So whatever I want for myself and how ever determined I am to get it, I am no more than what I think I am in a world I can only imagine, and to live in denial of this ignorance and self-deception is madness when I can be aware every moment of my thoughts, impulses, emotions, behavior, and at least be in contact with what I can’t deny is actually happening.
Just to be clear, we are not talking about being aware
(of one’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, etc). Just to be aware for a few seconds or minutes is enough. Why be greedy for more?
And when you say
isn’t this a judgement of oneself, an evaluation? I am what I am (in this moment), no matter what I think about it, however much I may judge. Awareness does not condemn.
I have shared this extract before, but I think it is very relevant to what we are discussing here:
To read this book, which is yourself, one must have the art of listening to what the book is saying.
To do that means not to interpret what the book is saying, just to observe it as you would observe a cloud.
You cannot do anything about the cloud, nor a palm leaf swaying in the wind, nor the beauty of a sunset. You cannot alter it, you cannot argue with it, you cannot change it. It is so.
So one must have the art of listening to what the book is saying. The book is you, so you cannot tell the book what it should reveal. It will reveal everything.
(Talk 2, Columbo, 1980)
What do you think @crina , @Sean ? Does this passage ring true for you?
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This is the second time you’ve implied I’m greedy.
I’m beginning to think I’m greedy…
Oh no! I thought we debunked the ring of truth.
Greedy to have the last word in every thread?
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Inquiry is referring to something that was being discussed on the ‘Beyond intellectual understanding’ thread. The ‘ring of truth’ is an expression that means sensing the truth of a statement. If it helps, I can share a summary I made of it there:
@Sean is talking really about a kind of perception with the mind, with awareness, that captures - for a moment - the truth of a statement.
This momentary perception of truth depends (as I understand it) on the degree to which one’s mind - in the very moment of listening - is attentive, sensitive, self-aware, emotionally intelligent.
I wasn’t aware of it being debunked. We were saying that it depends on a combination of factors, which include the degree to which one is attentive, self-aware, sensitive to inner and outer facts, etc.
But this is not relevant to the present topic, which is:
The reference I made to greed had to do with the fact that we are often neglectful of such modest moments of awareness, and think we ought to be in a constant state of awareness. We have an ideal of what it means to be aware, and we compare this ideal with ourselves, and so discount our own modest but actual moments of observation. This is what I was calling “greed”. I could have called it impatience. We seem to be neglectful of observing ourselves, and dress this neglect up in complicated reasoning. That’s all.
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Perhaps if we look at the Core of the Teachings text, and extract the relevant passages? I have highlighted in bold the sentences I feel are particularly relevant to this self-knowledge thread:
[Mankind] has to find [truth] through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection…
Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.
So I take it that ‘freedom at the beginning’ does not mean to be in a state of bliss, love, freedom from the contents of consciousness, freedom from envy, jealousy, suffering, etc. Freedom means the freedom to observe, to look, to discover the “lack of freedom”. To observe ourselves without choice. To observe - without any particular motive for doing so - our reactions, our habits, our thoughts and feelings in relationship.
To observe - not just get lost in intellectual superficialities and secondary issues all the time.
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And even that can observed !!!
While reading yesterday, one sentence in A wholly different way of living hit me by surprice.
" Freedom implies not the negation of the known but the understanding of the known and that understanding brings about an intelligence which is the very essence of freedom. "
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Not sure who the “we” are here. Debunking tends to be a subjective business that may ring true to only certain people.
It certainly rings true to me. That means that I feel K is saying something deeply sane here. I feel that it makes a lot of sense. I find it very communicative.
So why is it that this seems to be regarded with suspicion by the good folk of Kinfonet?
There are many aspects to K’s teachings, what he talked about over the years. But if I could distil the essence of his teachings down to one or two words it would be:
observe, look, listen, see, be aware, pay attention.
And yet how many of us here give attention to this, give significance to this? We seem to be trapped in an endless loop of intellectual doubts and worries, intellectual problems; or else caught up in a subtle form of religious adherence to certain things that K has said, which has become a new kind of conditioning.
We do anything on earth except observe, look, listen, see, be aware, pay attention.
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I accept this Wim. But by ‘understanding’ - as has been discussed elsewhere - Krishnamurti means understanding through attention, observation (and insight). Not through intellectual or verbal understanding - which is what some of us may be limiting ourselves to on Kinfonet.
Could we put it that observation is born of the perception that observation is essential?
Isn’t it redundant if I say: for heaven’s sake don’t accept it but understand it !
Is it not unnecessary to explain what has been explained or meant by understanding for this on the forum or even by K. If it’s understood?
For me, it is still surprising that after 50 years of listening, watching and studying the teaching, suddenly a particular sentence seems to reveal an even much deeper meaning.
In reading over some of the comments people have been posting for years (I’m not referring to your comments here) I find it surprising that there is still so much resistance, avoidance, negligence with regards to simple observation, self-awareness, self-knowing.
It seems to me that there has been a complete overemphasis on problematic issues concerning conditioning, thought, the ‘self’, etc, and an almost total lack of interest in direct seeing, direct awareness, basic daily observation.
What animates discussions here is almost always wholly irrelevant secondary issues, and it has become acceptable to casually shrug off anything Krishnamurti has said about awareness and self-knowing.
People looking in at Kinfonet from the outside would simply assume that people who are interested in Krishnamurti have no interest in actually being aware. But, as an insider to the conversations taking place here, it seems clear to me that only a minority of people posting are actually interested in understanding what Krishnamurti said. The majority are either cynical, superficial, or promoting theories of their own. And so discussions go nowhere.
This has been my experience.
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Can I summarize the part of the conversation (and what it might imply) that seems interesting to me - and then anyone can tell me if it is actually what we are saying.
Q: Is it possible to be aware of what we are feeling and/or thinking? (at least momentarily, and pretty much at the same time we are thinking/feeling it, or close enough)
A : Yes (everyone seems to agree on this)
Q : So what? Why is this significant?
A: Because, if we are familiar with the problem of suffering and self (due to past experience, and to the teachings of K and Buddha for example) awareness of experience is freedom from experience.
Is this what we are saying?
This may be what Dan is saying. It is not what is being said elsewhere in the thread.
We are saying that it is only possible to know oneself through being aware of oneself, observing oneself, in daily life, in relationship. And that this awareness, this observation, this seeing or looking or listening is what is essential - not our theories about it.
Q: Why do we think its essential to observe ourselves? To know ourselves better?
A: Because of our past experience with suffering, and because of the teachings of K et al(?)
Why be aware of ourselves? Because otherwise we are living on autopilot.