**This depends on what this word ‘mind’ is pointing to. If it’s pointing to what most people call “my mind,” then no, that ‘mind’ is just the ‘content of consciousness’, which is just ‘thought content’, not awareness. If it’s pointing to the ‘mind’ as awareness or intelligence, then yes, it is aware of what is.
The mind is the cognitive faculty… what K called, “thought”. Where else can “likes” be formed?
Like and dislike is a function of self - I is want/don’t want. (Good/bad, desire/aversion etc - maybe even fast/slow, up/down? - but this may be clouding the water a bit)
A bit, because it isn’t clear what we mean by “self”. On the one hand, my self is an illusion, a figment of my imagination. But on the other hand, when I speak of “a function of the self”, I’m not using the word to denote an illusion but a functioning thing.
We can avoid “clouding of the water” by not referring to what we do for the sake of our imagined self, as the self doing it. We can call “self” a process, but I try not to because the process is the way thought malfunctions for the sake of the self-image.
Think of the self as your God and how your devotion to it is demonstrated every moment of your waking consciousness. Don’t think of it as something that can do something. You are the “doer” in the name of the almighty self.
It is a functioning illusion? A very powerful functoning illusion?
What do you mean? Obviously it is doing/responsible for lots of things. Are you meaning this as in it cannot escape from itself ?
The self is an image. An image can do nothing but serve as your authority to behave in a certain way, to be your (imagined) self. A “functioning illusion” is one you can’t see for what it is. Your failure to see it is its authority. It stands because you don’t put it to the test.
To put it another way, you’re pulling the wool over your own eyes so that you can behave the way you think you should.
The obvious question must be : who/what is this “you” that the self is deceiving?
When you say: “you” and the “self”, are we referring to 2 different concepts?
If we consider the K statement that we are “nothing”, that “you are nothing” …There are just layers of the ‘self’. Okay… Yet there is this undeniable feeling that ‘I am’. Here, now, writing this, thinking, etc. The permanent, continuous ‘I’ is an illusion but the ‘feeling’ of I being here is not. There is what we call ‘awareness’. It is in all living things but to different degrees. Is it that the different forms of life, given their composition reflect this quality of awareness depending on their complexity? The human brain different than the ant’s, the plant’s, the tree’s? But all living forms only differ in degree. There is no ‘division’. This ‘awareness’ which is ‘nothing’ (not-a-thing) is what all things are…not the manifest material ‘thing’ but awareness ‘itself’?
I know that’s not very well put but thought I’d give it a shot since it’s always at the back of ‘my’ mind.
PS If this is the ‘true’ state of affairs…then what is really interesting is that my feeling that ‘I am’ and your feeling that ‘you are’ is the same, from the same source: awareness. And that would include all living things…to quote the cliche’, ‘we are all one’!
“You” is thought, the mind and its activity on behalf of its image of itself. So yes, two different concepts that are often conflated, creating a muddle.
The mind, thought, under the authority of its self-image and supportive beliefs, responds and behaves conditionally, not freely.
You are thought, the mind that measures, analyses, decides, etc. The true identity of this function is impossible to define because it’s confused, conflicted, and incoherent. It’s only authority and guidance is its image of itself, which is aspirational rather than accurate. When it makes Krishnamurti its authority, it compounds its conflict and confusion.
No, that is the functioning of the brain. Thinking / thought is not what ‘I am’. Thinking is a movement in the brain. The self-image is not what ‘I am’. The ‘contents of consciousness’ is not what ‘I am’. That is all just accumulation. The physical organism is not what ‘I am’. …Awareness is what ‘I am’, no? And awareness is eternal, no?
How could it be otherwise?
I only see one concept described here. Unless self is the image the self (or you) has of itself.
If you are awareness and not the brain that imagines you and pretends to be you, why do the thoughts and concerns of “I” dominate that awareness? If you were naked awareness, there would be no “you” to speak of, and your behavior would be your identity, but you’re aware of your thoughts and even post them online, so why identify with awareness instead of the intention and ambition that you’re aware of?
As I’ve said, repeatedly, the self is an image created by the mind. It can’t do anything. It has no power in and of itself, but if you worship it, live and die for it (as we all do), you invest it with power.
It’s self-deception, but we don’t see it because we are self-deceiving.
Conditioning. Yes? And no “if”s; ‘I am’ awareness. As you are! (But without all the Kimo and Dan business of course)
Beware of over-confidence. Certainty is for those who can’t tolerate uncertainty or ambiguity,
Inquiry
Beware of over-confidence. Certainty is for those who can’t tolerate uncertainty or ambiguity,
I would say Kimo, that that is normally good advice. But here there has to be an amount of certainty or there will never be a ‘breaking through’. There has to be a certainty that the “house is on fire” as K has put it, or the postponing will continue until physical death. No one can make one certain that there must be this breaking through, or that there is an appropriate or safe ‘time’ to do it, or that there is a right way of ‘doing it’. There is no guarantee or knowing what will happen. It is after all, unknown. Thought it seems will always find a way to put it off and the brain unfortunately has found security in its ignorance of what it actually is.
Knowing the house is on fire and being convinced of it are two very different things. Conviction drives people to do all sorts of things, mostly awful. Our worst behavior is driven by beliefs we don’t question or are not even aware of.
In his poem, “The Second Coming”, Yeats wrote:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Poetry
Be grateful not for the friend’s kindness but for his tyranny, so the arrogant beauty in you can become a lover who weeps.
Rumi