Almost certainly not Sean. Everything we see is for “the first time”. Memory holds images of what has ‘been seen’. But the information coming in through the eyes, ears, etc is always new, always for the ‘first time’. Can ‘my’ thoughts which are always new, ‘my’ feelings, ‘my’ sensations which are always new, be seen as new? Can they be seen as if they ‘belong’ to no one? Just seen as they are? Just seen as they appear and disappear?
The past is garbage and needs to be treated as such.
We retain a lot of memory that serves no practical purpose and should be discarded, but we can’t learn or function without memory, so what’s needed is intelligence enough to know what to keep and when, if ever, to forget it.
It depends on what you’re listening for. If I was a teacher, I would consider everyone here one of my students and meet them at their level of incoherence so as to be accepted as one of them. Good teachers know they’re no better than their students - just more inclined to teach openly than surreptitiously.
I think I know when I’m believing and when I’m not, and believe me, I am more believing than I believe I am.
Yes, and you’re saying it better.
Hi James. Obviously Inquiry saw something wrong with it. It seems that it showed I was a believer although, as you pointed out, I didn’t make any claim about being free of conditioning. A trifle odd, but there you go.
I think you’re right here James, but where does the “choosing between like and dislike” come in? I mean, if I’m looking at a tree, isn’t it past knowledge and experience of trees that is what is blocking seeing the tree as it really is? In the quote you posted from K, he seems to be talking about seeing our conditioning with choice, with like and dislike. So is seeing our conditioning choicelessly different from seeing a tree without the filter of conditioning?
I don’t feel it is a matter of saying it better, but of perhaps being open to a (more) compassionate mode of response?
That is, if we genuinely see ourselves as tortured, traumatised human beings (similar to the unfortunate animals involved in Pavlov’s experiments), then doesn’t part of that “seeing” involve affection, compassion, sympathy, ‘love’?
Not an intentional ‘love’, or a manufactured experience of ‘love’, or a moralistic or spiritual attitude of ‘love’ - but simply that the seeing of our own trauma involves a feeling-component too (it is not just an intellectual seeing).
In the OP quotes 4, 5, 6 and 7, Krishnamurti makes it clear that seeing, awareness, watching, being attentive, etc - and insight itself - involves a feeling component that we can call affection, love, compassion, or whatever:
Do you see what I mean?
I am not saying that we have to have ‘pure love’, ‘divine love’, compassion (b), etc - but I’m just pointing to the fact that if I really am traumatised (which we all are to some extent), then doesn’t any genuine seeing or awareness of that fact inevitably involve a sense of care, compassion, ordinary ‘love’?
If this quality is lacking, then how can I honestly, truthfully claim to have seen what I am? - I cannot, right? - Which means that I have not yet seen myself holistically, completely, so I cannot draw conclusions from that incomplete seeing and make judgments based on them (I mean, I can and indeed do make constant judgements based on my own incomplete seeing, but I accept that these judgements really have no legitimacy in the end).
So some sense of compassion, love, consideration is a part of seeing, part of awareness. Correct?
And so, if I honestly do not have that quality at all, then I’m simply not aware of what my intellect is claiming itself to be aware of. Right? And if I can become aware of that disjunction - between what my intellect is reporting about myself and what I am actually aware of directly - then doesn’t my conditioning become much more important than what my intellect is saying about it?
Then, perhaps, there is just great sadness - grief for the fact that I have never loved and perhaps have never been loved. My intellect can label this as ‘self-pity’, but the label is not the actual traumatised entity which is my condition.
So can there just be an awareness of the pain, the trauma, the grief, as pain, trauma, grief (without any labels at all)?
This is just a question you understand. I am not saying that there is a ‘next step’ (or that I know of a ‘next step’). As I understand it, this is a question one lives with rather than answers.
Hi Sean,
I’m not sure that I understand your question completely; but if I were to respond to the following
I would say that it is probably just more layers of conditioning, no?
Say, for instance, that I become aware that of feeling lonely. I react to that feeling with judgements of like and dislike that arise from my past experiences of feeling lonely. These judgements interfere with meeting that feeling-state of being isolated, empty, cut-off from other people, etc.
Choiceless awareness is then simply to see this whole process going on: feeling lonely, judgements coming in (“I shouldn’t feel lonely, I don’t like feeling lonely, I will distract myself with some activity in order to avoid feeling lonely”); and then the feeling of loneliness itself, what is involved in that state (if the secondary judgements of like and dislike have naturally fallen away).
What do you think?
Hi James. Thanks for your reply and sorry if my question wasn’t clear.
I was wondering if the seeing of our conditioning with like and dislike was specific to seeing our conditioning rather than, say, observing a tree. When observing a tree, the interference and distortion of conditioning seems to be in the form of past knowledge and experience of trees rather than any element of like and dislike.
