“We don’t ultimately know anything.” – Pema Chodron sharing her story with us
I think muscle memory and the effect of a partial insight are the only real knowing the conditioned brain has. We don’t really know what we think we know, and we’re not aware of our muscle memory or the effects of our partial insights until our behavior demonstrates it.
If it is true that Krishnamurti expressed himself in this way at the end of his life, what does it mean in relation to the reception of his teaching? Undoubtedly, throughout his life he was concerned with conveying something, pointing to something or leading to something that is of fundamental importance with regard to the quality of our way of life. As far as understanding our conventional way of life is concerned, he sees it in the context of thought, consciousness and reality, that it is focused on keeping the effects of the conflict that is inherent in the movement of thought within acceptable limits. Binding the mind to this focus and the activity initiated thereby results in the perpetuation of this conflict-laden reality.
Krishnamurti’s teaching aims at the negation of this connection, at a way of life that is free of it. One of his central statements is: “Total negation is the essence of the positive”. This negation implies the understanding of thought, its relationship to reality in general and the form-determination (time, samsara, duality) of reality in particular.
And now I ask whether the logical structure of his argumentation lives up to the claim of actually transcending this reality? Or whether the logical structure of his argumentation is on a path on which anyone who follows it and accepts it dogmatically is doomed to failure? When asked why nobody understood him, he always replied that he did not know.
And on the other hand, those who encounter difficulties in understanding when receiving it do not question his argumentation critically, but try to make what is not understood plausible by drawing on other areas (brain research, quantum physics, teachings of others, etc.) or simply by following a trustworthy interpretation according to which one could say this or that in such a way, as is done, for example, with the formula of observer and observed. Or, in order to pretend to understand, there is this escape into secrecy, or even that one is content with the postulation of paradoxes.
The conditioned brain can understand what “the observer is the observed” means by explaining it, but explanation isn’t insight.
Insight is a failure of human conditioning that illuminates the human condition, and explanation is successfully sustaining the brain’s conditioning.
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Are we presuming that a logical argument can transform our relationship with reality?
Philosophical arguments can sometimes change my understanding of certain concepts - but is this the same thing : my relationship with experience itself.
Even if I have intellectually grasped the model of harm/suffering correctly, is that sufficient?
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Unfortunately it’s not.
So - if we are in agreement that the mere acceptance of any particular model (about the human experience) is not what is expected of us - what does it mean to “get it”?
Keeping it simple : what does K ask of us? Even before he starts laying out any facts about the human experience - what frame of mind is being encouraged?
To keep it simple, I would say, to accept the fact that where there is division, there must be conflict. That the sense of me creates a divide that cannot be bridged by the ‘divider’. That there is in fact no division psychologically and that the brain’s movement in that direction of being ‘individual’ somewhere back in time, was to ensnare itself in a ‘trap’ passed on down through the generations.
K: Yes, sir, but what I’m asking is, do we really want to go into it, do we really say, this is a terrible burden, a devastating factor in life, it brings darkness, you know all the nervous responses to fear, and psychological shrinking, withdrawing, resisting, fighting back ; all that which is a form of violence - do we really want to go into it so that our minds are completely free from it? That is the first question I would like to suggest to ask.
“Can you face the fact that you are absolutely nothing?”, Seminar 3 Brockwood Park, England - 14 September 1978.
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To be clear : I was asking for the very first step - before any description of the human experience - what kind of interaction with life are we being asked to enter into?
I think @Manuel 's quote is addressing my question very well.
To go into it, so that our minds are completely free from it.
This “going into” requires a kind of approach to understanding the relationship between thought, consciousness and reality, which reflects this relationship in its movement itself. It is not enough to postulate this or that as a trap or illusion or to assert it from a “better knowledge”, but the setting of the trap, the emergence of the illusion, must be understood from the inner logic of the movement of thought itself. Because it is precisely this insight that ends the movement and thus the illusion in a natural way, just as the rain stops when the air is no longer saturated or the clouds have dissolved when the sun’s rays are not refracted by tiny water droplets.
As long as the emergence of the illusion is understood as a continuation of the past, one is in an external relationship to the illusion, which then gives rise to questions about “being able to do something without…”, “putting aside…” etc. With that arise the many paradoxes. And it becomes even more complicated when one tries to understand it from the material states of an organ called the brain. Whether in the past or in the brain, the creation of the illusion is in both cases relocated to an area to which there is no direct access at all.
My experience tells me how to respond to what I think is happening, but my thinking isn’t always correct, so I know my experience isn’t always what happened.
If this is a relationship, who are the two parties involved? If the observer is the observed, there is no relationship…there is only duplicity.
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all that which is a form of violence - do we really want to go into it ?
Do we find that too, are we into it? That is the first question.
Or is this crucial initial question overlooked and we immediately end up with the question of a solution: How is this supposed to work? How do we arrive at a mind that is completely free?
So the first step is not to do with an idea, a model of self - it is about the attitude of this center.
As some crazy zen master might say : “Detachment is total immersion”.
To be totally present to this moment, resistance is counterproductive. When there is detachment from my fears about the future, more care can be given to this moment.
Or as stated in yesterday’s QOTD : “In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love”.
The first step is to care deeply about harm.
Is this a trick question?
If I am nothing as the question suggests, who or what is there to ‘face’ this fact?
And if you who are also surely nothing, answer this question, who or what is answering?
Is it then simply the brain itself, the organ, that seeks relief, peace and has employed the wrong tool to find it: thought? The ‘wrong tool’ because thinking is a movement that can never discover silence? Can the brain ‘face that fact’? (If that is a ‘fact’)
The way I see it, @macdougdoug, if I am not willing in all seriousness to die to all that I know, to the world, to my relationships, my possessions, to absolutely everything, then I cannot begin.
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Is it a fact that I am this or that, whatever I say that I am, or are this and that illusions of my own invention? Or can I ever answer the question, what or who am I, without deluding myself? By means of an illusion I fell into conditioning, so maybe by means of another illusion I might be able to get out of the conditioning.
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You have used the word “willing” and put in bold - this gives me in a cold sweat as I fear some semantic argument about the etymology of the word “will”.
But yes, the acceptance of death is central.
Yes. The brain is using the wrong tool because, for lack of self-knowledge, it’s the only tool the brain knows.
The brain can’t solve its problem of total dependence on thought without knowing itself well enough to know when not to think.
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If you face the fact that you are absolutely nothing, then there is no one to ‘accept’ or reject anything. There is no you to make a choice. So facing the fact of your nothingness may be what is ‘central’?