The thing that is imo closest to not-story is being (is-ing). Not being something, just being. In different traditions it’s called awareness or consciousness or tao or brahman or God.
I think a couple of words are missing from this sentence; don’t you mean : “I’m simply wondering whether there is any thing that is not an appearance to me”
Everything I see is an appearance, of course - but we mustn’t make the silly mistake to think that means that I see everything, or appearance is the whole of existence.
What do you do with Descartes’ famous “somethings going on so therefore somethings going on, but damned if I know what going on” (In French originally : je pense donc je suis - unless the geezer was thinking in Latin idk)
I wonder, is there a kind of internal emotional balancing system at play in us? An inner auditor that monitors our joys and sufferings and balances the books. If true, it would be a balm: in the midst of great torment we would know that “this too shall pass.” But it works both ways: in the midst of great joy we would know that sorrow is part of the package deal.
I guess I am kind of describing karma? Every emotional action creates an equal and opposite reaction. Are emotions wholly dependent on identification with an egoic self?
Unfortunately my understanding of Karma has more to do with psychological conditioning than balance or justice.
Karma would be reification of the self through confirmation bias - ie. selfish action confirms ones fears. what I see and do confirms my beliefs.
As for your talk of balance, it reminds me of the nervous system naturally having to have moments of calm and silence to recover from all the nervous energy spent trying to be a winner.
Yes, our periods of peace and happiness are sometimes (often?) reliefs-interruptions from our more persistent state (foundation?) of suffering (dukkha, dissatisfaction, longing).
The internal auditor (keeping emotional score, balancing the books) for some people appears skewed towards joy or towards suffering. It’s your glass half full or empty model. But I don’t think that even the most skilled of auditors can eliminate the negative or the positive. I used to think I had that ability, but the negative I thought I had eliminated kept coming back in devious forms to sink its teeth in whatever aspect of me happened to be most vulnerable.
When you play the pleasure vs. pain game, certain rules seem to apply. Krishnamurti and others suggest there is another way, one that ‘transcends’ (without escaping from) pain/pleasure.
The obvious ‘way’ to end psychological fear and sorrow is to end the duality within the mind. Leaving only the ‘fact’ of what is.
My thought-feeling, my experience of duality is a fact, is what-is for me. For many, I’d wager.
What happens when I cop to the fact that my experiential world is largely dualistic? I feel honest, and relieved (pretending is stressful), and inferior (imagining wokes tsk-tsk’ing at me).
I ‘cop to the fact’, when in the face of fear, sorrow, suffering, there is no movement away from what is happening, the fact of it taking place in me at any moment. And when there is a ‘moving away’ to the opposite (duality), then the moving away becomes the fact…the attempt to change what is?
Is the feeling itself a fact, as you understand ‘fact’?
Yes. Anger, sadness, fear, joy… all facts for me. What is happening in the moment is a fact.
Btw K said his secret was that “I don’t mind what happens”. So ‘minding’ is evidence of the duality?
Minding is resisting what-is, resisting what-is is suffering. Who or what resists?
The reflexive mind, reflexes acquired from conditioning, the mental equivalent of knee jerking.
1 Like
And what understands that the conditioned mind is the agent of resisting? If it is that same mind, the understanding is limited by the limits of the mind. Is there a not-mind that understands? Or a bigger mind, the mind of the whole? Is unlimited-ness just an idea? Am I storytelling?
When I have a sensation that is recognized as dread,say, I dread something. That ‘dread’ is what I am. I am not dreading, ‘having’ dread, I am the dread. K is saying, don’t react by trying to ‘not-dread’. Don’t try to ‘change’ it. Stay with it…but we don’t. We’re ‘conditioned ‘ to escape.
We can’t “understand “ our violence if we run from it …or anything else about ourselves, can we?
Yes we are trained to escape. From the earliest age. To stay with what is, it’s difficult, especially when the what-is is unpleasant. And thought is a master manipulator, it says sneaky things like: “You wouldn’t stand in the middle of the street when you know you could get run over, so why would you let yourself love someone when you know your heart could get broken?” Sometimes the self seems to me like an overzealous protector, like a bodyguard gone a bit mad.
The animals mourn a loss and move on but self pity / thought / feeling, in humans can drag on for a lifetime?
I think I’ve been in mourning for 40 years. It’s so powerful, quite mysterious. I don’t know about self pity, but I’m sure my sense of self identity is involved. Sometimes the mourning seems like the pining away for a lost self and a refusal/inability to build a new vital, engaged self.
If I’m okay with suffering, if I feel that there is something noble, meaningful in being this suffering - then that will continue to be what I am, my creation.