There is a new instrument which is the mind, which is intelligence

Kinfonet Discussion
15

One would have to have an idea of what “a Buddha” is. To me, it’s someone sitting under a tree doing nothing but being, giving cryptic answers to questions from curious, questing people.

Since we’re here trying to understand why we’re prisoners of our own devices, and we keep asking ourselves and each other if there’s anything one can do to bring an end to self-imprisonment, maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe instead of wanting release from our prison, we should be asking what we think it is to be relieved of oneself.

16

I may be wrong, but I think Adeen is using the word thought to mean ‘outside’ because K mentions this in a couple of his talks. Bohm once told K that the word ‘thought’ in the Inuit (Eskimo) language means ‘outside’.

Yes, I think there is something to this. When we are free from external influences (including social media) there is a different quality to the brain.

I would say that there will be less reaction of thought; external silence is helpful in producing clarity. But if the absence of ‘external’ thought were sufficient in and of itself to end thought then one would expect the thousands of monks the world over to have ended thought - and there is no evidence they have done so.

The ending of ‘inner’ thought - i.e. the more deep rooted psychological conditioning that has been accumulated in the brain from early childhood - probably requires insight to be dissipated.

17

(I think something may have gone wrong with the quotation tool here Dan? A block of text has been copy-pasted twice over, but without any quotation box to show it is a quote? - It’s just a bit confusing to read, that’s all).

Yes. By the word ‘ordinary’, I should say, I didn’t mean anything pejorative.

One of K’s early phrases was that freedom is the first and last step. So the quality of freedom that exists at the start of an investigation into oneself may not be fundamentally different from the freedom that may (or may not) exist once the mind/brain has been unconditioned (through insight).

He also says (in one of his journals) that the movement from simple watching and listening, to awareness, to choiceless awareness, to attention, and then to insight is like an arrow moving - a single movement:

When there is this simple, clear watching and listening, then there is an awareness — awareness of the colour of those flowers, red, yellow, white, of the spring leaves, the stems, so tender, so delicate, awareness of the heavens, the earth and those people who are passing by…. When you are aware there is a choice of what to do, what not to do, like and dislike, your biases, your fears, your anxieties, the joys which you have remembered, the pleasures that you have pursued… but there is no choice when you see things very, very clearly.

And that leads us to an awareness without choice — to be aware without any like or dislike. When there is this really simple, honest, choiceless awareness it leads to another factor, which is attention…

then out of that comes insight. Insight is not an act of remembrance, the continuation of memory. Insight is like a flash of light… This is pure, clear insight—perception without any shadow of doubt… That insight is outside the brain, if one can so put it…

This whole movement from watching, listening, to the thunder of insight, is one movement; it is not coming to it step by step. It is like a swift arrow. And that insight alone can uncondition the brain. (Krishnamurti to Himself, 20th April 1983)

But the catch-22 still seems to be there: one needs a certain degree of freedom from one’s conditioning first before insight becomes even a vague possibility - and yet only insight can completely dissolve one’s conditioning.

18

So it could be a tipping point situation wherein a series of partial insights tip over to total insight. Or it could be that total insight happens for no reason one can know this side of total insight, if at all.

19

On the matter of tenuous connections, I don’t know if you have followed the ‘catch-22’ discussion above? (i.e. that in order to have insight the brain must be at least somewhat free from self, from our conditioning; but only insight can completely dissolve the self, our conditioning)…

I don’t mean to go into this here, but in Dzogchen (not that I am an expert in Dzogchen) the ‘path’ and the ‘fruit’ of the path (i.e. insight/liberation) are said to be just different aspects of the same process (because Dzogchen is a non-dual tradition).

The same issue arises in Chan/Zen traditions (because realisation is supposed to be sudden, while cultivation is gradual).

Maybe. But I think the fundamental issue is that for K insight has no cause, it is ‘outside’ the brain. Whereas all activity of the brain (or at least the part of the brain which is subject to our conditioning) can be said to have a cause. A cause and effect process from ‘within’ the brain will never lead to insight because insight has no cause.

However, as we have been discussing, K also says that through watching and listening, through awareness and attention, the possibility of insight exists (which suggests that some activity from ‘within’ the brain is relevant and perhaps even necessary for insight to take place).

