As I said, I am not defending my lack of patience with you. It was wrong of me to speak to you so abruptly. I’m sorry for losing my patience and expressing myself unfairly. (We are all pseudo philosophers on Kinfonet anyhow, myself included - so it was a silly remark to make, and I apologise for writing it).
We all have our limits, and it seems I reached mine. But hey, now I’ve got something else to look at!
Let’s say that I see my limitation, Is that not intelligence that sees the limitation of thought ? The me comes afterwards, doesn’t it? Tell me if I am wrong.
I’m sorry you feel that way because I appreciate what you have to say and I feel I’m breaking new ground and upending old ground in this forum.
Maybe it is enough to just admit to being annoyed and frustrated by the dead-ends we always run into on Kinfonet.
Annoyance and frustration is inevitable, it seems to me, and because nothing is expected of me here, I can just ignore those who annoy and frustrate or I can let them know how I feel. But more is expected of you, it seems, so it might be best to just let someone know what they are apparently unaware of what they’re doing. That way, you won’t be wasting energy.
Annoyance and frustration is inevitable - I agree. What we are enquiring into is subtle, difficult to perceive and act upon, and so there are bound to be difficulties in sharing and communicating ourselves.
But just to be clear, I am not claiming to be different to anyone else on the forum. I may have a slightly different language or interest than other people here, but that’s a minor detail. I certainly don’t have any superior awareness or virtuousness than other people. I am in the same trap of conditioning, limitation, ordinary consciousness as you or another is. I get impatient, irritable, frustrated, just like everyone else. I’m not trying to justify being frustrated or annoyed, but I’m just saying something factual.
I would like to be ‘beyond’ irritation, anger, but I still get irritated and angry - often for the most petty reasons. So please don’t have an image of me that is higher or lower than anyone else here. We are all in the same boat - and my boat often has big holes in it.
Perhaps what is happening is that we are reaching the limits of what we can resolve by merely talking with each other, discussing, using thought. Not because you or I are at fault in a personal sense, but because we are using thought to communicate, and thought is always limited.
Thought is always incomplete, no matter what it does, and so we are constantly bumping up against the limits of our capacity to communicate, share, comprehend each other through our thinking.
This is why I feel awareness, observation, is important to explore, be open to, look at.
I feel that it is only by paying attention in daily life, looking, listening, being aware of my reactions and thoughts, that there is a possibility of finding out whether there can be a perception without thought.
This is the thing that really interests me - not having arguments about it, etc, but finding out whether or not the mind, my mind, is capable of putting aside thought completely to just look, perceive completely.
On the other thread DeNiro pointed to a discussion with Anderson in which Krishnamurti says that religion - the real meaning of religion - is to gather all one’s energy (mental, emotional, physical) to have total attention, because it is only in that state that we can have a perception of the whole.
It’s probably the case that in my passion or interest or focus or greed to discover, discuss, explore this quality of attention, I get frustrated when others do not share this question, or when others create what I perceive to be intellectual blocks to such a perception - which reveals that such a perception has become a mental goal for me, which creates conflict because it is opposed by other people’s mental goals.
All this is part of it, as far as I can see.
If I’m aware that my energy is not gathered for total attention but divided and distracted, I might be able to gather it together. But divided, distracted attention seems normal to me and I just live with it. The idea of gathering it all together for total attention doesn’t occur to me because that would be abandoning the way I have divided and apportioned my energy for different things. I’m not totally invested in total attention.
Krishnamurti said that freedom begins with the perception that freedom is essential. So I’m free enough to know what freedom is, but not free enough to be totally free, unlimited, empty, silent, choicelessly aware, etc. If I think of freedom as flowering, opening, awakening, an effortless natural process, I am resistance to this process. Why? Because I want to remain with the devil I know rather than surrender to what I don’t know about freedom?
I am free to realize my energy is divided between what I’m afraid of losing and what I need to lose.
Why are we in resistance to being totally attentive? As you say, it means abandoning the known - the known being the habitual canalising of our attention, the dimming of our own light, because we have found security there. We have become accustomed to being limited, partial, broken up. And so when someone asks whether there can be a gathering of total energy, we already have our roots, our anchor, in the fragmented way of living.
Freedom means the freedom to perceive our own limitations, to see how limited we are. And we resist this. We don’t want to perceive our incapacity for perception, we don’t want to be confronted with our limited, fragmentary response to everything that happens in life. Because we have found security in this fragmentary response.
So what we are resisting is the feeling of being insecure.
Total attention may be freedom, love, beauty. But we don’t know that state of freedom. So we cling to what we know, which is our limitation, our fragmentary attention, partial attention.
So what can we do?
We can become aware of our resistance. We can question ourselves whether there really is security in this resistance, in this partial way of paying attention. We can take the risk of observing ourselves as we are, and not as we would like ourselves to be. And to remain with that observation and see what happens.
This is as far as I understand all this.
Hey James, I stumbled on KINFONET and love this discussion and all things Krishnamurti. I am a psychologist who has always been drawn to the subject of consciousness. Krishnamurti is a most wonderful bridge between logic and a deep sense of life for me. was reflecting: In my most conscious moments of awareness, there is no past or future (narration/need for memory), and thought appears and disappears. Without attachment to that moment to moment phenomenon, I don’t experience an accumulated self. So self knowledge is just a full awareness of this moments experience of a self that have converged from countless variations, thoughts, impulses, external stimuli perhaps? And perhaps with stillness the unconscious can emerge to become conscious from moment to moment?
Hi Kym, thank you for your post.
Yes. This sounds similar to what I feel about self-knowledge without accumulation. Krishnamurti often talked about learning without accumulating what has been learnt, which is the same thing expressed in different words. So to learn (in Krishnamurti’s sense of learning) means to be aware, or pay attention, in the present moment, and observe without judgement what is happening - both inside and outside. This in-the-moment-learning does not require analysing our experience, but just observing experience as it happens.
In the process of such observation (without judgement) the mind is then free to throw up its conscious and unconscious contents:
So if we can remain alert throughout the day, these contents have a chance to show themselves. This is part of what it means to observe ourselves in daily life.