And ‘putting out ‘ the fire 
is dying to that “centre”…yes?
Evidently it isn’t enough. 
. The violent games continue even after you apologized for something that you haven’t done. I wonder what is this colossal emotion to continue ranting after someone is walking away? Is it desire to be right? Fear of being wrong? “Personal” insecurity"? Luring to continue? Perhaps it’s all of it and more.
Seems like the house is burning…our own house that is… not some “fictitious” ideological house. Unable to bear it, face it, and accept responsibility, it seems the person continues to make it an ideological problem and looks for a metaphysical resolution.
**That appears to be the case. A dying to the false value of truth being given to the self-image, and the entire collection of psychological thoughts stored in the brain as “my thoughts.” An insight into the limited nature of this entire collection of abstract psychological thought-imagery.
Can we inquire a bit into the ‘dying’ or ‘emptying’ aspect of what is called for here? Is it by being aware of what we think and feel, that that is enough to reveal the falsity of it? Does something else have to take place? If I hate others, for example, can that be emptied or died to, just by seeing the hatred or does something else have to be present? Does it have to be a realization that ‘I’ am only ‘hating’ (judging) an image formed of the other and that that image is false because it is, of course, partial…and can only ever be partial?
**Hello Dan - Sounds great. I’ll tell you where this started for me, which points to what you’re asking. I read Socrates in college, and he seemed to be a pretty wise fellow. So I was curious about this issue of ‘know thyself’ that he had apparently suggested. Years later, having some degree of leisure, I decided to explore this, but I didn’t know how to do it. The second book I tried, in order to get some clues about how to know myself, turned out to be K’s Freedom From the Known. On the very first page, K made this suggestion:
K: For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, ‘Tell me all about it - what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?’ and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people.
**Upon reading this pointer, and observing myself, it was immediately clear that this fellow had described me perfectly. There was a seeing that basically I had never really questioned the things I thought were true. So that seeing created the necessity to observe life directly for myself, to not settle for theories or beliefs, from anyone. Aside from practical situations like going to the doctor or dentist, or having an “expert” fix your car.
So, if you and I are going to really ‘see the truth’, it can’t be done by accepting any second-hand description.
Next, how can any of us see that something is false? Don’t we have to ‘see it for ourselves’? By observing what is actually occurring? Can thought, which is always a limited abstraction of a past experience ever reveal what’s present now? Will a word or concept ever be ‘what is actually occurring now’? Will the word or description ever be the actual manifestation it is meant to simply ‘refer to or point to’? Will the word apple, ever be the actual fruit?
So, we can rule out words or concepts revealing the actual. All they reveal is ideas or concepts, not what they point to. We would have to look at what the words point to. If I want to discover who I actually am, to know myself, this requires observing my self as I actually am, each moment, without the word, not trying to “figure it out with conditioned thought.” Not analyzing what is present.
So, what else other than a choiceless awareness of what is actually present could possibly reveal what is true or false?
I’ll stop there, and ask you, What is this ‘I’ that you suggest would be ‘hating’? Do you mean the human being?
This gets at where the core confusion in thought is. This ‘I’, this ‘thought’ or ‘idea’, is confused for the thinking/feeling human being. The ‘I’, or ‘observer’ is a thought, or more accurately, a collection of psychological thoughts. And a thought can’t “hate.” An ‘I’ can’t hate. It’s just an idea, an image, a “self-image.” And images aren’t an entity with the capacity to hate. The human being, responding to conditioned thought , is what engages in the action we call hating. The action of hating reflects incoherence in thought.
Again, we’re looking, not accepting descriptions for truth. That’s the suggestion anyway. I’m just using words to point to what is seen. The words, the descriptions, aren’t the described.
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I was being rather reserved. There is much more than just quibbling going on. There is a not so subtle form of intellectual bullying taking place, using K as your crony. I leave you to it.
