I think that’s (a big) part of the story, but not all of it. Along with being conditioned, every arising has genuine newness that is unconditioned. You can’t see/think/feel the same thing twice.
Are you asking without bias, with the freedom to see whatever comes up? You’re in a unique position, engaged with both Krishnamurti (anti-path/practice) and Zen (pro-path/practice). Do you ever find it difficult to balance what amount (kinda) to polar opposite approaches?
Nope - I’ve never been made aware of pro-path practise in zen (apart from when they use it as an example of confusion)
Actually I came to the tradition through Chan (Huineng, Huangpo) - it is only recently via american youtube zen teachers talking about Dogen, that I’ve seen that zen is also in agreement with “no-path” “zazen is good for nothing” “no goal in zazen” etc
Feels like it. In fact I’m hoping that dialogue miight uncover some crazy belief of my own.
What arises is not always new. In fact, more often it is what’s old, the known. When it seems new, it’s a variation, a modification of what’s old. If it was new, it couldn’t be acknowledged by a brain conditioned to operate only within the limits of the known.
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If fear/desire has no meaning without self, why isn’t it the same for all other opposites? Isn’t “self” the personification of duality, this or that, belief or disbelief?
Good!
Do mindfulness, meditation, and awareness practices keep us confused and motive-driven, or enable us to observe and let go of the neediness caused by confusion and motive?
Depends on the practitioner and the practice. Sounds like a cop-out, but I think it’s true.
I’d say the practices I do keep me in the game, reinforce my story of “personal spiritual evolution.” To stay with the prison metaphor, they help me learn about my prison cell and the prison overall: how it works, what it looks like, how to navigate it, how to maximize its pleasures and minimize or lessen its pains. What they haven’t done (yet) is usher me to the front door and let/push me out.
Et toi?
I think I’ve probably fallen in love with the prison, a love-hate kind of love. It’s a wild and wooly place, full of drama, high emotions, intensity, oddness, juicy suffering. (I grew up Catholic.) It’s unsurprising that a person in love with their prison will be reluctant to leave it. Especially since there’s no guarantee that life on the other side of the prison wall will be a life worth living.
Right. “Guarantee” doesn’t apply. Isn’t there a Christian saying: “many are called, few are chosen”?
Yes, Christian Murphy, the first salesman to use the telephone to ply his trade.
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Well Rick, So you seem to be saying that it depends on the practitioner, and that you are not that practitioner (thats going to let go of neediness, melodrama, and pillage on the high seas).
I’d agree, freedom from confusion and neediness, is dependant on the practitioner, but not so much the practise.
The practise is just the tool that neediness is hoping will fulfill its needs.
It is something to do with the attitude of the practitioner (attitude due to causes and conditions) that allows them to to see, accept and take responsibilty for harm.
If I had to say something positive about the practise (of allowing for awareness) : if we are able to allow for moments of awareness of our experience to arise, and those moments of awakening to experience free us from that experience, that is being in silence, is freedom from the known - there is necessarily nothing more to strive for in that space.
You’d say that about your meditation practice, the practice of your teacher, of Buddha? You don’t see anything but wishful thinking motivating practice?
The meditator’s attitude plays a huge role, agreed.
What do you mean by “freeing us from experience?”
Freedom from the known is essential, it is not a means to an end.
I am never sitting down with the intention of gain, but rather in a space where motive has no power.
I never had a teacher that told me to meditate in order to achieve anything, In fact no teacher even told me to meditate. This is probably why I’ve never had the experience of formal meditation leading to some magical experience.
Buddha tried following some nonsense, realised it was nonsense, before honestly and hopelessly facing all the nonsense until the nonsense gave up. (read the stories again if you need to)
My experience of reality seems so solid and real that I am automatically drawn along by it, instant by instant, thought experience by thought experience, reaction by reaction, microsecond by microsecond.
Where is my reality taking place?
Being free from experience doesn’t mean not experiencing, rather not mistaking experience for reality? Are you saying our experiences/qualia are not real?
We keep going over this same question.
If I take an acid tab and see a leprechaun, are you asking whether the leprechaun really exists outside of my imagination, or whether I’m really having the experience that I’m having?
Experience is changed by awareness, things that exist in one reality, suddenly dissapear in awareness. The person I am in that moment for example, which also means what that person is experiencing (the things out there and what they mean to me)
I am trying to understand what you mean when you say experience only seems real. So it doesn’t really matter what ‘real’ means to me, but to you. Are experiences/qualia real in your view? How?
Are you suggesting the change in experience awareness produces is freedom from experience?
I see things differently: Every arising in consciousness is both conditioned and new/unique. I’m tempted to say it’s fundamentally different from Krishnamurti’s view, but maybe it’s not? Maybe Krishnamurti would have agreed that every arising has newness/uniqueness, but that the newness/uniqueness can only be fully seen-experienced by the unconditioned mind?
Depends what we mean by real, I’m happy to go with whatever definition we agree on.
I reckon the LSD leprechaun is not real in the sense that it does not exist outside of my imagination, but that my experience is real in that it is happening, I really feel that I am seeing a leprechaun.
In the example given, its a sign or symptom of freedom from experience. The fact that that reality vanished, rather than continued to be solid and real, indicates that it lost its power over the experiencer.
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Is the self a kind of autoimmune disorder? An overzealous and misguided protector that’s trying to prevent its host organism (you) from being exposed to harmful things, but ends up preventing it from being exposed to beneficial things?
What beneficial things? Satisfaction?
Here’s an extract from the Hsin Hsin Ming :
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for, or against, anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.
Equanimity, passion, love, kindness, strength.
But we un-illuminati all have preferences pretty much all the time. Judging things we perceive to be good/pleasurable, neutral, bad/painful is a reflex. It might slow down or stop in deep meditation and deep sleep. But when you step out of those states, it rushes back in.