Why “moments”? If you’re aware of your impulses, feelings, and thoughts as they arise and pass, you’re aware of your conditioned response as it occurs.
We talk a lot about the conditioned mind, but if we’re not always mindful of what it is doing, how it is reacting, we’re not interested in self-knowledge.
Krishnamurti is said to have said “Nobody got it” near the end of his life so that’s why I used the word “getting”. I understand “getting” to mean “understanding” which is indeed similar to “seeing” but not exactly the same. I also used the word “presumably” in the following sentemce:
" Presumably, if we really “got” what K was saying we wouldn’t do any of the above."
From that, you seem to have concluded that I have a belief. I would say that my use of “presumably” was to introduce an element of doubt which could lead to an interesting discussion. However, you equated that to me not seeing as far as I can see.
Howard, do your beliefs block you from seeing? Is this something you have observed in yourself? Or do you arrive on this forum with a mind which is clear and unpolluted by thought? Do you have an image of me as a blocked person full of beliefs? Or is your mind free of such images?
Personally, I am not watchful enough to always be aware of thought as it arises. Are you saying that you are?
**But I was asking about what ‘you’ see, not what did K say. “Getting” appears to be an intellectual understanding, and seeing appears to be a different kind of understanding, a direct observation.
**Isn’t a presumption a belief?
An interesting discussion? Possibly so, but that’s generally an intellectual endeavor using the already ‘known’ isn’t it? Is the mind occupied with thought open to insight?
**“Howard” doesn’t have any beliefs. ‘Howard’ is merely a label, or ‘thought identity’ that only exists in thought. It’s a useful label to distinguish one human from another. But words aren’t the thing. Beliefs, opinions, assumptions, etc., etc. are just thought imagery. They never reveal what is occurring now. It’s just limited past abstractions.
I sincerely have no interest in forming an image of “Sean.” The interest is to observe together the ‘commonly shared’ conditioning. The patterns of thought humanity is conditioned with. The conditioning “isn’t personal.” It’s the conditioning that falsely says, “It’s about a me or you.” But me and you is thought imagery, that’s commonly confused for what is. Where is a ‘me’ or ‘you’ without thought-imagery? We don’t generally notice that this ‘you’ is just an image, not the human being.
K: This centre, the me. My house, my family, my wife, my children, my bank account, what my impulse is, I want to do this, I am impelled to go to India to find truth, and so on so on so on.
Would we agree on that verbal description of what we call the self? Not only the
verbal description, but the feeling, the me and you. We, and they.
The me and the you.- Brockwood Aug.1979
**This ‘me’ and ‘you’ is the core of the self-image, ego-thought-structure. This imagery is available for observation in relationship, and available for an observation of the limited nature of this divisive imagery.
**For anyone here who has recorded this commonly shared idea as part of what “I know,” who don’t have Mark Lee’s first book, here’s what those present felt about this comment:
“Several times Krishnamurti met with groups made up of a few trustees, who stood at the foot of his bed. There were publications and organizational issues to talk about. Some of the meetings were tape-recorded by Scott Forbes. At one of those gatherings, Krishnamurti said: No one has understood the teachings…" The seven of us present there conferred later and agreed he was talking about us rather than the whole of humankind in a regretful dismissal of his life’s work. He had made this pronouncement before, but obviously he could not have known whether or not among the millions who read or heard the Teachings there was even one person who understood them.”
I’m not saying it, but it’s implied.
If you’re interested in your conditioning you’ll be watching it.
Awareness of the delusion does not stop the delusion? Can we be aware of our delusion and continue being deluded ? Maybe you are conflating judgement/interpretation/fascination with understanding/seeing?
As I have asked many times before : who is the you that is watching you?
As I have answered many times, the mind is watching its own reactions and responses. It’s a mechanical process. There’s nobody there. The mind’s cultural conditioning personifies the process, creates characters and plots, but don’t let that deceive you.
Is this a part of the mind that is free from conditioning - in the sense that it is seeing clearly?
I don’t presume to know anything about “seeing clearly”. All I know is that I can observe and acknowledge the thoughts and impulses and emotions that amount to me at this moment. Any one can do this if they care to know what they’re doing.
Are you still working within the framework of the conditioned self at that point (when you are observing and acknowledging)?
Of course. What else is there?
So how is this looking at the delusion from inside the delusion, any different from what everybody else (even those that have never considered the teaching) is constantly doing?
Do you know you’re deluded, or do you just assume you are? If you know how confused and delusional and desperate and depraved you are, you’re free, because the seeing is the doing. But you don’t see anything but the ideas and beliefs you have about who/what you should/should not be.
Find out who/what you are by watching every movement of thought and every surge of emotion and everything you do and say. It all reveals what you are.
Hi Howard. Thanks for answering the points I raised.
As I said, “Nobody got it” was what K said. I don’t think we should get too bogged down on the difference in meaning between “getting” something" and “seeing something”. “Getting something” doesn’t in my view have a purely intellectual connotation.
