Don’t we share the same, or similar, basic human consciousness?
Why don’t we seem to come to any shared understanding about anything?
Is it that the words we use are in competition? You give a primary word - such as attention, innocence, freedom, suffering, etc - one meaning, and I give it another, and we misunderstand each other because of this, or we refuse the authority of each other’s meaning.
But these differences and misunderstandings and resistances are all at the level of words.
K’s definition of religion “rings true” to me. Sorry to use this expression again, but I can’t express this any other way. It’s definitely something more than an intellectual reaction. Surely what K says is more than just a highly sane, extremely perceptive, eloquent definition. The words he uses suggest that K knows what he is talking about through direct experience. He must have seen all this with great clarity. I’ve certainly never heard anyone else come anywhere close to defining religion in this way before.
There’s more to it than just words, isn’t there.
I was reminded of the first Q&A session at Brockwood in 1985 where Krishnamurti began by asking us.
But let me repeat his question here:
"A lot of questions have been put. We can’t possibly answer all of them. These questions have been chosen, not by the speaker, by others. I haven’t seen them, and you haven’t seen them either. Probably some of you wrote those questions.
If I may most respectfully ask you, I am putting a question to you, why are you here? This is a serious question as you have put to the speaker several other questions. Why each one of us is here in this not too nice a weather, windy, and one hopes that you are comfortably seated, but why? Not that you are not seated comfortably but why are we all here? Is it out of curiosity, nothing better to do? I am asking these questions most respectfully, not in any sense of impudence. Are we here to be stimulated, to be challenged, to have more energy, or release energy, or merely intellectual flirtation - that is a good word! - or romantically, sentimentally, or some kind of help, wanting to be helped by another? If one put all these questions to oneself what would be our answer? You might just as well ask the speaker why he is talking. Is it a habit? Is it he feels happy facing an audience, fulfilling, and that he needs an audience? All these questions must not only be put to oneself but also to the speaker. And if we explore into that: why we are doing what we are doing, with all this trouble, travail and the anxiety and fear of all life. And if one doesn’t find an answer to why the speaker is going on the various continents talking for the last sixty, seventy years, is it a habit to him? He has tested it out, kept quiet for a year and more. And also at one time he talked behind a curtain (Laughter) to the audience and he felt rather silly (Laughter) and so he went before the audience. He has tested this out very carefully, whether he depends on another to fulfil, to be, to become, to feel famous, all that nonsense. Why in his return he is asking you, if he may respectfully, why we are all here. Is it old age because we have nothing else better to do? Is it that we really deeply want to understand ourselves. He is only acting as a mirror in which each one of us can see ourselves as we are, not be depressed or elated to discover what we are. Is that mirror clear, sharp, every feature of it is so - without any distortion. And if that mirror is clear and you see oneself exactly as one is then the mirror is not important. You can break the mirror without feeling any lack of luck! And if you can answer that question - it is rather serious - why we behave as we do, as each one of us does; why we think in a certain pattern; why we follow somebody - the crazier the better; why we store up all the things that one has said, that others have said; why there is nothing in ourselves that is ourselves. And to discover what we are, ourselves, that deep-rooted seed, not only the cultural seed, the traditional, the religious, all the outgrowth of all that but go very, very, very deeply in oneself to find out the origin of all things. Not the cells and all that, not the genes that one has inherited but much beyond all that."
So even our startposition is important for clear understanding
Yes. Krishnamurti’s re-definition of religion is quite refreshing and revelatory.
Obviously, religion in the ordinary sense means belief, faith, organised worship, rituals, buildings, special clothes, scriptures, moral codes, prescribed methodologies, etc.
So to reinterpret the word ‘religion’ as total attention, complete wholeness, is so elegant and simple, and yet also incredibly profound.
It implies that living in a state of attention is itself the meaning of religion.
As a former scholar of religion I also feel it sums up the meaning of Buddhism in a coherent and simple way. Buddha means ‘awake’, one who has woken up. Someone who is awake is in a state of attention, they are awake to life, to the moment, to the now. So to be in this state of religion, of total attention, is to be a Buddha.
But this is my own meaning that I give here. I can happily drop this meaning as it is based only on what I have thought in the past about Buddhism. To be in a state of attention is not to think in terms of Buddhism or any other ‘ism’.
Maybe this topic doesn’t interest many people here though? It is difficult to assess other people’s feelings about these things because not many people participate in these conversations. But for me this business of attention is at the heart of what it means to explore real religion (as opposed to all the superstitious stuff that passes for religion).
Maybe you can express, Wim, what it is that you want to say by sharing this extract? (not that there is anything wrong with sharing the extract).
I have read the extract. K is asking his audience why they are listening to him, how serious are they in participating, has it become a habit, or are they really interested in finding out for themselves the origin of all things, beyond one’s cultural conditioning, beyond even one’s genes.
Are you asking a general question to people about why we are here on Kinfonet? Are you asking a question about what is involved in clear communication with each other (I have just opened a separate thread on that because I feel it is important to look at), or are you wanting to say something about the topic of this thread (which is K’s meaning of religion as total attention)?
Why do you compare your awareness with ‘choiceless awareness’?
What you think choiceless awareness is may be something else entirely. I think it is.
So when you say
this is entirely sufficient.
