority does one say that comparison is inevitable? You seem to be very definite on this Inquiry, but surely this definiteness is also a “belief”?
As we were saying previously, one is as one is (presently). So if one is comparing where one is now to where one hopes to be or wishes to be in the future, that is currently our ‘what is’ - right? That is what is actually going on (for us).
And aren’t we free to see that we are comparing, measuring ourselves with ‘what should be’, if this is what we are actually doing?
Surely, to say that we are always comparing ourselves (and that it at least seems to be inevitable - if this is what you are saying), this statement must be related to one’s degree of awareness of what is actually going on (psychologically speaking)? So why do you seem to totally discount our capacity to ‘see’ or to be aware?
However, your principle objection appears to be against belief, not awareness (the freedom to ‘see’) per se. - Correct?
You say
and
(the “alpha dog” presumably being Krishnamurti).
So let us accept that this is a danger for anyone who becomes interested in what K has said.
The danger is that we constantly compare our actual daily experience with the ‘standard’ or measure in our mind that has been put there by our knowledge of K’s teachings. The ‘what is’ of whatever we are actually experiencing or thinking or feeling right now, is being compared with what we remember Krishnamurti to have taught about what is happening now, and how he said we should go about investigating it. Right?
I think this is your fundamental objection to what we are doing on the forum.
And it is a worthy objection. The danger of regarding our own present experience through the prism of what K has said about it, is a real danger.
This is why dialogue meetings are often fraught with difficulties, because we are constantly mistaking the finger pointing at the moon (i.e. K’s teachings) for the moon itself; constantly forgetting that the word is not the thing, the description is not the described.
But does the simple fact of this danger mean that succumbing to psychological authority in our self-observations is inevitable? Is it inevitable that every time I look at my own present experience I must look at it through the prism of K’s (or anyone else’s) teachings?
And if this is what one is doing (constantly), can there not be an awareness of this fact?
You seem - from what you have written - to suggest that there cannot be an awareness of this habit.
But then this conclusion (“cannot”) becomes the prism through which one looks at one’s own daily experience, doesn’t it? - a conclusion that says cannot (constantly): I cannot be aware of my habitual judgments, comparisons, escapes, etc; I cannot be compassionate; I cannot be choicelessly aware…
So one says things like
and
… which are definite conclusions, assertions, prejudgments.
Do you see what I mean?
So is it ever possible to look at one’s present experience without this layer of judgements & comparisons?
I think this question is still valid, even if it cannot be presently answered because one is habituated to instant judgment & comparison. And one can at least ask oneself:
Am I aware that I am judging & comparing now, this instant?
What Pavlov’s dogs lacked was obviously any intelligent awareness of what they were doing (apart from their immediate sensations of hunger and thirst). They were treated cruelly, without love or affection, without a space for their native intelligence to respond freely, and they act in kind (like any traumatised animal). They became pure slaves to mechanism.
Are you saying that we are like that? - that we have been tortured, traumatised, boxed-in by circumstances, parents, schools… ‘conditioning’ (with all the suffering and suppression of instincts this has inevitably entailed)?
So can we be aware of this conditioning, without the filter or prism of one’s habitual “cannot”? - and if we cannot do this, can we be aware of this conclusion that we cannot?
