Just to be clear, this was my answer to Inquiry to give the context for K’s quote: Change is the denial of change “”
Yes, but moving away is what we are, so telling ourselves and each other to stop moving away is just a modified version of moving away. We’re creating the illusion of progress when we pretend to know what to do, or pretend to know what must happen for us to quit pretending.
I am not aware of any way to delete posts. So you are confusing me with another.
Yes, I think this is the key. To be vulnerable to whatever is happening, inwardly and outwardly. This way, we do not exclude the world of others, the world ‘outside’ - the violence and confusion and pain, as well as the beauty and courage of the world; and we do not suppress what we are, what we feel, what is at work in our psyche, in the background of our awareness (including what is presently not completely conscious).
As you say, it is like walking on a tightrope. Every second is a death and rebirth.
But I appreciate K’s practicality when he says (I am paraphrasing - the full quote is somewhere on the thread above):
“Don’t try to be aware all the time - that’s just absurd! Just be aware for a minute, for a second. That’s enough. Don’t be greedy for more.”
Two minutes of actual reality is worth all the philosophy in the world!
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That was on a different forum. You may recall we started with the definition of the word “passion” and how it may apply to various words like com+passion, Im+passion, etc. But again, the interaction isn’t important, but perhaps any lesson learnt, is. Slowing down may may create the necessary circumstances…wherein one can work towards building some integrity. Then you won’t have to borrow someone else’s words and play word games (to whom it may concern, ya know who ya are), or would feel the need to make straw dolls.
Well, it is if you make it into a goal to be achieved. But it is not a goal, is it? You said it yourself:
So if you are aware enough to write this, then you are also more than capable of sitting with that awareness for two seconds, a minute even, maybe even two minutes! - That’s already the whole ball game in my view.
You are going to move away from it anyway, because - as you yourself said - that is who and what ‘you’ are. But why make a problem of it?
And the point is that while ‘you’ may move away from what is, what is never moves away from you - so you can always come back to the fact that here ‘you’ are again, wondering away as usual…
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I agree. But since I’m the problem, is it my problem to solve, thereby vindicating and redeeming I? Or is the only problem the need for a problem?
Again you are confusing me with somebody else. I never discussed anything like that.
Dear James, absolutely that is absurd if someone tries to be aware all the time. It is only this moment that we can be aware. Even talking about a minute or second does not make sense to me. Because that brings the future in too. Be aware this moment, that is where our organism acts and lives. There is no other moment. And I agree “Being in touch with that acutal reality is worth all the philosophy in the world.” It is life and we are that and includes everything.
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What you may mean for “practical” and what it’s usually meant are or can be two different things. Your explanation shows your good will at pointing out that K teaching is something “useful” and efficient doing. I think we all, or almost all, share this point of view otherwise we would not be interested in K at this level. (And if we are not then I really don’t understand the reason we are here.)
But 99% of so called spiritual people approach the complex issue of freeing oneself through a practical method, that is: follow cercains intrunctions, steps, and you’ll get the desidered results. This is the usual meaning of the word practical in the context of “spiritual advancement”. And you just started your post stating:
“One of the complaints that people often make about Krishnamurti’s teachings is that they are too abstract, too intellectual, too impractical.”
So to me that was the central point of your post and my reply addressed that point.
Not at all! I think to be a very practical person in daily life, and like most of us I love when something is practical to do, and I’d love if K’s teaching were so practical like the traditional Indian approach to samadhi, for instance. But as I understand things the central issue of K’s teachings is not “no authority” or “seeing” but awareness. “No authority” is just one of the many prerequisites for real awareness to take place. And awareness is not practical in many senses: you cannot practice awareness, you cannot put it into practice (at will) and you cannot even be sure if and when you are really aware. All those statements comes from my personal experience. So the purpose of my previous reply was to point out that “practical” is something which belongs to a certain field, realm, while awareness and most of K’s teachings belong to a completely different realm. And let me add that my statement does not come from an intellectual speculation but from having banged my head against that wall far too many times.
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I don’t know. According to the dictionary, the ordinary meaning of the word “practical” is to be
of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.
I think this is good enough, isn’t it?
Perhaps because - unlike yourself - I am not what is ordinarily called a “practical” person (as in, a carpenter, an engineer, a builder, a nurse, a farmer, someone good at tinkering with technology, or someone clever with money, etc) the word “practical” has no stink for me.