Is there any choice about the fact that one’s awareness is not ‘pure’, that it is ‘adulterated’ with reactions?
Probably not, or else you would have chosen differently, right?
So your awareness, in which there is the interference of reactions, is the fact. There is no choice in the matter. If one compares the fact of one’s consciousness, one’s present awareness with its reactions, to some other state of attention (something ‘pure’), then this is only another reaction of thought, a theory, right? - it is a movement away from one’s factual state of awareness.
So it is one’s current, actual awareness that is important, not any ideal or projected state.
If one begins from facts, then one can move. But if one begins from theories, what should be, then one is stuck. If you see what I mean.
‘Gathering all your energy’ are also dangerous words because they also are used by for example IS as is executed by HAMAS and in reaction by Israel. They both claim there right doing in forehand.
So those words spoken by Krishnaji belonging in a certain context which is in harmony.
Since 1985 those questions remain active within me.
I don’t when and why the brain made these choices. I only know they are still in effect.
If one compares the fact of one’s consciousness, one’s present awareness with its reactions, to some other state of attention (something ‘pure’), then this is only another reaction of thought, a theory, right?
Pure awareness isn’t actual for this brain, so yes, it’s only an imagined notion, a theory.
Please Wim, we are surely not talking at that level are we? Is it the case that people who throw bombs and kill and rape and murder have
?
If one has troubled oneself to read the OP I think it is fairly clear that we are not talking about the kind of religion that has to do with beliefs, superstitions, killing other people in the name of God, in the name of a dogma, etc.
We are opening up an inquiry into what it means to be in a state of attention, to have a mind that is sensitively attentive. At least, this was my intention in looking at this question.
Probably one has not made any choices. This is just the way one has been conditioned - we are the result of the way our brains have been conditioned.
But we can be aware of our own conditioned awareness - which is our consciousness - in daily life, in our reactions to other people, or in paying attention in the present moment (to what we feel, think, perceive, etc).
This is the major thing. If we can be aware of ourselves as we are, then we need nothing else. Our own awareness will bring about what needs to be discovered, what needs to be seen.
The meaning given to the word ‘religion’ by Krishnamurti, once stripped of its conventional associations, has an unconventional meaning, but perhaps also its truest, deepest meaning: to be in a state of total attention.
Don’t you find this interesting?
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we then accept religion as it is understood conventionally. We do not accept belief, dogma, ritual, the throwing of bombs or killing people - what religions have done to human beings. Any person that murders and rapes others because of a belief is clearly not religious in Krishnamurti’s sense. The ‘God’ they believe in is just a projection of their thoughts: a cruel, empty God who reflects the cruelty and poverty of their own hearts and minds.
But aside from all the cruel butchers who take the name of God in order to justify their own egotism and insecurity, religion in a broader sense has also been at the heart of all civilisations. Greek religion built the Parthenon , Buddhist religion was the inspiration for Aśoka’s edicts and spread across the whole of Asia. So asking ourselves what is the essence of religion is a meaningful question to ask.
Clearly, there is a wrong way of answering this question. The wrong answer is the conventional answer. Conventional religion has led to wars, separation, sectarianism, violence.
But the unconventional religion of being completely attentive in one’s actions, in one’s perceptions, in one’s responses… This religion is worth inquiring into (imo).
I completely agree with this, but I find that my attention is divided. On one hand, a stream of consciousness is flowing constantly, and it isn’t logical or practical, but associative. That is, from moment to moment, one thought leads to the next for no obvious reason.
On the other hand is awareness of what’s happening outside of what’s going on inside. Consciousness is two movements. One is moving in the dark according to its own momentum, and the other is attending to what is transpiring outside.
Yes. One sees, hears, perceives the outer with one’s senses - the trees, people, objects in one’s immediate environment; yet one sees, hears, perceives all this through a screen of one’s own thoughts and images, one’s mental associations, etc (the inner).
It is this associative mental life - the movement of memory - that we are drawing attention to, because this is actively interfering in our perceptions of trees, people, objects, etc.
Right, and we are identified with the “movement of memory” as it asserts itself constantly. When I attend to this movement, I may agree with it or react to it because it operates on its own and I’m not always attending to it. Passively listening to it can be assuring, disturbing, or upsetting. I is more or less aware of itself depending on how interested I is in what I is doing.
Are we identified with the movement of memory? Or we are the movement of memory. So there is only the observation, passively, of this movement of memory.
Not agreeing with it, reacting to it, or feeling assurance, or getting disturbed by it: the agreement, reacting, assurance, disturbance, etc, are all part of the same movement of memory.
It is not a matter of the I being interested in itself. The I is memory, part of the movement of memory.
So can there be a passive watching of this movement, not taking sides, not debating with it? There is no debate to be had with the movement of memory. There can only be a negative awareness of it as it occurs, as it moves. Right?
This is why I feel none of this can happen unless we are able to look outwardly - at birds, trees, nature, people - without having an image about them in that looking. If we can look outwardly that way for 2 minutes at a bird or a cloud, then only we can look inwardly at the movement of memory with negative awareness.
, Buddhist religion was the inspiration for Aśoka’s edicts and spread across the whole of Asia. So asking ourselves what is the essence of religion is a meaningful question to ask.