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Sometimes one gets angry with another person. When one tries to cover it up with words, the anger is still there. So I would rather say to someone, ‘You are a fool,’ and get it out of the way. But when one keeps on pointing out to them all their various faults, it is ultimately only one’s own foolishness that gets displayed. It stops being a sudden flash of violence and becomes something even more destructive.
Get it out of the way for whom?
Personally I try to reserve the word “fool” for advanced beings and people that are ripe enough that the description might actually help. 
I do agree that self righteous violence is pretty horrible. (I too have been guilty of slam dunking obvious idiots online)
I have been following the work of liberal do-gooders that are trying to address the problem of dialogue and communication between tribes (eg. Trump vs Anti-trump) and one thing that seems apparent is that facts neither change minds nor bridge gaps. (It seems that the more intelligent a person is, the more they can squish contrarian facts into their worldview)
Rule no 1: You cant force someone to see the light (especially right away or on your terms) acceptation of disagreement is essential.
Rule no 2: Try to find out the basis upon which you do agree - then work from there.
Rule no 3 : The bridge is more important than the conclusions reached
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How does a secondhand person practise choiceless awareness?
Dan,
You say we learn to exploit others, etc… I think here you are using ‘learn’ in the sense of appropriating. Yes, it’s true, but I’m afraid it happens because we choose it, the same way we reject many other behaviours. Maybe it’s a matter of your nature driving you or an image you have already because it will be easier for you to adjust to the environment where you’re living. Krishnamurti engaged in many dialogues with teachers of his schools just discussing how to bring out such prejudices to the surface and by exposing them to the students helping them use intelligence and order in their lives. Just a short excerpt of one of these dialogues (in ‘A flame of learning’): ‘T -‘It seems we’d have to start with being completely honest with each other.’ K - We are being now. I won’t go into that for the moment. Honesty is the most dangerous word. All I’m saying is, are you interested and responsible to see if you realize the world is you and you are the world? And that one of the factors in this monstrous world, of which you are, is violence, psychological violence, from which breeds external violence? How do you help yourself who are the world, and the student to be free of this violence?’
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Not sure about this. What do you mean? I have chosen to be a deluded fool?
Macdougdoug,
Why do you think Krishnamurti called this a ‘monstrous society’?! Exploiting others is seen by many as being cool or clever or both.
Yes to that. The feeling that we are ‘individuals’, me against the world…you can see it here on the forum. Compassion is ‘seeing’ myself in the other. It doesn’t mean I am the other, but that the ‘contents of consciousness’ are different. The brain is the same, the body, the troubles, the fears all basically the same.
For both of us. It is then something of a crisis to be dealt with in our relationship; it can’t be glossed over.
Hello - could you do that again please? Either you didn’t answer the question or I didn’t understand your answer.
For example, did we chooseto be monstruous?
Maybe I do see an answer : we think it is cool to be monstrous.
This may be a “turtles all the way down” problem.
This coolness may be an adhoc excuse one gives oneself - in any case, did I choose to think it was cool?
What does this mean?
I get the impression you do focus on this issue (the relationship in dialogue) and I don’t think I have fully grasped what you are pointing at.
But… isn’t this the difficulty? The various identities involved (both of us) prevent a seeing (and acceptance, proper action) of what is?
This refers to the great A’tuin : Being the giant turtle upon whose back the Discworld rests.
Sometimes in geography class a young wizard might ask : “but upon what does the great A’tuin rest?” - to which the answer is of course “another Turtle”…
We are talking about the house being on fire. Relationship is the house because relationship is where all our difficulties and conflicts arise. Do we see this together? If we do see this together, then that is the first step to bringing about a relationship where there is no conflict at all. If we don’t see this, it must mean there is another more important house, which I doubt very much that there is.
There may not be a conflict between you and me because we like each other , are compatible, etc. But what about the conflict caused in me by the duality of thought and the ‘thinker’? As long as it is not seen that there is a false duality between me as observer and what is observed, there will continue to be a friction or conflict. Isn’t that the false relationship that needs to end?
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