Saturday Kinfonet Question: Can Perception Empty the Mind?
Beginning with this dialogue, topics will be presented in the form of a question; a question which Krishnmurti may have answered in the quote, but which we have the opportunity of exploring anew. Maybe we’ll see the same thing K did, maybe we’ll see something else.
This week we’ll be looking at whether it possible for perception to result in an emptying of the conscious mind. To be clear, we’re be talking about perception without the perceiver.
Looking forward to exploring this topic together,
John
Krishnamurti on Perception:
When there is only the organism without the self, perception, both visual and non-visual, can never be distorted. There is only seeing ‘what is’ and that very perception goes beyond ‘what is.’ The emptying of the mind is not an activity of thought or an intellectual process. The continuous seeing of ‘what is’ without any kind of distortion naturally empties the mind of all thought and yet that very mind can use thought when it is necessary. Thought is mechanical and meditation is not. - The Beginnings of Learning, 250
The very perceiving is the act of emptying. (from A Mind Free of the “me”, conversation with Eugene Shallert #1. San Diego, USA, February 17, 1972.)
Krishnamurti used various phrases to point to something indescribable from different angles. But, he always reminded us that we can only find out for ourselves. Words won’t take us there, they do not map the passage…
When we are completely at a loss, when no concept is sufficient, this it seems to me, is the only space where insight might have space to arise.
But usually we are so averse to not knowing, especially when the stakes are high, that we grasp greedily at the first idea that crops up, to pull ourselves ashore.
It comes up in dialogue a lot that words are inadequate at conveying something tangible much less intangible. However, words spoken within a context and with an openness to receive what’s coming in have sometimes triggered a sense for the presence of that space. Yesterday someone said something about trying to “remember myself”. So I did the same thing, looking to remember, and nothing was there but the space that was left. People have reported different ways of this happening such as looking into the embers of a fire, waiting for an answer (after someone asks a question), waves coming in at the beach, listening with a sense of care… maybe we’re talking about something in between the words, I don’t know…
Reminds me also of when people in dialogue say stuff like : Are we whatever, right now? or something that provokes a looking back at myself, what I am feeling, thinking - and the looking is all that there is to see.
Why are we pointing at these moments, these feelings? Are they what we see as an important moment in dialogue?
An important moment in yesterday’s dialogue for me was seeing direct perception as full-body perception, with all it’s sensory abilities (including attention), in connection with “what is” (everthing). Yes, hard to put into words.
Bringing it up at the beginning is the suggestion of dialogue as meditation, as a watching of what comes up in the thinking mind, right now, waiting in receptiveness to see what I, as if another person, will say or do next. And then sometimes there’s that state DeN is reporting. Is it possible to live that way? all the time? Can the question make that possibility actual?
Since you’re saying it to me, it’s a part of memory now, but to be reportable it probably happened. There’s no reason to trust, I just do, there’s no reason to doubt, I just don’t…
“The continuous seeing of ‘what is’ without any kind of distortion naturally empties the mind of all thought and yet that very mind can use thought when it is necessary.”
What I understand from the above lines is that. “Emptying the mind” is not the same as “Empty Mind”
For me emptying the mind means that all the inessential past knowledge which we have accumulated must be emptied and only the most essential knowledge must be retained.
When we continuously do so our mind would not be much loaded and we can perceive ‘what is’ with less distraction of past knowledge and thoughts.
Just like how the body works with the food we eat …
…this I felt during the Saturday group discussion.
Do mean emptied as in let go of as they arise and dissapear, or are you suggesting something else? like some sort of action upon subconscious stuff, not just the current contents of our consciousness?
Just in case this has something to do with what I said about looking - I didn’t mean to describe something fantastic or mystical - it was meant to be the description of something totally mundane - all I see when asked to turn the light of awareness back on myself, is that I notice myself looking is all (of course if I was suffering from something like a broken leg, I’d probably notice pain)
“When there is only the organism without the self, perception, both visual and non-visual, can never be distorted.”
These were the first lines from the quote which was for the discussion on Saturday.
Emptying the mind, as I understand, is unlearning of the not so essential past knowledge(self), which may distort our perception of ‘what is’ and at the same time retaining the essential knowledge which is needed for the survival of the organism.
Doug I just meant “you” in the general sense. I should have said when “anyone” reports… Sometimes when someone is in that state of seeing and saying it, the seeing mind of this entity is opened into the same space the way they’re saying it…
Does emptying mean unlearning? unconditioning? forgetting? setting aside? noticing? I don’t know for sure. When I see a conditioned reaction as the conditioned ming operating in real time, I don’t think I forget it. But the next time a similar circumstance that caused the reaction occurs it seems to be milder, sometimes just a twinge.
and there were other reports of seeing something new during the dialogue. To me these are the precious moments. Are these moments a new kind of communicating? a state of relating that isn’t about the self-protective conditioning calling the shots, but allowing another state of perception to do the acting?
“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything , it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities , but in the expert’s mind there are few.” - Shunryu Suzuki.
