Can the mind understand itself, its operation, or must it be ignorant and confused until death? The mind can understand a lot of complex and puzzling things, but is it asking too much for it to understand itself? Krishnamurti didn’t think so.
We are coming to a conclusion all the time. Thinking about what he/she said, the words, ideas, what we know, and then asking a question in the verbal context, is a conclusion. We have concluded the words, phrases, all that, is what I need to look at. So we can see this way the mind is working when meditating. Watching thought. The mind looking carefully, sensitively, not full of thought, is inquiring. Looking at parts, and what it the parts are called, and puzzling about this and that, is passing over it with thought. Thought is the distraction. I might do this in a job, in an interest to know more, or to develop skill, but this is missing the whole nature. To see the whole nature free from conclusion is meditation. Please don’t come back and say, that is a conclusion. Look, see there is this verbal preference, and ask, am I looking and can see it simply for what it is, and not be naming things? To see my busy mind is a start.
Looking at this this morning. And the relation between ‘thinking’ and the other senses. The eyes, ears, nose etc take in the sensations at hand and ‘thinking’ is there to ‘identify’ what is being sensed. The swaying of the tree (River Birch) is not a danger, it cannot attack because thought ‘knows’ that it is rooted in the ground, etc. Thinking’s function it seems then, is a tool for survival , for ‘knowing’ what is dangerous and what is not. The sensation of the din is made by ‘birds’ (‘Crows’) is recognised and can be disregarded, etc. …So ‘thinking’ is a sense organ that makes sense of the environment and helps the body successfully navigate it.
So what went ‘wrong’? Why ‘nationalism’, ‘racism’, all the isms? Why all the stereotyping? Why ‘greed’? Seems obvious that none of these flow from the senses, sight, touch, hearing, smell…something went ‘wrong’ with the thinking sense, didn’t it? Can we become aware in ourselves of what here is ‘out of place’ and created a hell for so many?
I don’t really get this “stay with the inattentiveness”. Does that mean continuing to think? Surely attention brings about immediate change. If you are on a bus and lost in thought, you are not very aware of what is going on around you. If you become aware of the fact that you are thinking, what happens? Well, you can decide to go on thinking or the thinking can stop and you suddenly become more aware of what is going on around you in the bus. You hear the conversation of the two women sitting opposite you and notice how they talk. You become aware of the teenager playing with his mobile phone and all the rest of it. You just start observing what is going on around you. As soon as thought starts up again, the intensity of the observation wanes and you become less present. If you go around making an effort to be attentive then this will surely block awareness. The more silent the mind is, the nore aware you will be. These are my observations on experimenting with attentiveness.
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What I mean is that the thinking is inside or within me but the man sitting opposite me on the bus is outside me. I can be aware or completely unaware of these things.
I have been trying to see what is the difference between observing thinking as it appears and the shift to the becoming ‘identified’ with the thinking process. Is that identification what K. has called the “trick” of the thinking process when it projects a 'thinker" separate from the ‘stream’? A ‘me’? …When we use the term “lost in thought” is that when ‘I’ am this ‘thinker’? ‘Meditation’ as I am understanding it is the awareness of thinking as it occurs as well as the products of the other senses… K. has said that the ‘self’ arises when the thinking process “identifies” itself with the senses or sensations…( As opposed to a role as a ‘partner’?) Does that imply, no identification = no ‘self’, no ‘center’? A 'harmony between the ‘parts’?
If I see it as a challenge, it’s all about me, what I can do, etc. But if you’re observing what’s happening, there’s nothing to do but remain with it until something more urgent diverts attention.
What happens if we place that great K-Bomb here : “The Observer is the observed”.
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Hi Dan, What you say seems to make a lot of sense. I understand that K pointed out that thought acts as a filter. We see and interpret the present through the filter of thought which is an accumulation of past experience. We identify with this accumulated past experience which is the “me”. When I am lost in thought then yes, I am this thinker. I’m not sure what you mean when you speak about “the products of the other senses” but I, like you, understand meditation to be the awareness of thinking as it occurs.Or perhaps meditation or some sort of emptying occurs when there is continuous periods of observation with silence of the mind. But that is for us to explore.
I suppose that this is a key point in K teaching that we need to discover for ourselves.
It was just what seemed to be the basic essentials if we were to have a chance of heading in the right direction - But I see that it was not a helpful answer - so I’d like to try again.
The first essential step is to be free of our delusions.
Before asking “How can I understand mind completely?” We need to know things like : Can the I understand completely? What is the I?
Secondary questions like : What is mind? Is it complete? may lose their significance after the first step.
What’s being seen thanks to Macdougdoug’s lobbing of the “K-Bomb” is that there actually is no me looking through the “filter” at the world… I am the filter as well as I am the world. The division of a ‘me’ or ‘you’ apart from ‘what is’ is an illusion created by thought. Not to say that there are not different bodies, brains, etc with different memories and experiences, etc. but the ‘you’ or the ‘me’ (the ‘self’) is just an inhibited, or limited ‘mode’ (in the brain?) of perception…
No thought means no filter, no past, no “me”. What happens when there is observation with no thought?
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I’d like to ask a similar, but hopefully simpler question:
Is it possible for there to be observation without a goal?
Is there a goal to observation? What is it? Can we not just look at a tree or a cloud and see what happens?
The self is always, by definition, compelled by good/bad, I want/I don’t want. Thus everything I do has a goal.
Sounds a bit like daydreaming - apart from the stated goal of wanting to see what happens.
We could just sit around and talk and forget about observing. The tree will still be there after we close this topic - hopefully. Hang on, we shouldn’t be hoping!
I’ll rephrase the question: can the mind understand itself? Can the mind be so attentive to its every thought and conditioned response that it misses nothing? Can its awareness of its activity (self-knowledge) be so complete that the mind understands what incites its every thought and conditioned response? Can the mind learn about itself to the extent that no cognitive distortion or error goes unnoticed?
I’m using “mind” to mean cognition. Krishnamurti called it “thought”, and at other times “mind”.