if it isn’t right at the start
how can it become better over time
maybe it is best to stop working altogether
for when something is right at the start
then every word is redundant
Why is this a koan? By Koan I think we mean that there is something mysterious or paradoxical going on.
Is it paradoxical because we are somewhat confused by the idea of an authority or guide with hidden knowledge who wants to forsake us? And that to be abandoned by the source of beneficial knowledge would be a negative outcome? So how could a negative outcome be positive?
Is this the kind of confusion thats occuring?
Is the idea that the truth might set us free, a mysterious concept?
The ultimate function of the teaching is that we should see evil clearly, and in that seeing be free of it.
There is only one step between acting like self centered individuals and seeing the implications of acting from this center - but we are not all blessed with the necessary causes and conditions that will force us to look.
K’s teaching is just an invitation to look, the idea that the possibility of looking is available for those that need to.
1 Like
Krishnamurti did provide us with a great koan - but we’ve already discussed it to death, so I won’t bring it up again here.
But a thought did just come to mind :
Many see a paradox in the idea that in order to Love one must be free of fear, or that in order to see a complete picture of fear (and thus be free of it) we must first be able to look with love.
But this seeming paradox may just be a simple tautology : that Love only comes from love. That love cannot be the result of fear.
Here is the latest version:
The ultimate Krishnamurti teaching is to be free from Krishnamurti teachings.
I think this is getting closer to koan-ish.
Now there is a koan!
Let’s say someone comes at me aggressively saying “you’re a stupid idiot!”. According to you, what would be these “necessary causes and conditions” that would supposedly “force”(?) me to look (at?), and which you say “we are not all blessed with”? And what exactly does “blessed” mean in your sentence?
@fraggle I’m just going to hope that you are asking for clarification on my statement
I’m saying that we find it very hard to see and accept the whole picture of this self-centered experience (ie. the human experience that we are having) - not because it is very intellectually complex but because something (maybe built into our psychology or even in our inherited brain) is preventing us from doing so (maybe for proper functioning of the primitive process of interaction with the world for survival purposes - for example it would be counter-productive if we could sense our eardrums beating).
Sorry thats a long sentence so I’ll finish it here : Something in our life needs to overcome the barrier to seeing the whole picture of self (K calls it immense energy) - I’m calling it causes and conditions, meaning : that which provides the immense energy - which could be anything : one’s upbringing, life experiences, etc…
1 Like
I guess the moral of the koan story is: Knowledge held onto limits the knower’s freedom. This goes for knowledge of all ilk, no matter how gloriously transcendent! What knowledge are you holding onto now and how is it limiting your freedom?
1 Like
Sounds legit Rick - sorry you had to answer your own koan 
But in my opinion if the answer to a koan is a tautology, thats a mega win.
And you might well have a mega win here :
Which sounds very much like : If I’m not free, I’m not free. Or if I’m a a prisoner of the known, I’m not free from the known
How about this: To be free is to be unfree. Glitches the brain nicely. 
By desiring to become something, we deny our birthright to be nothing…which is everything!
Waoh guys - in a way I’m really vibing with your koantum weirdness!
Can someone explain: Zero contains all numbers and nothing is everything.
If you could reverse time and the universe returns to it beginning. (Big Bang) In 13.8 billion years all ‘things’ would have returned to the ‘singularity’ and disappeared. So the singularity (or Void, or Nothing) ‘contained’ Everything?
This is from the same dialogue as the excerpt from which you got these quotes, maybe it will help…
PJ: When you say it contains the all, is it the essence of all human and racial and environmental, and nature and the cosmos, as such?
K: Yes. No, I would rather… You see, I am talking of the fact of a realisation that there is nothing. The psyche is a bundle of memories - right? - and those memories are dead. They operate, they function, but they are the outcome of past experience which has gone. I am a movement of memories. Right? Now if I have an insight into that, there is nothing. I don’t exist.
You can read the full dialogue here, or watch it on video here, if you wish.
p.s.: a misunderstanding of emptiness/nothingness can lead one to nihilism (nothing exists at all) and its consequences.
The psyche without dead memories, without the past is no longer those ‘things’…it is no thing, nothing! The ‘me’ is an accumulation of the past, it doesn’t actually exist in the moment…only in memory. Only in thought which is the response of memory!
This doesn’t mean that one disappears.
Unfortunately it doesn’t.
Tremendous energy it seems is needed for the insight that ‘I don’t exist’. Intellectually it’s easy enough to see but that doesn’t have the energy to break its hold on the mind.
No, no… I think you misunderstood me, the self disappears but not you.
As I said before, a misunderstanding of emptiness/nothingness can lead to nihilism (nothing exists at all) or to an unbridled materialism, both with their associated consequences.
You mean there’s a ‘me’ beside the self?
What’s his name?
This is a question that only oneself can answer.
Nothingness has no name, unless you want to re-enter the circle of thought. But that does not mean that after the disappearance of the self there is nothing there at all.
“That” does not have the energy to break through it because of our lack of courage, or if you prefer because of our fear to open the door to the unknown.