I am not sure there are any principles in the teachings. The fact is we react; that’s our daily life. We react to our partners, our family, our friends, our colleagues, to the politicians and celebrities we see on the TV, as well as to all the things going on around us in the world. So our reactions are the principles we actually live by because they are how we first meet the world.
Macdougdoug,
Krishnamurti also says that there are no ‘yes’, ‘no’ answers to the problems of living. I cannot say whether this is 100% so, but certainly a lot of what we say is right or wrong according to the situation. I understand that ‘the observer is the observed’ may mean that we relate to others and the world around us according to our ‘conditioning’, that is, according to our prejudices and psychological images, etc. But compassion is also understood to happen when ‘the observer is the observed’. But I’m quite sure that when we act according to what is right to do, it is ‘this light in oneself’ that is prevalent. What role the self has in it, I guess it can’t simply be measured, also because everybody speaks of the self and how to know it and whether it can be silent and things like that, but nobody knows the real nature of the self.
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PaulDimmock,
Can I remind you that the title of the thread is ‘on radical change’? I mean, it doesn’t matter what you used to do and be like in the past, we have read Krishnamurti and are familiar with expressions like ‘the art of living’. Krishnamurti says that 'art’the way he uses it is to put things in the right place. ‘To act’ is different from ‘to react’. If you can act instead of reacting you are putting things in the right place.
Jess - I like what you say as it seems open ended - but I think that what some people here think of as a favourable union between the observer and the observed is actually the reifying of two things that are not separate nor really existant in their own right. The self that observes is more of a process or a feeling, and its interpretation of reality more like a concept than a thing.
K put it thusly : The observer is merely the accumulation of its observations.
or thus : When I observe my sorrow, fear, pain etc. it seems that we are separate (one observing the other) But in fact I am that fear, sorrow etc.
So : Being separate thus there is conflict (eg.I must not be fear etc)
And finally: when we give our complete attention, there is no observer, only the situation.
But surely the first action is to observe what we are actually doing, which is to observe our reactions, habits and beliefs, rather than try to form new habits and beliefs.
PaulDimmock,
If one has taken the first step, one is no longer negligent, one doesn’t get back into adopting new habits and beliefs just to substitute eventual previous ones. One is attentive so that one is acting, not reacting.
Macdougdoug,
Yes, I also see that there is only the situation… but what is the situation? As I see it, it is the observer alone in the sense that it is ‘all one’, undivided, that is what attention does. That is why Krishnamurti speaks of being absolutely honest and taking responsibility, no escape.
So what is the first step? We seem to be seeing two different steps.
The “we give” gives the impression that this ‘attention’ is something that ‘we’ control. As was posted earlier, K called it the “miracle of attention”. He’s using the word to describe something radically different than what is usually thought of as ‘attention’…more like love, intelligence, compassion? Once when asked to sum up his 'teaching ’ in one word, he said “Attention”.
PaulDimmock,
Of course, reading Krishnamurti, one is familiar with the expressions ‘first step’ and ‘last step’, no two different steps. And ‘first step’ has to do with one’s own life, Krishnamurti would often remind people: ‘it’s your life’. Only you can know about your ‘first step’ which is what I mentioned. ‘Radical change’ implies a first step.
Yes - attention without effort, without the central entity with its predetermined goal.
Then it’s pointless to discuss all this, if we are just going to go off on our own little path. There is nothing radical about that.
Radical- Middle English, of a root , from Late Latin rādīcālis, having roots , from Latin rādīx, rādīc-, root (freedictionary.com)
To be standing freely, soundly, effortlessly, sharing, in the world with no allegiance, no agenda, no expectations, and no conflict .
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That would indeed be a radical change. Of course the words have little meaning unless we do it…make the change. And K has always said that there’s no method…no ‘how’. So we are left empty handed. Maybe that’s a good way to start…empty of knowledge of what to do…of ideas and ideals about what to do or where to go. Maybe we need to begin with what we are actually doing…observing that…observing effort and expectation and ideals and goals.
Given the observer is wiped, is not the observed also wiped, and if so, then what is the anger?
Anger is the energy that gathers from living as a divided fragment. It is the energy of the fragment; and therefore it is the essence of the observer who is separate from the rest of existence and who has tried to place himself at its centre. The observer is anger; it is not that anger is merely an attribute of a casual observer. The root of anger is fear, which is also the root of the observer.
This is not quite clear to me. Anger is still a label at this point is it not? and a distinction made as energy which is anger, set against energy which is not.
If there is said to be an accumulation of energy, separate from all other energy, then would not the dissolution of that as a separate accumulation see the wiping of anger, and not just the observer? Or are you saying there is something to anger beyond any observer having it as an observed?
If its looked at as a ‘disturbance’, a stone dropped into a quiet pond, the resultant ripples radiate out and diminish. If nothing is done to change or interfere with that process, it ends, But if there is a reaction to the disturbance as in trying to resist it, suppress it, quell it, change it, that actually intensifies it and prolongs it.
Anger is not something that can be observed directly. It is only after the event that we call it anger, which means we are observing it from a distance in time. When the observer comes in with the label, the label may have different associations: from ‘I should not be angry’ at one end to ‘My anger was totally justified’ at the other end. What is anger without the label? What is fear without the label? It is a psychological energy, a flame that temporarily destroys the observer. But the observer doesn’t remain destroyed. He comes back in and takes control.
What we are doing now is simply watching what happens: first, the energy of anger; then, the escape from that energy via the usual channels of language and thought. We are not yet positing any other form of energy.
Notwithstanding the fact that energy is a label too, are you saying there is a burst of energy, which in the split second it occurs has neither observer, nor observed to it, and in that moment it is death, before the observer as the observed is resurrected?