20

I’m getting déjà vu (from yesterday):

You might remember that early on in your Kinfonet days we had some conflict around paths? I said I valued paths, though I saw the danger in them. You wanted me to explain myself, but I refused. Well, you provided a way in for me. (Thanks!) It was through Buddhism that I became comfortable with paths, again while acknowledging the danger of attachment to them, specifically the Madhyamaka’s taking both path and view as key elements of the awakening process.

21

You can see if below sounds logical.
The insight is not thought, so there must be freedom from thought to observe, that being choiceless awareness. In the choiceless awareness if anything arises it can be seen, if feeling arises it can be seen, if reaction arises it can be seen, ‘thought’ can be seen, anything outside can be perceived. The choiceless awareness being without division, without conflict, without separation as thinker and thought, observer and observed image. The thinker, observer being choice, becoming, thought.

‘Thought’ can be seen without thought. The observation being not thought, thinker, observer.

This can seem as catch 22 as thought does not know anything beyond itself. But what is beyond thought, observation which is not thought can observe ‘thought’.
We normally are unable to observe because of thought, thinker. If that drops then the awareness can observe thought, conditioning

22

So we have to discover an awareness which is choiceless, which has nothing to do with thinker. The thinker being thought, so an awareness which is beyond thought but can look at thought

23

Yes, this sounds reasonable.

Yes, this also seems coherent and logical: observation is not itself made up of thought, and so it can observe thought.

I think we can agree that observation/choiceless awareness is not itself composed of thought, and so can observe/be aware of the reactions of thought (as feeling, emotion, thinking, etc).

However, the issue is perhaps the notion of insight that you mention at the beginning:

If insight is not made of thought, then why is observation/awareness that is “free from thought” not itself already insight?

That is, insight is not made of thought, but neither is awareness/observation made of thought - so they seem to be the same at that level. This seems to suggest that ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness is already insight (of a kind)?

And yet insight is supposed to completely wipe out the conditioning created by thought - whereas this is not the case in ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness. That is, although ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness can (and does) dissolve local conditioning factors, it apparently leaves the rest in tact. And while ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness requires a (relative) freedom from thought and self-centredness, it does not completely end thought or self-centredness. Only insight can do that.

So what is the difference (between insight and ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness)? The degree of intensity of observation/awareness? The degree to which observation/awareness can be global, complete, whole?

24

I reckon degree or intensity has something to do with it - although to speak of degrees of “awareness” would probably be incorrect - awareness is either pure (as in its the noticing and dissolving of the self) or it is merely recognition.

Someone (somewhere else) asked why ordinary awareness with its momentary freedom from the self was not enough. If it was, we could agree with the idea (sometimes proposed by Dogen) that meditation/zazen is enlightenment ie. the moment to moment allowance of attention to dissolve this present, subjective experience is freedom from the known.

I think ordinary moment to moment liberation is insufficient because of its ordinariness. It is not hard hitting enough to unhinge me. eg. I was worrying about my grandma, I noticed this uncomfortable experiencing, and let go, freed myself, I happen to be a pretty cool balanced kinda guy.

25

I’m more familiar with the language of ‘path’ and ‘view’ in the context of Dzogchen. Madhyamaka takes so many different forms that it is difficult to generalise? For sure, in Gelugpa (Tsongkhapa) Madhyamaka they believe in a more gradual path of liberation - which distinguishes them from more subitist approaches found in (some) Chan/Zen and Dzogchen.

The question remains though how the starting point of an inner inquiry (‘freedom at the beginning’) relates to the fruition or flowering of the inquiry (‘freedom at the end’)?

If the ‘freedom at the beginning’ involves a temporal succession of gradual psychic improvements, it is essentially a process of cause and effect. So how does the ‘freedom at the end’ (i.e. insight) - which is free from cause and effect - relate to the ‘freedom at the beginning’?

K sometimes told the Chan story about the student who was chastised by his teacher for thinking that by constantly ‘practising’ awareness he could find illumination: the teacher began rubbing two rocks together, saying that he was attempting to create a mirror.

This is, I take it, because insight is sudden, not gradual. Insight is not ‘caused’ by any intention to be free. Insight is total perception of the whole (psychic) situation, not a partial uncovering.