I’m just trying to understand the point K was making about like and dislike but one thing that is clear is the impact which constant judgement has. I mean, we make judgements all the time about people, places and things. I’m conscious that this can have a very narrowing effect on how one sees the world and oneself. People, places and things change all the time - if a man you know was rude last week it doesn’t mean he will be rude the next time you meet him, so to classify him as “a rude man” is not really helpful. So to observe oneself and the world without this constant judgement seems to be an important element in this thing called choiceless observation/awareness which seems so difficult to understand (at least to me). How do you see this?
I’m not sure I see the difference? When I look at a tree and past knowledge comes in, isn’t it that past knowledge which is saying “I like” and “I dislike”?
‘That tree looks ugly’, ‘that tree looks pretty’, ‘that tree reminds me of when I was a child’, ‘that tree would be nice to have in my garden’, etc. Right?
Right. But does one have any choice in the reactions that come in from the past to interfere with the perception of the tree? If not, then can one be aware of them in the same way that one is aware of the tree?
I am not saying that one can - which is an assertion. But I take choiceless awareness to be just this awareness of whatever is happening within us and around us: trees, people, judgments, likes and dislikes, distractions, attractions, escapes, desires, fears, etc.
An awareness with no filter - in which even the ‘filters’ are allowed to be as they are, until they aren’t! (because they have dropped away naturally, if they have dropped away).
Hi again James. What you say seems to make a lot of sense. Can you think of moments in life when we act choicelessly, when we stop trying and things just seem to flow along?
Sure. Usually on holiday!! 
Perhaps choiceless awareness is a “holiday” for the mind - only every day is our holy day really (if we but knew!).
Not “odd”… just not clear, sorry.
Sean said, “in the choiceless observation of the movement of thought we can be free of our conditioning and able to experience the present moment without the distortion of the past.”
Had he attributed this to Krishnamurti and not stated it as if speaking from his experience, I wouldn’t have pointed out that it is a statement of belief, a testimonial, not unlike what Christians do when reciting scripture.
I think it’s unseemly when K-aficionados parrot Krishnamurti, making K’s truth, their truth, and I see no difference between this kind of certainty and what Christians call “faith”.
Consideration, yes. One who does not consider how wrong and mistaken one has been and is inclined to be, can’t help but be constantly considering how wrong and mistaken one can be at any moment. This consideration gives one pause and makes one wary of knee-jerk reactions.
As for compassion and love, K has said they are beyond the brain, so I’d be lying if I presumed to know anything about compassion and love.
And so, if I honestly do not have that quality at all, then I’m simply not aware of what my intellect is claiming itself to be aware of. Right? And if I can become aware of that disjunction - between what my intellect is reporting about myself and what I am actually aware of directly - then doesn’t my conditioning become much more important than what my intellect is saying about it?
My conditioning is usually “much more important than what my intellect is saying about it”. If it wasn’t, my conditioning wouldn’t persist.
Then, perhaps, there is just great sadness - grief for the fact that I have never loved and perhaps have never been loved. My intellect can label this as ‘self-pity’, but the label is not the actual traumatised entity which is my condition. So can there just be an awareness of the pain, the trauma, the grief, as pain, trauma, grief (without any labels at all)?
It’s possible when there is no reaction to “the pain, the trauma, the grief”; when the conditioning doesn’t kick in.
And you’re the one complaining about believers! 
As I think I mentioned, I’m not talking about pure love or compassion (b); but just the human quality of kindness, compassion, affection, sympathy, etc.
To be aware of one’s conditioning without this simple human quality is not a meaningful form of awareness (imo).
So all I’m asking is can we allow our conditioning (e.g. hurt, trauma, sadness, etc) to tell its own story, rather than listening only to the story our intellect is telling us about it?
I don’t think there is any separation or difference between the pain, the reaction to the pain, and “conditioning”. The pain is a part of my conditioning - as is the reaction to the pain.
So the question for us is: can there be a sympathetic listening both to the reactions to the pain, as well as to the pain itself?
I consider this type of editing to be disingenuous Inquiry. I said this was (as I understood it) K’s assertion. You are trying to attribute something to me that I simply never claimed.
So Inquiry, according to you, if someone summarises what they understand to be K’s position on conditioning or anything else, they are “parroting K”. Is that actually what you are saying? How do you equate a summary of what someone else states with belief? What is the connection here? This is a matter of the meaning of words in English. I try to be brief and precise in my use of words in written English so as not to cause confusion when we are talking about something as complex as K’s teaching. I do not understand how you justify what you have written about my original contribution.
Because I didn’t include the next sentence: “That’s my understanding of the teachings”?
I regret saying it. I apologize.
Apology accepted - thanks Inquiry.