Staying with the metaphor, the ‘born mind’ arises early in life and starts developing attachments, identities, neuroses, and other manifestations of conditioning. Yet no matter how strong and dominant the born mind gets, the unborn mind is always there, hidden perhaps but present.
This is a belief. Why doesn’t the brain empty itself of it?
Well we all (here) know that the brain loves its beliefs, depends on them, even worships them. Without them the brain feels lost, frightened, unhappy. Even the lucid brain (equivalent of lucid dreamer) is full of beliefs, though if truly lucid its attachment to its beliefs is relatively mild.
Familiar pattern for me (you too?)
- You run into a new teaching.
- You understand, grok the teaching quickly, and it resonates strongly.
- You start questioning the teaching, taking it apart, looking for flaws/falsehoods, seeing if it is refutable, negatable.
- Days, months, years, decades, lifetimes(?) later you realize the teaching holds up for you, is true. The bloody war is over, you have surrendered to the teaching, you are now convinced of its truth. And, ironically: Your understanding of the teaching is almost exactly the understanding you first had all that time before when you first encountered it.
The brain that resides in a skeptic’s skull seems to need to do its best to break every assertion it runs into. Should it succeed, the assertion gets tossed in the trash. Should it fail (after a long period trying), the assertion gets accepted and integrated.
All stories fail, if it doesn’t the skeptic has failed. No story can exactly mirror what is.
From my perspective, adopting the right story was never my main goal.
Teachings were always a finger pointing, some resonated with my conditioning, others failed by sheer dishonesty/confusion.
What ultimately gelled was the revulsion towards harm. Identification with stories was part of that harm.
Jaaaaaaaaa! (Happy surprise when we agree. 
)
All our lovely stories fail as exact mirrorings/models of what-is. But they succeed as stories, and stories are powerful and beautiful (sometimes) expressions of our thinking-feeling abilities.
The only perfect story is the one that frees us from all stories, like an arrow piercing a ripe fruit.
Causes and conditions are key : a fruit that is perfectly ripe, the right arrow for that particular fruit, perfect timing, immpeccable aim, and no sudden gusts of wind.
Zen and the art of literary archery?
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How is an arrow piercing a ripe fruit like “the perfect story”, “the one that frees us from all stories”?
If there is a story that frees us from all stories, what is it? If you don’t know, how do you know there is such a story? It you’re sick of stories, ignore them, dismiss them, and don’t tell stories about crazy archers who hate ripe fruit.
There isn’t a story that fits all mind states and situations - the point was about context.
Pertinent advice (or a shock to the psyche) at the right time is the only story that might help the penny drop.
A bit like how in your model of possible future liberation : some collection of bits of knowledge about ourselves might be perfectly helpful in provoking transformation in some particular yet to be determined situation?
Actually, I added the context bit to your model - I think your model implies its the knowledge itself that transforms, the accumulation of self understanding itself provokes the collapse of self.
Could we say that in your model its all about the story? Once the story of self is sufficiently well constructed, that in itself is the tipping point?
I don’t know if terms like “model” and “story” help. If one is curious about how a clock works, one observes the movement of its parts in action, and may even take the clock apart to get a closer look at each part. Eventually, after this examination and observation, one understands the mechanism, and that’s the end of it.
But something significant has taken place because a clock is no longer a mystery to the one curious enough to find out how a clock works. The brain has learned something and is not the same brain it was.
Call this inquiry what you will, but it is not about “possible future liberation”. It’s about liberation from ignorance now as complete attention is on the mechanism.
Everything we think (imagine, intuit, analyze) and express (say, write, capture) is a story: indirect symbol- and image-driven re-presentation of ‘the real thing.’ Some stories are closer to the truth, others farther from. (Is ‘the truth’ a story? Stories all the way up, all the way down? Oh nooooo!)
Why get hung up on “story”. McDoug likes to use “model”, and a model isn’t a story, though you seem to be saying it is.
Why would I, would we, do we get hung up on any way of saying something? Pleasure, comfort, familiarity. The sense of an anchor and stability. A feeling of rightness. ‘Story’ for me tells the whole story and generally seems to communicate quite well.
Krishnamurti’s writings and talks are less like teachings and more like invitations to explore the self and the world, individually and together. That might explain why many of the things he wrote and said are suggestive, rather than prescriptive, and open to subjective interpretation.
Seeing as we’re talking about words I use : a model is a kind of story, usually a story (description) about how a system works.
There are those who would say that K’s “suggestions” are not “open to subjective interpretation”, and that to assume they are is to miss the point of what K was pointing to.
Like “the house is burning”?
That wasn’t a “suggestion”. That was a metaphor K used to describe the human condition.
I know from having spent time in several Krishnamurti forums. Each view/opinion adds to the mix. There are things that reveal themselves more vividly from each vantage point.