But a path is gradual, it involves conscious intentions and motives (i.e. ‘wanting to be free’), and it is always partial.

So the two processes seem to be radically unrelated to each other. This is the conundrum.

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26

While K would reject the idea of a person claiming to be ‘already enlightened’, there is, it is fair to say, something about the freedom at the beginning and at the end which is related. So-called ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness, in as much as it is free from thought, may already be the seed of insight/awakening. But to mistake ‘ordinary’ observation/awareness for total insight would be completely mistaken (because the conditioning will still be present).

27

If we want to look at traditional methods of creating high intensity moments of psychological death, what about the Rinzai way of Koans & Kensho?

28

The view/insight and path ‘conundrum’ is so fascinating and central to what we’re all doing in here the forum that it deserves its own thread, ja? (Experiments too!) How about we start one? Should the thread invite participants to explore view/insight and path and leave it at that? Or should the thread frame the investigation in Krishnamurtian terms by beginning with a quote? The former’s advantage is that the exploration is wide open. The Krishnamurti-centric approach has the advantage of hewing close to Krishnamurti (and we are in a Krishnamurti forum). ?

29

Once there was an enlightened master who spent an hour every day answering questions. But on the last day of the month, he wanted to spend 1 session asking 1 question to his audience.

One day, he asked the following question:
“What is the sound of the applause of a one-handed person?”

A few bright minds in the audience soon came up with many different answers, which he always waved away with a negative head nod. As time passed, things got quieter and quieter and occasionally another profound description came up but his head nod remained denial after ten minutes it was quiet and still everyone kept waiting for his response which he usually gave at the end of the session.

After the session, he apologised for his apparently silly question:
‘I did not realize that so many attendees apparently knew the answer,’

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30

Self-knowledge is a succession of partial insights that negate false notions and misunderstandings, and it’s necessary for sanity, mental health, putting one’s house in order. It may be that total insight is not possible without this foundation.

31

I don’t know, what I feel is choiceless awareness is moment to moment. Thinker is dormant at the moment. When it is dormant, there is choiceless awareness and choiceless awareness is more about action in life (not activity of mind). It is participating in life through action and there is no sense of psychological conflict or separation. It is also not seeking.
For me it’s more about right or correct action in daily life, but I feel pain will always be there, feelings will always be there, conditioning will be there. In my inquiry I am inquiring into ending of subject, not object. If experiencer is absent, then pain will not turn into suffering, sorrow, self pity or blaming. My inquiry is more in that direction.

32

K seemed to stress the importance of understanding and insight. I believe he enjoyed taking complex machines apart and putting them back together again. In doing this, he no doubt gained understanding and insight into how these machines worked. He seemed to have the ability to “take apart”, through close observation, complex processes which occured within himself such as envy, anger, fear etc. Through understanding, he gained insight into thought and its relationship to the self. This discovery seemed to allow him to come into contact with something that lies beyond thought.

I’m not sure I’ve addressed the Catch 22 question but the above is my understanding of discovery through understanding and insight.

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33

Yes, I understand what you are saying here Adeen. After all, the awareness that exists in our daily life is more important than anything else.

But it nevertheless still raises the question, for me, about whether the self - the psychological conditioning that constitutes the self (and generates suffering) - can end completely in the way K indicated, rather than be simply dormant. And this, according to K, requires insight. This is why I feel it is worth asking this question.

As Dan was saying earlier on, perhaps this insight is simply a deepening or intensification (Dan didn’t use these words) of our everyday awareness and observation? A single movement (though apparently very few persons ever complete this movement).

34

Yes. Maybe it is a mistake to only consider the ‘total insight’ that K often talked about, because this becomes abstract for us?

What is an insight? Isn’t it a quick perception of the way something works; seeing the whole of it at one glance?

As you say, K had a very practical interest in car engines, cameras, and watches, etc. He loved to see how they worked, how they are put together. Having taken a machine apart and examined the various aspects of it, it takes a sudden insight to see how everything works so that one can safely put it back together.

So when we say we understand something (and really mean it) this implies that we have had an insight into it.

So maybe we need to have small yet significant insights into our thinking and feeling before the ‘total insight’ that K talks about becomes even relevant? - Probably.

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