We each have our own ‘personal brand’ of thinking…but it’s all just ‘thinking’.
Hello fraggle and all. As far as I understand, much of what K pointed out needs to be discovered for oneself rather than understood intellectually. This discovery might be something which we find difficult and complicated.
K seemed to have found a way of continually discovering from moment to moment and this “newness” came across when he was speaking. We can intellectually see the truth in “the observer is the observed” but it is up to each of us to discover the truth of this statement. K seemed to point to discovering this absence of separation in observing a cloud, a tree or the face of a person. Attention, awareness and sensitivity seemed to be essential factors in this choiceless awareness in observation that he spoke about.
This is what I understand. How do the rest of you see this?
Yes - I’ve just read a bit more about Bohm’s proprioception of thought - and it includes this idea that it seems to us that our reactions are due to whats going on “out there” - but that all our thoughts about what’s going on out there are actually being created and happening in here which is terrible propriowhotsit - when my hand moves I know its my hand, not someone else’s
Yes Sean, we’re asking what provokes choiceless awareness, why we might discover for ourselves that reaction to our own discrimination is not the highest form of intelligence
Or maybe we’re asking what it is about ourselves that resists freedom of intelligence or choiceless awareness
He’s saying why not the same for the movement of thought? Something to do with ‘intention’. When my hand moves, it’s to scratch something or grab something or to make a point…but thought moves often without any awareness that it’s doing so, on its own.
K. asked “Can the rhythm of thought come to an end?” Why did he use the word ‘rhythm’?
I am aware that my hand moving is the movement of my hand.
When I see “that bastard walking down the street”, I’m not aware that that thought is me thinking - it feels to me that “that bastard walking down the street” is happening out there.
Somebody IS walking down the street ‘out there’, it’s the “bastard” image that’s in your head? So ‘freedom’ implies that the bastard image will not be present when you see that person walking down the street?
I’m willing to bet 500 bitcoins that all of what you are thinking is happening in the same place
I suggest we don’t start a discussion on “what is truth” because I will have to keep silent.
PS. and all I have is 500 bitcoin (and only because they won’t let me exchange it for cash)
so ‘freedom’ implies that the bastard image will not be dragged into the present and applied to that person seen in the street?
Freedom from the ‘known’?
Freedom implies not mistaking experience for truth - thus experience is no longer the supreme authority
Freedom from the known
nb. damn! I’ve used the word truth - but I think I’m allowed to do that
Does freedom imply not forming images and storing them in the brain. Not ‘recording’? Some knowledge is necessary but the ‘bastard’ variety is questionable?
Or is it about being aware of the image forming machinery and its dangers?
I prefer this one
nb. don’t vote for the bastard (or the A-hole)
Is the impediment to freedom, one’s reluctance to ever give up one’s precious ‘freedom’ to decide who or who isn’t a ‘bastard’?
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Oh no, we are talking about the natural responsibility that arises in one after having seen what it means for oneself and others to continue with my usual pattern. A responsibility that makes me want to discover more and more the self that is my-self and its influence on my relationship to everything around me.
It may be or may be not, it all depends on how serious and attentive I am at the moment of listening to someone talking not about others, but about my-self.
This would be the main obstacle for most of us to move beyond an initial perception of ‘what I am’, to think that someone else will free me from my pain without seeing that it is only my responsibility to free my-self from pain and its causes. But again it will all depend on how serious and attentive I am in listening to my-self through the words of another.
Are you aware that you can only say this about yourself?
I hear others ‘thoughts’, their ‘brand’ of thinking. Same syntax: subject, verb, predicate…I know that their hearts are beating maybe slower or faster than this one but more or less the same. Same with nutrition, digestion, excretion etc. We are aware of our excretions but not so much with our thinking. It’s more or less a constant unconscious drip,drip…
This ‘system’ desires ‘freedom’ from everything ‘bad’. It doesn’t understand that it IS a system. There is no freedom for a system. it is a system of reflex actions. It is a product of the past. When the knee is tapped the leg jumps. There is no control over that. It believes that it exists as an entity, an individual entity but that is questionable. It says “I suffer, therefore I am” but as someone suggested, “emotion is a misplaced sensation”.
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Hi @Sean
True, but the first step is intellectual understanding, as this is the only tool we have when we first listen to someone talking not about others, but about ourselves, in a way that is so provocative to our thought.
Yes, because we have never looked at the actual cause of our dissatisfaction, but now we are there listening to someone who is somehow making us look deeply into that dissatisfaction which is ourselves. And although we may have been able to have a contact with ourselves (maybe for the first time) if we have been attentive to ourselves through the words of the other, it seems difficult for us to maintain that occasional insight we may have had during the listening, once we are no longer there. Yet, we have planted the seed of curiosity, which will be watered the moment attention arises again.
And as far as ‘finding it complicated’ is concerned, I have always felt that it is merely the refusal of thought to move with what the insight is seeing.
Let me ask… Have you ever been in conversation with someone, and when after a few minutes the other person, for whatever reason, asks you to repeat something you said before, your response is ‘I’m sorry but I don’t know what I said before’?
I think we are in agreement.
The rules of engagement include :
- an ability to listen, care, pay attention - (this seems to be nearly impossible for most of us - but an intellectual understanding of “freedom from the self” or “expectation” would appear to be helpful)
- A strong sense of responsibilty for the movement of self aka revulsion to harm (unfortunately this cannot be manufactured by theory alone)
nb. sorry if I put words in people’s mouths that they did not mean to say
Are you telling Krishnamurti, “I hear your ‘thoughts,’ your ‘brand’ of thinking. [You are repeating what Buddha said.] Same syntax: subject, verb, predicate"?. If not, what makes us think we can say it about someone else?
It’s whether or not the thought words touch me…maybe what’s behind the words that resonate with me? An insight into all this, that through the thought words points in a new, perhaps surprising direction like “you don’t exist” or you’re not your thinking, thinking is a movement; you are the silence before the movement, you are the world, etc .
If all our psychological suffering is illusory…and needless, we need to understand how it all works and maybe end it.