To anyone who has studied Eastern spiritual teachings. To see the self as illusion is pretty much de rigueur in these worldviews.
Have any of these people ever studied themselves as they actually are? Have they watched the whole story of their own ambition? Or they are interested only in the ending of it and in the exchange of one self-image for another. Thatâs the actuality of any spiritual endeavour: a movement from one petty state to another.
Yes, thatâs the foundation of self-reflective spiritual systems. The thing is, each system has its own notion of what people âactually are.â
And that system survives on the fools who are waiting to be told what they are. So they are both programmed: the one to teach and the one to learn.
Yes, students learn, teachers teach. Some are intelligent, some are foolish, most are a bit of both. It can get messy, but it can also work: Teachers can help students learn.
And yet you insist:
âThere is only the programme, which is the two thousand years or more of social and intellectual conditioning. There is no âyouâ outside of that.â
You are simply copying K, shall we remain with that fact.
Surely this answer misses the point?
ie. In relation to freedom of intelligence (aka : freedom from the known), what good is 2nd hand knowledge?
Teachers do not necessarily impart âknowledgeâ (as the term is used here). They can help trigger a studentâs ability to discover things on their own. Thatâs imo the benefit of working through what someone like Krishnamurti said: You can learn how to think-feel-learn for yourself. Right?
Yes, letâs remain with it together, if we may. What is the question? How would you like to phrase it?
Can you? Have you ever done that?
Did the person who said this realise what they were saying? Or was it just automatic nonsense?
More than I used to, and working through what others have said has definitely helped.
Since othersâ internal worlds are largely unavailable to me, I canât say for sure. More important: Do I realize what they are saying?
Are you learning now? In other words, are you working through what I am saying based on what you have already learned? Or are you just listening? And is any working through then necessary? Surely, the working through, the attempt to learn something, prevents listening, doesnât it?
I listen-think-listen-think-listen-think. I stop reading to contemplate, reread earlier parts, read phrases over and over, all the while thought is there, ready to pounce.
Then thatâs not learning; thatâs accumulation. Itâs really greed by any other name. And when you see the fact that you are greedy, what else is there to learn? You are out of it. But if you see it as a theoretical statement that you are greedy, you can only go one of two ways, which is either to reject it and stop listening or to accept it and then try to do something about it. The trying to do something about it is just more greed because you have accumulated one theory, which is, âI am greedy,â and now want to find the better opposite theory, which is, âI am not greedy.â
Trading one theory for another is not learning. Moving from one religious belief to another is not spiritual growth.
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Thought is often greedy, yes. Itâs a bully too, swaggers in and tries to take over.
Knowing this about thought informs the process of listening-thinking. You learn to usher thought to its place, not take it so seriously, not get so riled up about it. Itâs like being with a type-A dominant coworker, you learn how to deal with it, how to optimize the co-working process.
And if you succeed, you learn to see thought not as an enemy, rather a neurotic but creative, even at times brilliant force. A colleague, friend even. It is, after all, to a large extent: you.
Thought is greed - it isnât somewhat greedy or occasionally greedy. Thought is the desire for more thought. Now, can you listen to this statement without thinking about it? Then there is no process involved; there is no course of action.
Guaranteed success for those that manage the feat of out-clevering themselves!
This implies I have to be even cleverer than my apparently wonderful strong, creative and brilliant self.
No.
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