I am well aware that for the majority of so-called “spiritual” seekers,
the word “practical” means following a method, a system of “practice”; but I have made it clear previously, and made clear in the OP, that this is not the meaning I have in mind.
So, with these negations out of the way, to repeat myself again, the word “practical” simply means efficient or effective doing (or action).
So, for instance, to live forever at the level of theory, of ideas, is inefficient, ineffective action. It goes nowhere to live like that, and so we say that such a way of acting is a waste of energy.
It might also be said that arguing forever (on Kinfonet) over mutual misunderstandings and personal prejudices about words is a waste of energy! Probably it is. But if it has any merit, then it perhaps the one of helping to clarify for ourselves what it is we think and mean by our words.
So, for instance, when you say that
First of all, I think it was again made clear in the OP that the word “seeing” - along with that of “no authority” - was used knowing full well that it is a summative word, i.e. a word that distills down a great many other related words and meanings.
So “seeing” - if you read through the extracts from K that I shared in relation to it - includes awareness. For instance, in his 1983 journal (To Himself), Krishnamurti describes the whole process - beginning with watching and seeing, then awareness and attention, to insight - as one unitary movement. Meaning that all of it - seeing, listening, awareness, attention, insight - is an interrelated whole:
We never watch for long. When we watch with great patience, watch without any sense of the watcher, watch those birds, those droplets on the quivering leaves, the bees and the flowers and the long trail of ants, then time ceases, time has a stop. One doesn’t take time to watch or have the patience to watch. One learns a great deal through watching—watching people, the way they walk, their talk, their gestures. You can see through their vanity or their negligence of their own bodies.…
Or when you listen, listen without any interpretation, without any reaction, listen without any bias. Listen to that thunder in the skies, the thunder rolling among the hills. One never listens completely, there is always interruption.
Watching and listening are a great art—watching and listening without any reaction, without any sense of the listener or the see-er. By watching and listening we learn infinitely more than from any book. Books are necessary, but watching and listening sharpen your senses.
For, after all, the brain is the centre of all the reactions, thoughts and remembrances. But if your senses are not highly awakened you cannot really watch and listen and learn, not only how to act but about learning, which is the very soil in which the seed of goodness can grow.
When there is this simple, clear watching and listening, then there is an awareness — awareness of the colour of those flowers, red, yellow, white, of the spring leaves, the stems, so tender, so delicate, awareness of the heavens, the earth and those people who are passing by….
It does not mean that they are to be self-centred in their watching, in their awareness, but just be aware.
When you are aware there is a choice of what to do, what not to do, like and dislike, your biases, your fears, your anxieties, the joys which you have remembered, the pleasures that you have pursued; in all this there is choice, and we think that choice gives us freedom. We like that freedom to choose; we think freedom is necessary to choose—or, rather, that choice gives us a sense of freedom—but there is no choice when you see things very, very clearly. And that leads us to an awareness without choice — to be aware without any like or dislike.
When there is this really simple, honest, choiceless awareness it leads to another factor, which is attention. The word itself means to stretch out, to grasp, to hold on, but that is still the activity of the brain, it is in the brain. Watching, awareness, attention, are within the area of the brain, and the brain is limited—conditioned by all the ways of past generations, the impressions, the traditions and all the folly and the goodness of man. So all action from this attention is still limited, and that which is limited must inevitably bring disorder.
When one is thinking about oneself from morning until night—one’s own worries, one’s own desires, demands and fulfillments—this self-centredness, being very, very limited, must cause friction in its relationship with another, who is also limited; there must be friction, there must be strain and disturbances of many kinds, the perpetual violence of human beings.
When one is attentive to all this, choicelessly aware, then out of that comes insight. Insight is not an act of remembrance, the continuation of memory. Insight is like a flash of light. You see with absolute clarity, all the complications, the consequences, the intricacies. Then this very insight is action, complete. In that there are no regrets, no looking back, no sense of being weighed down, no discrimination. This is pure, clear insight—perception without any shadow of doubt…
That insight is outside the brain, if one can so put it. It is not of time. It is not of remembrance or of knowledge, and so that insight and its action changes the very brain cells. That insight is complete and from that completeness there can be logical, sane, rational, action. This whole movement from watching, listening, to the thunder of insight, is one movement; it is not coming to it step by step. It is like a swift arrow.
