Well that’s the grand question Krishnamurti posed: Can we live without conditioning?
What I’m trying to do is observe the consequences of being addicted to pleasure, its fruits.
Free of the intention to be choicelessly aware, to consciously observe, I fall into pleasure/pain.
Belief and language are abilities that are abused when the brain is not intelligent enough to know what it’s doing, i.e., confused, in disorder.
The language used (which could be an indication of the mind that is speaking) still seems nonsensical.
Free of the intention to be free of intention - what could this possibly mean?
are these synonyms or antonyms?
When not in a conscious conflict with my confusion, my automatic reflex processes (of confused conflict with my perceived situation aka want) regain control.
Or more simply put : when I don’t want this, I want that.
Let’s be clear about what we mean by “the self”. Is it not the illusion of I, the thinker, as a character in a narrative, and that this illusion is a product of a brain limited to believing or not believing, since it cannot perceive what actually is?
We need to be clear about this because it makes no sense to talk about the self if we don’t know why, if the self is an illusion, the illusion persists in spite of our belief that it is the product of a confused brain. And the brain is confused because, limited to belief, it can’t stop believing in the fictitious person it identifies with because that “person” is the prison it is confined to until/unless the brain awakens to how it has imprisoned itself.
You say that, “The self is attracted to the idea of ‘choice less awareness’ because it holds out a promise of freedom from suffering”, but why not just say I instead of “the self”, as if I and the self are not the same? When I try to put distance between I, the believer that believes the self is an illusion, I’m deceiving myself. My problem is that, convinced as I am that I don’t actually exist, the illusion persists, and I may as well acknowledge that I am mentally ill, profoundly insane, a brain in disorder, and speak honestly, how ever disconcerting that may be.
The self is the movement of fear. Or the ground upon which fear/desire depends.
It is the necessary center that allows for discrimination, and thus the actions based on discrimination.
I am the sense of being me, the center that must be satisfied
Sounds like the problem is semantic, we have different understandings of “choiceless awareness.” For me the heart of choiceless awareness is to observe whatever arises in consciousness without judgment. Does that work for you?
To engage in that kind of choiceless awareness I need to form the intention to do so. If not, I’ll choose what to observe and judge it 99.9% of the time.
The initial intention to be choicelessly aware is like opening the prison door, the choiceless awareness itself starts when I walk through the door. In Buddhist terms, the intention is like a raft which, once its purpose has been served, is no longer needed. That’s the theory at least!
Sounds judge-mental as well as condemnatory and arrived at through comparison with who?
Can we be simply present to the human condition without calling it names? With care and affection as one might with a child?
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Are you looking at your reaction? Are you offended, insulted, to think that your brain might not be operating optimally?
Is one calling the human condition “names” when calling it a brain disorder? Is “incoherent thought” a name you disapprove of? Is it judgmental, or is it just a confusion causing condition that we can’t come to terms with because we can’t acknowledge, much less ascertain, how confused we are?
Sounds judge-mental as well as condemnatory and arrived at through comparison with who?
Why do you assume that a comparison must be made to arrive at a sense of what the human condition is? Are we not all limited to belief/disbelief, no matter how well one can suspend judgment when one chooses to?
The only alternative to belief/disbelief is “I don’t know”, but who is comfortable with acknowledging how little one knows, if anything?
Maybe, thats part of what we’re looking at, because the words we use can be strongly tied to our relationship with the world.
The question is this : does the idea of deliberately trying to meditate (as in be choicelessly aware) in order to achieve some mysterious goal, make sense?
We are given the metaphor of noticing a snake in the grass at our feet and reacting to it. Do we need to make a choice to be aware of snakes at any time before, after or during this event?
The same goes for self - our relationship to the movement of self (pleasure seeking, discomfort avoidance, defence of beliefs etc) cannot be based on pretence (nb. for there to be any real transformation/liberation)
Obviously, if there is intent, the door is within the prison, rather than an exit from the prison.
M. le DougDoug,
I think we’re looking in the same direction but seeing different things. The direction: wakefulness to life, truth, what-is. I’m still not sure what you see when you look there, but what I see: Paying attention to life (as it arises in my mind) awakens me to it. As far as methodology goes, I’m all for a “way in,” a raft, as long as it works. The “first step is the last” non-method is a dead end for me, though I see that it might be perfect for someone else.
You seem to be saying that fear is the ground in which desire grows, but isn’t duality “the ground upon which fear/desire depends”?
It is the necessary center that allows for discrimination, and thus the actions based on discrimination.
It depends on what you mean by “discrimination”. Do you mean discriminating for or against certain things, or the ability to discern the actual difference between things?
What matters is what K meant by “choiceless awareness”, and it seems to me that he meant awareness wlthout the bias, prejudice, hope, desire, etc. that is the effect of conditioning; awareness of what actually is.
The intention to be choiceless does not free the conditioned brain from conditioned response. If all it takes for the conditioned brain to be free is the intention to be free, the conditioning would be too superficial to be a problem, and the brain’s condition would not be as serious as it actually is.
Whatever arises in my mind is my conditioned response. The only awakening is to this fact.
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Could ‘non-identification’ be added to the list of this dimension we’re calling ‘choiceless awareness’?
I wouldn’t use the term “non-identification” for the same reason K wouldn’t use the term “non-violence”. The brain either identifies or it does not; it is either violent or it is not.
If awareness is choiceless it’s because there is no chooser.
Self (as the sense of being the central entity) is a necessary reference point for fear/desire to have any meaning (same for up and down). Duality is the separation in 2 : fear and desire, up and down, me and you etc.
Both. Though the important bit is the for and against discrimination.
Okay, good, thanks for pointing this out. I was using ‘choiceless awareness’ as a synonym for mindfulness. That explains most of the confusion with MacDougDoug. You can practice mindfulness, there are paths that lead to it. There are no paths to K’s version of choiceless awareness, although I guess you could say absence of conditioning will ‘get you there?’
I’m just asking whether mindfulness, meditation or some special K awareness practise etc is a path arising from, and remaining within the confines of confusion and motive, or whether it is what we call the state of seeing confusion and motive at work, and in that seeing, the letting go of neediness (because the whole painful confusion of neediness has been seen) .
It is not that the fool must obtain what they want, or find the best practise to obtain what they want - the implications of being an unstoppable fool must be seen. (even if their foolishness is infinite, everchanging and neverending as rick tells us below)