Musings

Yes, I think you are right. But this valuable ‘fact’ that we both seem to see, thought was involved in the finding and expressing of it. So, thought, tamed, is a very powerful and beautiful thing. Tamed meaning serving awareness of what-is rather than obscuring/distorting it. ???

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Very different now. But free from the ‘known’, maybe not? Technologically there seems to be no limits but psychologically the brain has stuck itself with this pathetic image of what it imagines itself to be and frets and groans its life away.

Yes we are like a dog trained by electric collar to stay within our little yard. Pain/fear defines our ‘safe’ perimeter, and eventually the collar is internalized and becomes part of who/what we are.

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Once the brain believed that if you went far enough you would fall off the earth.
It doesn’t need a ‘new updated’ belief about what it is. To ‘blossom’ it needs to be free from the ‘past’, free from its ‘riches’?

How does it do that? And does it matter more if I’m causing suffering for me or for someone other?

I’m asking what you think is true, what you mean. No need to answer for everyone else. And no need for comparative braining - comparison with others is a major problem for dialogue (not just between you & me)

Maybe winning in dialogue means being able to say : I don’t know. It shows that I’m the ultimate nobody. Unfortunately, the other guy might not know you’ve won, which sucks. :face_with_head_bandage:

Interesting, the notion that it is the very treasures of the mind that keep it limited. Imagine being someone who derives their sense of worth/meaning/joy from their possessions (things and people and ideas) and then running into someone who suggests you will only know true worth/meaning/joy if you become free of these possessions. You don’t want to lose your hard-won meaning and joys, but without doing so you’ll never know if it leads to deeper aliveness.

I feel I’m trapped in this predicament. And I wouldn’t be surprised if others here are also. Straddling worlds!

K put it nicely, I don’t know if you read it :

“ To die rich is to have lived in vain”.

Western homespun philosophy:

“He who dies with the most toys wins.”

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Right and the ‘toys’ come in all shapes and sizes.

And the toys are physical, mental, emotional, intellectual.

We can’t blame “thought itself” because it is just a mechanical process. What’s at fault is the brain’s limiting itself to thought, the intellect, stories and explanations for the way things are and who one is.

Inquiry, the kind we do here, can nudge us towards the surcease of sorrow, no? And in inquiry the question “Who suffers?” sometimes comes up.

But isn’t that a product of thought? Or are you suggesting there is something else ‘in charge’ of thought? (I am speaking about us unenlighteneds, not Krishnamurti for whom intelligence presided over thought.)

Maybe it’s just the honest thing to say.

You seem to have missed my point, so I’ll repeat it: when you use the word [meditation], don’t leave it up to the reader to decide which meaning of the word you’re using.

You made some pronouncements about meditation. I was inquiring further into what you were saying. Conversation is tricky stuff.

So, to be clear, I was asking what you meant. I was not trying to impose a preferred meaning of my own.

OK, sorry about the misunderstanding. Being familiar with K’s redefinitions of commonly used words, we’re not always sure which meaning is intended.


Is the universe with all its apparent laws and consistencies a story? A product of collective dreaming, imagining, and thinking? If we (sentient beings, or perhaps all existents) dreamed a different dream, would the universe change to reflect it? Is this happening?

File under: unanswerable questions.


We are not gods, it is only our relationship to, or perception/interpretation of that changes.

The thing we call “the speeding bus” does not seem to be affected by our subjective opinion.

Question : are there true stories and false stories? Stories that can be demonstrated to be apparently correct, and others that are demonstrably incorrect.

There seems to be a relationship between our ideas and what our ideas are about - but it is the idea that is secondary.
I am not the creator of the universe (I am not even responsible for my idea of the universe) - maybe the concept of I arose out of the universe but thats not a power I have over the universe.

What am I not getting?

PS. I accept Idealism (as it has been presented to me) as true. But that does not mean that my story (for example the one you have told us above) is an exact representation of the universe.

I think we’d both agree that appearances require awareness. ‘The colors of sunset’ doesn’t make sense when that sunset is taking place on an unobserved planet. I’m simply wondering whether there is any thing that is not an appearance. It’s a variant of my “Is everything a story?” story.