Obviously K’s language sometimes changed from year to year, from decade to decade, and the specific meanings he gave to words could change - so, for example, in the above extract attention is something “inside the brain”; whereas in other talks and discussions he has said that attention is “outside the brain”, that “attention is love”, etc. But it is the gist of what he says that matters, not so much the details. And so this requires reading between the lines to make sense of it.
In the same way, no authority and seeing (as words used to distill other associated meanings) require reading between the lines, because no authority also means - to me at least - the absolute choicelessness of what is. By which I mean the absolute fact that this present moment, whatever it may be, is what it is, no matter what my personal wishes or opinions about it may be. So, in relation to what is, my own wishes and opinions have no authority. It also means that any conclusions I may have - at the level of theory - about who and what I am (based on my reading of K, Buddhism, Advaita, etc), also have no authority.
So all such evaluations, conclusions, theoretical ideas, etc, are inefficient, ineffective - impractical (meaning a waste of energy) - if you see what I mean. So I wouldn’t say that no authority is just “one of the many prerequisites for real awareness”, as you put it; I would say that - apart from not having acute brain damage or being a zombie - it is the only prerequisite for awareness.
Which brings me onto the last thing. You say that
Is this a fact? To put it in different words, you are saying that awareness is a form of inefficient or ineffective doing (or action). Is this so?
Or is awareness, in fact, the most effective kind of action that is possible for the human brain? After all, we are sentient animals first, and only secondarily are we thinking machines.
So isn’t the issue rather that we have been educated, conditioned to seek efficiency through our thinking - through technology, through bureaucracy, through making money, etc - which makes us unaware of how primary and simple awareness actually is?
K’s teaching boils down to saying that thought is wastefully inefficient; so see this fact, and be aware, attentive; see.
A good carpenter, when he finds that his instrument is useless, throws it away and tries to find a new instrument. But we don’t. (Mind Without Measure)
No?
When a carpenter realises - or sees - that the tool he is using is no longer efficient, effective, practical, he discards it. In this case, the new (effective, efficient) tool is the seeing itself (as awareness, attention, etc).
But, unfortunately, it seems to me that you - like so many others on Kinfonet - have made this seeing, this awareness, into some kind of Lochness monster:
Does it though? What is practical about being unaware? What is practical about being insensitive, dull, inattentive?
As K says,
Awareness isn’t something mysterious that you must practice; it isn’t something that can be learned only from the speaker, or from some bearded gentleman or other… Just to be aware… that you are sitting there and I am sitting here; that I am talking to you and you are listening to me; to be aware of this hall, its shape, its lighting, its acoustics; to observe the various colours that people wear, their attitudes, their effort to listen, their scratching, yawning, boredom…
And
There is no end in view but awareness of everything as it arises… Awareness begins with outward things, being aware, being in contact with objects, with nature.
And
Awareness demands constant pliability, alertness. This is not difficult. It is what you actually do when you are interested in something, when you are interested in watching your child, your wife, your plants, the trees, the birds. You observe without condemnation, without identification; therefore, in that observation there is complete communion… This actually takes place when you are deeply, profoundly interested in something.
And
I am aware of that lamp, I do not have to choose when I am aware of it. (Tradition and Revolution)
And
We cannot maintain total awareness all the time. How can we? To be aware from moment to moment is enough. If one is totally aware for a minute or two and then relaxes, and in that relaxation spontaneously observes the operations of one’s own mind, one will discover much more in that spontaneity than in the effort to watch continuously. You can observe yourself effortlessly, easily—when you are walking, talking, reading—at every moment.
And
Don’t be aware all the time! Just be aware in little bits. Please, there is no being aware all the time—that is a dreadful idea! … Just be aware for one minute, for one second.
So why have we made “awareness” into this behemoth of impossibility? Why have we created such a dense screen of oughts and oughtn’ts about it, so that it has become the convention in K circles for simple sensual (and inwardly felt) seeing or awareness to be rejected, ignored, disvalued, overlooked?
Perhaps it was for this, or similar reasons, that K went out of his way in the last years - particularly in his conversations with Pupul Jayakar - to rehabilitate the centrality of the senses.
So, just to see, hear, taste, touch and smell, have their own value, their own quality. Any so-called attention or awareness that eschews the senses is no attention at all. And what is more efficient and effective - from an evolutionary point of view - than the senses?
So seeing is just whatever is happening right now, as far as our senses and our sensitivity (or non-sensual awareness) are able to perceive. And interest in seeing is all that is required, as far as I can make out.
