Granted that is all we can do. For those of us engaged in this K inquiry though, the question is whether that is all that can be done.
Instead of the word ‘suffering’, the more appropriate word would be that the organism is in a state of ‘crisis’. Meaning, a situation from which no matter how well integrated the body-mind or physical-psychological apparatus is, there is no escape. The past with all it’s force of flow, with every help made possible by any or all segments of mind cannot allow the organism to proceed to future through the present, but yet, it survives. It opens up to an insight that the organism survives such crisis due to forces well beyond itself (considered as a body-mind complex including all of what we call as unconscious aspects of mind). This is speaking about crisis es which has the potential to change the direction of our life, allowing the necessary humility to realize the significance of surrender.
I suspect that is just tweaking the metaphor Mac. Take the example of another activity, a physical one, walking. I guess you can talk of walking “flowing freely.” Anything one does can be ‘in the flow’ in the zen sense. It would imply a natural movement, optimised in the sense of being free of encumbrance.
But walking can never really be a thing-in-itself in the way being described of intelligence and/or intellect. Walking cannot ‘wake up.’ Yet we say intelligence can. It makes intelligence more than just a facet, a movement, an activity. One creates an aura around it. That’s what I’m getting it.
Thanks for your input. It’s an interesting thing to look at.
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We can also learn from our successes. We can learn from just about anything, any experience. The question remains however, what do we learn? You can find the Holy Grail but you still have to ask, to whom does it serve?
OK…some confusion because I wasn’t clear. I should have said that it may be an ACTION of the intellect.
This is how I see it Paul, rightly or wrongly (RoW?) as distinct from intellect which is ‘conditioned ‘. Intelligence as I understand it, cannot be conditioned… thinking of it in the way discussed by Bohm and K as something that “reads between the lines of thought “. (Inter-legere?) A finer materiality’ than the thinking process? A potential in the 
quiver but is dormant hence the ‘awakening’ or possibility of it manifesting.
Oh, I see now. In that case, maybe ‘engagement’ of the intellect. I see intellect as the capacity to reason. But it is a somewhat arbitrary category. Mind does not seem to have internal borders as such. We are just taking a stab at something and hoping something true gets communicated.
p
We learn what we need to learn. In school we were told what we needed to learn, and so we crammed and regurgitated, and realized later it was not what we needed to learn. Retaining new information is not necessarily learning. Being able to recite Krishnamurti quotes from memory, for instance, is not learning…unless participating in this forum is something one needs to do.
If you don’t know what you need to learn, you’re lost. But if you know you’re lost, you’re beginning to learn.
Poetic but I feel, empty. It is remarkable to me how easily we romance the void. The fact is that we become adept at dancing around nothing and chanting, “See the flame.”
It is an easy game to say what a thing is not.
I never crammed at school. I was too busy day-dreaming and then I left at 16. Cows regurgitate. I am not a cow.
Regurgitated cleverness. I will say this: You are only lost when you think there is somewhere to be.
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“The very activity of the mind is a barrier to its own understanding. Have you never noticed that there is understanding only when the mind, as thought, is not functioning? Understanding comes with the ending of the thought process, in the interval between two thoughts .”
J. K. Commentaries on living, Series II - Chapter 7 - ‘Discipline’
Understanding as well as intelligence are in the moment. Thought is always the past. Thinking is a material process…Understanding, intelligence are not? They are present in the ‘interval’ between the two thoughts.
Can thought be aware not only of itself but aware of the space between each of its ‘arisings’?
The thinking process would be the conditioned mind interpreting, analysing, separating, categorising and judging with the goal of gaining control for security and progress. Its a narrow minded, single goal oriented, interpretation of sensory data.
Only when that process ends can there be space for anything else.
Thought cannot be aware of anything (especially not itself) - it can only come to conclusions about itself (via analysis and judgement based on its needs)
It names this “silence”, and that “thought” - and it assigns value judgements to both.
I agree that ‘thought being aware of itself ‘ sounds unlikely but when there is ‘awareness’ of one’s thoughts and if you admit that possibility , who or what is the ‘aware-er’? K posed the question of whether thought can be aware of itself…and also added that there was “no other factor “…it’s worth looking into without the conclusion that thought can’t be aware which may be the ‘thinker’s’ conclusion? (Itself posing as the aware-er?)
OK…there can be awareness of thought…the thinking process as it’s happening. Why can’t we leave it at that? Do we have to say what that awareness is? Give it a label? If it’s beyond and outside of thought, a label/thought will put a limit on that which is unlimited, no?
I am judgement, comparison, interpretation, conclusion, I am not awareness.
I am the desire for security and progress, I am the one that wants to be “aware”.
I want to obtain awareness. I cannot.
Don’t try to be aware. Don’t try to be aware of thoughts or the pause between thoughts. This is just the efforts of the self, separating, judging, with a view to control.
The pause between thoughts is a place where the self is not being strengthened. As such, it is essential. But we cannot, must not try to grasp it, nor hold on to it - by doing so we kill it.
My advice is to see that we are thought. The self is constantly in movement. And that this desire for security will never be met. If we can see that, maybe once a day just stop striving - see that we do not need to follow thought wherever it goes. And if the brain can calm down for a moment, maybe we can even notice the part of the brain that is still watching, categorising, interpreting. (And maybe even the watcher may let go for a while?)
Are you unaware of your thoughts as they occur? Are you incapable of observing your thoughts and following their progression?
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Well. That is open to question. K says that we are “nothing, not-a-thing” and thought/thinking is a ‘thing’, a material process…so are we both, nothing and something? But is what we are ‘in essence’, not matter, not a thing? We can’t know, can we but how we ‘think’ about what we are determines how we act…I’m thinking about greed, fear, anxiety, mental suffering, etc. If we have been conditioned to consider ourselves to be this or that, we act out of that conditioning…that it is true we can’t grasp what we are in essence, because we are it, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t question what we have been conditioned to believe we are, especially with what a horror the actions resulting from the conditioned,material view of what we are purported to be have been throughout our history.
This is your opinion, your conclusion. You’re uninterested in your thoughts because you’re uninterested in self-knowledge. You’ve made up your mind.
My advice is to see that we are thought.
We’re aware of our thoughts. We can question them and even be surprised by them. Our thoughts are spontaneous mental events we can acknowledge and appraise the accuracy or inaccuracy of.
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Apparently spontaneous, surely thay are predetermined?
Appraise as in compare to outside knowledge banks, or as in compare to internal standards? In either case, to what end?
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