I am interested in language and what meaning words or sets of words convey but again, I think there’s a danger in getting bogged down if we analyse the choice of a word too closely. To address your point, we could look at the following sentence: “Presumably, you wouldn’t be interested in discussing anger.” Here, “presumably” is likely used because there is previous evidence to suggest that the recipient of the message does not want to discuss anger. However, the sentence as a whole is inviting a response and is opening a door for further communication. You wrote;
“An interesting discussion? Possibly so, but that’s generally an intellectual endeavor using the already ‘known’ isn’t it?”
That seems to me to be yoy making a judgement about discussions based on your past experience. Isn’t this closing a door on communication?
I find this interesting. Earlier, you talked about belief blocking seeing. However, is that not in itself a belief? What I would be interested to know is if Howard has closely observed his beliefs and discovered that these beliefs block him from seeing. If that’s the case, we could have an interesting discussion I think. If, however, Howard is merely repeating what someone else has discovered then the discussion will be boring and lack interest and life. Repeating second hand what has been discovered by others is not conducive to real communication in my opinion. So I ask you Howard, how did you come to discover that belief blocks seeing? I am asking this in a genuine spirit of enquiry rather than trying to catch you out.
**I’ll just pick this one of a few similar statements to address. In order to ‘inquire’ or ‘look together’, we will need to use language, to “describe” what “appears” to be occurring. And the use of language will depend on past life experience. These descriptions of what we each observe can genuinely be merely a description of “what appears to be.” To suggest that the nature of ‘discussion’ as generally being “intellectual” is not a “judgment” in the sense of saying something is good, bad, right, or wrong. But rather, simply pointing to what “appears” to be a fact. There’s no “fixed position in thought.” There’s no ‘judgment’ that an intellectual endeavor has “no value.” So, there’s really no need to get bogged down, no need to analyze, no need to agree or disagree, we’re just looking together, and using language to share what we each observe.
**Again, “Howard”, or any “thought-identity” doesn’t observe. “Howard” is a ‘thought’ that appears in awareness. There is a human being that responds to that label, but the ‘thought-identity’ doesn’t do the observing. Observation doesn’t belong to a thought label. In fact if there’s a “me” occurring in thought, it’s not observation, it’s thought. There is no observer separate from the observation. In the observation of that, the difference between “thinking the thought of me looking,” and “observation without the me,” it’s ‘seen’ that ‘belief’ and observation are completely different actions. Thinking about “me observing,” is “blocking observation” in the sense that the brain is occupied with thought, and not observing what is occurring presently. The mind occupied with belief, is not observation free of the “observer-thought-structure.” Seems rather obvious, doesn’t it?
**I would again say that “Howard,” the thought label, didn’t discover this. It’s simply revealed in observation, from ‘not knowing’. As described above.
**Hello again Sean - Let’s look at what “thought is saying.” Isn’t it creating a psychological barrier?" Ex: “If you’re doing this, we can’t inquire,” but, “if you’re doing this other thing, we can inquire.” Did ‘Sean’ “choose” to create this barrier to inquiry, or is it a conditioned thought pattern doing it? Does inquiry need to depend upon “the other” meeting conditioned thoughts requirements?
But I actually wanted to go a bit more into this suggestion that the ‘identity’ is not what’s observing. Let’s start with this pointer from K:
K: Do you understand what I am saying? You are all somebodies. You all what to be something, either professionally, or you have delusions of grandeur; you want to achieve something or become something, realize something, fulfill. Which is all respectability. We are saying that in total silence, there is nothing, you are nothing. - The Krishnamurti Reader
**These divisive self-images, of a “me” going somewhere or achieving something, are just that, “images in thought.” We’re human beings, humanity. We aren’t an imagined “me and you.” This is conditioning we all get, the idea of a “Howard separate from Sean” is the imagination. It’s a similar conditioning occurring in humanity, passed down from generation to generation. And it’s the conditioning, thought, that is saying, “I can only inquire with you if you meet my conditions.”
K: When you have gone through all the layers of the self, its inmost nature, it’s essence, is nothing. You are nothing.
Public Talk 5 in Madras (Chennai), 7 January 1978
DB: B is creating the division by saying, “I am a separate person,” but it may confuse B further when A says, “It’s not that way to me,” right?
JK: That is the whole point, isn’t it, in relationship? You feel that you are not separate and that you really have this sense of love and compassion, and I haven’t got it. I haven’t even perceived or gone into this question. What is your relationship to me? You have a relationship with me, but I haven’t any relationship with you.
DB: Well, I think one could say that the person who hasn’t seen is almost living in a world of dreams, psychologically, and therefore the world of dreams is not related to the world of being awake.
JK: That’s right.
K: Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.
One’s identity as a Howard, Sean, Dan, etc is a conditioned ‘belief’ that is held in the brain until the error of it is discovered?
**Yes, when it’s revealed by insight.
It would seem then that once that is truly seen, there would be no ‘going back’ and resuming that false identity? ‘Going back’ would be the indication that the ‘illusion’ was only ‘glimpsed’? True insight would shatter it as when seeing that the world is round, there’s no returning to see it as flat? Or that the sun is going round the earth?