The act of seeing is the only truth; there is nothing else. If I know how to see a tree, or a bird, or a lovely face, or the smile of a child - there it is, I don’t have to do anything more. (The Awakening of Intelligence)
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So what prevents this simple seeing from taking place in us?
Apart from the obvious things - like wrong education, habitual insensitivity, a strong predeliction to be either intellectual or emotional, etc - it is essentially the images and concepts we form about things, isn’t it? As K says (in the same talk from The Awakening of Intelligence),
To us the word, the concept is extraordinarily important, not the acts of seeing and doing. But having the concept, which is a belief, an idea - having this - conceptual living, prevents us from actually seeing, doing.
So the concept of what is meant by the word “practical”, for instance, interferes with the actual immediacy of effective action. [It is interesting, just as an academic aside, that Goethe objected to the creation reference at the beginning of John’s Gospel, where it says “In the beginning was the Word”. Goethe changed it to “In the beginning was the Act”]
And not only concepts, but images (which are the same thing, only a little more concrete and immediate) prevent seeing:
That seeing of the bird, of the leaf, listening to the noise of birds, becomes almost impossible because of the image that one has built, not only about nature but also about others. And these images actually prevent us from seeing and feeling; feeling being entirely different from sentimentality and emotion.
Isn’t this something we see all the time on Kinfonet?
A forms an image of B because of something B has said, and this prejudices A in his/her relationship towards B.
Now all of this is incredibly practical, is it not? If I have a strong image or concept about what another person is saying, then this will inevitably colour my relationship with them: I will unconsciously or consciously approach them through the image or concept I have made about them (or about what they have said) in my mind; and this will impede, interfere with, relationship.
So, psychologically speaking, images and concepts may not be practical (efficient, effective forms of doing) at all. Right?
Now the point is that we are all of us doing this all the time: making images of each other, making a concept of something another has said, making the word more important than the thing to which it refers. So, two things occur to me"
- Can we be aware of this fact that we have images of each other in relationship, or concepts about x, y, z, and the effect that these images and concepts have on our relationships or on our understanding?
And
- Is the distinction between our perception of another and the images we make of another always clear for us? (The short answer is obviously “no”, but there is something to be explored in this absence of a clear distinction).
On a practical level, I find it very difficult to distinguish between my perception of another person, and the image I have unconsciously formed of another person.
This is especially the case on Kinfonet where all we have to go by is words words words! - which means that one is always having to read between the lines to feel out or sense the real person acting behind the words.
Sometimes people reveal themselves very simply: either because they are so very crude and petty, or because they are transparent and vulnerable. But usually people keep the major part of themselves hidden behind a cloak of different ideas, explanations, arguments, expressed values, etc - so it is very difficult to get a clear sense of who or what they truly are.
The same of course applies away from our online presence here, in “real life”. It is difficult to truly perceive another. We have all grown up concealing ourselves to one degree or another, and so we don’t reveal ourselves to others (or even to ourselves) easily. And this makes for all kinds of misunderstandings, confusion, unnecessary conflict. Anyone who has paid much attention to their relationships will know this.
But in addition to this is the fact that we find it difficult to discern, distinguish between an actual holistic perception of another person, and the image we have unconsciously formed about them.
Because sometimes our image of them conveys something quite factual - at least in part - about who or what they are. So, for instance, we say that X is a very emotional person, or that Y is quite intellectual. These are images of course, but they are also in part based on actual perceptions our brains have had of these persons.
So I think this question about perception and image - i.e. how to distinguish them from one another - is a valid (and quite practical) question.
What do others think? (if anyone is reading this)
What have I done when I decided to post my reply!! Surely I didn’t expected all the discussion it followed, and surely it wasn’t my intention to initiate another debate or discussion. I thought my argument was simple to grasp, beside being expressed simply. I think simplicity is one of the important thing in life and I was glad K shared this view of mine. But simplicity often is not grasped at first sight because we are used to swim in an ocean of words and complex reasonings. So K was often misunderstood. It seems I have the same destiny! 
(
So I will not answer or discuss each argumentation you have made, first because it is not necessary and second because I’m not at home and the wi-fi I’m using is very weak and off most of the time.
