“You” are what must be emptied
That may be true - it certainly has a mysterious poetic quality to it.
I was simply trying to say that there should be no effort on our part to do any emptying - Our desire to achieve some imagined goal being part of the confusion.
Effort is all we know. We are futility itself.
What’s the difference between attending to what you recognize, and attending to what you don’t recognize?
Well, it seems to me that there are some things that you can’t set out to do. I don’t think you can say, “Today I will empty my mind.” or “Today I will be innocent and vulnerable.” Krishnamurti seems to be saying that the emptying of the mind is a consequence of attentiveness and awareness.
1 Like
Recognition depends on comparison and interpretation.
This means depending on our world view in order to confirm our world view - this is about security and progress. This is the human condition, the self in action.
Attention is not about grasping and naming - It is already free from fear - attention without comparison, is Love.
So is awareness possible? Have you experimented with awareness? Many people seem to just think about awareness - whereas the opposite may be just as interesting.
This is an important point, I’d say. “Yes I want to find out about this awareness thing, today. Is it possible?” Experimentation with ‘awareness’, every day, is what I sense is missing. People read K. and other gurus/ teachers and give them a ‘reverence’ like they do the Bible, the Koran, etc… Going off from there on one’s own can feel ‘dangerous’, safer to repeat over and over what has been read, heard,etc. Leaving the false ‘security’ of the ‘known’…It’s like ‘weaning’ oneself from the source. If if it’s true that there is “no path” to the truth, go for it, you don’t have to worry about getting lost. When you experiment, you will get ‘lost’, that is the point. Then you see what K. was pointing at when he said, “A confident man is a dead human being.”
2 Likes
Krishnamurti says in this talk that meditation is the mind free of the past, and that this freedom is the silence that comes when the mind completely understands itself.
Psychologists would scoff at this and dismiss it as nonsense, and we would be fools to assume it has to be true because Krishnamurti said it, so how is one to find out if the mind can completely understand itself?
Good post, Dan…thanks. May comment further later. “A confident man” and a knowledgeable man…not referring to practical knowledge of course which is essential to survive physically.
1 Like
What makes you say that? Isn’t a lot of therapy just a confused attempt to to ease the Psyche of past trauma?
Fearless honesty, incurable curiosity, desperate need and no other options
Have I experimented with awareness? Yes, I have. Sometimes I am aware, observant and attentive to what is going on around and within me. At other times, thought wanders all over the place, I am not aware of it and oblivious to what is going on. Sometimes after I watch a video like the one that began this thread I find my mind is sharper and more aware of thought. Inattentiveness seems to be our “normal” state most of the time. Do we ever really listen to anyone or anything most of the time?
3 Likes
Isn’t the ‘challenge’ to stay with the inattentiveness and not move away with our desire for the ‘attentive’ state?
3 Likes
Where is this me that I am in?
Maybe that’s a stupid question. What about : Where is the frontier between inside and outside me?
Careful. No picking or choosing. Neither grasping this nor that. (Nor trying not to grasp for that matter)
Waves come in, waves go out, there is no staying.
But if one is inquiring or investigating, something may be learned by not escaping the ‘unpleasant’ or ‘unrewarding’ state to get to the more pleasant, etc…that which we “normally” flee from may prove to be different than we imagine.
1 Like
I think this is a good question. Generally, the boundary separating outside and inside of me is the skin of the body. This is why we say “having skin in the game” to point to a genuine vested interest or real stake in matters we claim to have an interest in. So, you have to ask what are you? Are you macdougdoug who cares about your little finger or are you the world and concerned about the welfare of all mankind?
I said they’d scoff at the idea of anyone, on their own, completely understanding the mind.
This is your answer to my question, “How is one to completely understand the mind?”
Does your answer mean that you completely understand the mind, or that you know how to completely understand the mind, or that you know what it takes to completely understand the mind?
1 Like
Think of ‘understanding’ as being an’ awareness of ’ in the moment… there is no ‘understander’. (as in the theory of relativity i.e.)