Yeah, but that just explains what the brain is and what it’s components are. You didn’t answer the question; what else does it do besides think?
I’m saying that the self always has a goal : getting what it wants and avoiding what it doesn’t want - this is what “the self” is.
The question is : is understanding possible without the filter of “self” - is clarity possible.
The answer is : Clarity is only possible when there is no self.
No. Anger/jealousy is “I really, really want/don’t want”. The I is expressing itself very strongly due to lack of attention - maybe due to exhaustion (?)
In awareness, there is no picking and choosing. There is no you vs me.
We often mistake judgement, interpretation or point of view, for awareness.
Yes, maybe. I like to say silence is an open heart. Meaning, love is embracing what is.
Yes, this is an agreed position by many of us who come here. The thing is, that in the video I posted in comment 83 on this thread, Krishnamurtii asks if we can find out if we can observe without reaction and without the network of words interfering with our observation. I understand that we have to experiment with this ourselves. Is there another way? Just go for a walk in a wood or by the sea or just sit on a bus and experiment with awareness and attentiveness. You seem to be saying that if we ever observe anything like a tree, a cloud or anything else there will always be a goal behind it. Surely there is a trap here. You wrote “Clarity is only possible when there is no self”. I’d like to ask how you know this. Is it a theory or something that you have actually experienced through observation when the self is absent?
Yes the self is a trap. Even when we observe ourselves, we see through its filter.
The theory has always been part of my life - and will have probably conditioned my experiences - here’s a link to one I described earlier in another thread :
https://forum.kinfonet.org/t/is-the-self-real/226/34?u=macdougdoug
Is the trap perhaps all the things we think we know about the self? If you, me or anyone else thinks they can’t observe a tree or a cloud because the filter of thought/self will always be there then any observation will be blocked. If you observe anger rising in yourself, what happens? In the instance that there is seeing there is change. This is something that can be observed in daily life. You can think about it and analyse it afterwards but the action comes directly as the seeing occurs.
The self is a (successful) survival mechanism - words are part of its toolbox in its function as progress/security provider - which is to say : knowledge is part of identity.
We can test this. Sit quietly an see - all sensation will be accompanied by interpretation, and all interpretation will be considered true. The trick is to be completely forgiving (of yourself for starters) and to stay calm and curious - and with any luck, even the observer will be seen.
In any case, during meditation anything that is seen, must be seen as just the movement of self. It musn’t be believed, musn’t be held on to. Just see and let go.
Yes - Knowledge is part of identity.
When you say “all sensation will be acompanied by interpretation”, do you mean that thought will always be present? Without thought then interpretation is surely impossible. What you describe in the quote above above may well be true for you but to apply this universaly is surely assumption. How can we know what happens when someone else sits quietly or looks at a cloud or a tree? This really is something that we can explore on our own and something which Krishnamurti encouraged us to do.
It was meant as an invitation to find out - to observe the movement of your mind (if thats possible?) - is it possible to see that we have a tendancy to be swept along unawares by the movement of the mind, always caught up in analysis, interpretation and conclusions. Swept along by what we think to be our own volition. Swept along by what we mistake for reality. Whereas its all just very gross, or if we are attentive , sometimes more and more subtle expressions of self.
Yes, I am assuming that you are a human like me. Except that you might actually prefer strawberry.
Do you feel that you do not interpret what is?
Wrong question. There is no room for conclusions in attention, since it is constantly in motion. Any answer to this question comes from thought and memory, not from attention itself.
Why thought wants to know that?
Not at all a stupid question, Douglas … it is the “me” itself.
“Let go” implies will and the will does not belong to the field of “the observed is the observer” but to the field of a “me” that is divided from that which is observed (in this case, thought). So “sit quetly and see, just see”.
“I like”, “I dislike”, “this is good”, this is bad", and so on, so on.
Because attention itself is knowing and that knowing is new every time, i.e.: attention don’t need to keep that knowing in memory or convert it into experience.
Wrong. As soon as you know that you are attending, attention stops and thought begins. There is no such thing as “attending with knowledge”.
Only with a silent mind observing itself.
Your assumptions are correct - I am indeed a human being and I do like strawberries. Does that count as “preferring”? The wild strawberries that grow in the mountain forests of the Pyrenees are particularly tasty.
Do I interpret what is? Of course I do. When I think, which is almost all of the time, I interpret “what is”. This interpretation comes from my past experience or conditioning. When I see a tree, thought says “that is a tree”. The question seems to be if thought is ever silent and there is the looking at the tree in silence without thought. Does this ever happen? My expereience is that it happens for short periods of time. Krishnamurti spoke about observation without words which is an interesting thing. When you observe, does thought interpret with words, images or something else? Is thought ever still and is there sometimes observation with a silent mind? Surely these are things to experiment with. We can explore this together here but exploration is often closed down by black and white statements or declarations at the beginning of a discussion. Let’s face it, we know very little about observing with a silent mind.
Is the reader to assume your mind is silent?
Why would the reader want to know if the writer’s mind is silent?
What do you think?
Well, here is the first question: How are we going to approach something that does not belong to the field of knowledge without staying in the field of thought and words to know what it is?
And the second: Why do we want to know what it is?
And the third and last: At what point in such approach is there going to be an observation with a silent mind, at the beginning, in the middle, at the end … or never?
In short, what do these words of K mean to you (all): “You are listening to yourselves, and not to the speaker.”
There are the “conscious” thoughts - which most people can identify as thoughts - the narrative in our heads that we are aware of and can be recalled.
Then there are the more powerful thoughts that we usually mistake for reality. These are in fact interpretations/judgements about our relationship with the “outside” world.
Then there is maybe the most powerful thought, which we call identity or the observer.
Powerful because subtle and difficult to see and thus cause of confusion and conflict.
Meditation is when the process of interpretation and identification is seen.
I don’t understand what you mean here. Can you give examples?
In the video which began this thread, Krishnamurti makes it very clear that for him, meditation is the awareness of the whole movement of thought. I don’t see that dividing thought up into different categories really helps. When we talk about observation, surely there is just thought and silence. While thought is operating, there will be a distortion of reality as conditioning is present and constantly interpreting reality. Observation with a silent mind will not have this distortion. Is this not so?