It’s not necessary because I agree with almost everything you say about awareness. I have expressed more than once here similar statements. Yet the picture you give is not complete, is not everything which is implied in “awareness without the observer” (to which I referred - sorry - in my previoust reply) which is all we need to do to free ourselves from our conditionings. Awareness is a normal, usual, feature of human life and actually of all life, and in different degrees we all are aware at moments, for what concerns the awareness we need to live in a decent way (or practical way), as you describe in the case of a carpenter, etc. But when one deals with thoughts, emotions, reactions, things get complicated and not so smooth, and that is in spite of everything K said about awareness!!!
Perhaps we have made awareness (without the observer) into a Lochness monster, (good methaphor: everybody talks about it but nobody actually saw it), but you are supporting (as it appears to me) K’s statements only on behalf of his authority. If that it not the case then you should not quote K and explain why you consider awareness (without the observer) “practical” or effective, only on the base of your personal experience.
The definition you quoted of “practical” is limited, it’s not all. Words often have more than one meaning and practical is one of those. In short what you meant to say is that awareness is feasible and all you wrote had the goal to demonstrate (according to K) that it’s not impossible to do. But I’ve NEVER said that it’s impossible, and I what I wrote in my previous reply accounts for that. The root meaning of the word “practical” come from practice. If I refer to a practical job like the carperter then the sense in which you use “practical” is perfectly fit, but in the psychological field or in the religious one, practice means also something you can repeat mechanically and you can’t ingnore that because that is the field we are dealing with here.
I objected the usage of the word “practical” referred to awareness (without the observer) because as I have explained it is not and cannot be a practice. This is very simple and I’m really surprised you don’t see this simple point.
I consider awareness feasible on the basis of my personal experience but I feel I can’t call it practical just because K or someone else considered it that way.
I have no intention to continue this debate or to demonstrate anything. If you still think my statements are wrong after considering attentively what I have said (and not what I have not said), it’s OK. This will not hurt either me or you and in any case truth can take care of itself.
We may have an image of a person based on past interaction. But if we look at the person freshly with without letting the image interfere in our perception we will have a direct perception of him currently.
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Ok, but you have commented on the thread, so this is the natural place to discuss differences in the way we see things, or the way that we use words. You don’t want to discuss it anymore, that’s okay. You are sticking to your view about the word “practical”, and I am sticking to mine, that’s all.
To repeat what was said right at the begging of the thread, the word “practical” derives from the Greek praktikos - meaning “fit for action, fit for business; business-like; active, effective, vigorous;” - which itself derives from the word praktos, meaning “done; to be done.”
So what I take from this is that what is practical has to do with fitness (like art, for instance), or effective action, effective “doing.” So if something is impractical then it doesn’t lead to effective “doing” (it only leads to ineffective “doing”!).
I don’t know why this has to be such a controversial thing. For me the word “practice” - though clearly related - has a slightly different meaning based on its use. As you say, it has come to mean
But, if I may point out, this meaning has come with specific usage; a usage I do not equate with the simple word “practical” (for all the reasons that have already been given). Apparently you prefer the word
which simply means “capable of being done, accomplished or carried out” (from from Latin facere “to make, do, perform”). So there is no essential difference between “feasible” and “practical” as far as I can make out.
However, putting all this aside, the fact of the matter is that we probably do not disagree much on substance. As you say,
and
And obviously I agree with you that
But I don’t know why one would make this into a reason to say that awareness (of this kind) is any different to awareness elsewhere. It is the same awareness, isn’t it? Awareness of the bird outside is not intrinsically different to the awareness of being sad or hurt, is it? At least, I don’t see it as being fundamentally any different. I think this is simple enough.
Btw, I was quoting from K because you were saying (or implying) that I had misappropriated or misunderstood K, that’s all.
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Let’s say the same thing about the present moment. If I have formed an image knowingly or not that ‘freedom’ isn’t in this present moment but lies somewhere else ‘up ahead’, if I can let go of that idea, there can be a direct perception of ‘what is’.
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I completely agree. We have to distinguish the two, perception and image. Image is a result of thinking, in fact it is thinking, based on past memories that are stored up. Perception is not a function of thinking. In our physical organism it has a strong connection to our senses but perception cannot be reduced to them. It is an awareness of what is in the moment, whereas the image is just the past althought it too exists in the moment. The image has a content which is always of the past. Perception is just perception of what is. There is not content created. Content only comes in when we name that what we percieve, which again is thinking. To distinguish the two is important because if we do not percieve the image as what it is, we create a conflict between the image and what is.
But why make it so convoluted when ‘what is’ is right here.