Ok, I guess this explains why there has not been much in the way of understanding on this thread!
Obviously the word ‘understand’ can be used in ordinary English as a polite rejoinder in a sentence. It depends on its context. Understanding in the way you use it here means insight, and we have not been discussing - as far as I understand it! - insight.
There are two different points being made here, aren’t there Douglas?
The one point has to do with the way we habitually take our thoughts (and feelings) to be the ‘truth’ of the way things are.
The other point is about ‘truth’ itself, and what our relationship to it is or ought to be.
Maybe we can bring both points together by saying that whatever thought thinks ‘truth’ is, it is not the absolute truth (by virtue if it being thought that thinks it). This is because a thought about something is never the thing itself.
But this is not to say that in the area where thought has its place there can be no accurate assessment of true and false facts (such as whether the earth is a sphere or flat, etc). Relative ‘truths’ (facts) have their place here.
Do you see the difference?
I am tired so I stop, which is observing, putting it into words - thinking - from which comes understanding, insight and action all together. There is nothing fancy about it, nothing sophisticated, nothing complicated; and nothing ever separates one from the other. Where there is thinking there is always insight.
Sorry I am tired, but there it is, the fact. Hopefully, there will be a next time, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Au revoir.
I am sorry that you feel too tired to explain yourself more clearly, but I don’t think it is controversial to point out that calling something a fact does not make it a fact.
Having previously equated thinking with attention, you are now equating thinking with insight (having previously connected thinking with emptiness and love).
Short of making these words valueless, I wonder what is gained from making the words ‘insight’ and ‘thinking’ (or attention and thinking) synonymous? To most people - including K as far as I know - these words point to quite different actualities.
It seems as though you simply want to assert this as a dogma without giving clear reasons for doing so? - giving as your ‘reasons’ the claim that you are speaking from insight/emptiness/love. This doesn’t make a dialogue very straightforward.
You are pointing at the differences between our beliefs about what is true, and what actually is true.
Also at the differences between beliefs that can be demonstrated to be so, those that cannot, and those that seem to be in contradiction with what can be demonstrated.
Also at the difference between the description and what might actually exist independant of the description.
What I would like to look at is the bit about our relationship with truth. Is this not what is driving us?
Truth is an authority, both what we believe to be true, and as a concept : we feel that truth should be an authority - but we only have access to what we think is true (yes, no?)
Listening from insight, emptiness and love makes it very easy. So that is what matters; it is not about who is speaking. The speaker and the listener are one; they are thinking together. Then the dialogue never ends and we’ll never get tired of it.
You have not yet begun to think. You are allowing thought to do all the work. But really you haven’t a clue what is going on and neither have I. Then we are free to think. I can’t keep making clear if you keep making it muddy.
This is why I feel the question involves being clear what we mean by the word ‘truth’.
There are factual statements that can be correct or incorrect - such as ‘the earth is a sphere’. Some factual statements are easier to verify than others, but once verified they become true or false in ordinary language. I don’t think there is anything inherently authoritarian about verifying statements of fact, but obviously they can be controversial when put before the general public (e.g. climate science).
There is also a more fundamental meaning to the word ‘truth’, as for instance when we are discussing the nature of reality, existence, or what it sometimes called ‘absolute truth’. This is very difficult to verify, and may be impossible to verify in an objective, publicly acceptable way. Maybe truth in this sense can only be discovered through first person insight (by first person I don’t mean by an individual ego).
Then, thirdly, there is our psychological relationship to either of these ways of using the word ‘truth’. Factual statements can be used to bolster one’s ego at the expense of another. And, in the case of ‘absolute truth’ (or whatever word one likes to use) one can be mistaken that one has actually discovered absolute truth, and deceive oneself and others about it. Furthermore, in either case, one must recognise that the word is not the thing: by which I mean that any thinking about truth (whether factual truths or any absolute truth) is never the actuality itself. We human beings tend to forget this.
What aspect do you feel is worth emphasising in all this?
Perhaps. I think any ‘salvation’ possible for humanity will more likely come from insight and love than from thinking. I also feel that it’s part of the nature of our thinking to deceive itself into believing it has insight and love when it does not.
What about insight into thinking? That would change the nature of thinking, wouldn’t it? Seeing that our thinking is deceiving itself with beliefs and theories, it would bring to a stop the process of believing. Not believing a thing in the psychological field, does that stop our thinking or does it make it perform a different action? This is really the nub of it.
Let’s go back for a moment to what Hermann said. He said: So thought reacts to the word ‘thinking.’ Pointing to the reaction and watching it together is thinking. So, first, you are watching the reaction from your perspective and I am watching the reaction from my perspective, which are both partial views. But when we put it into words, very carefully, accurately, is there then a perspective? Our separate perspectives are both influenced by thought. And when we put it into words it brings to light immediately our separation. Can we now look directly at the separation caused by this way of thinking and end it immediately at that point where it separates? Because we are interested now only in looking together at what is happening and not sticking fast to our limited perspective from thought, the gap between us has then already gone. That gap was always and will always be conceptual. And the looking at it together, the putting it into words, - thinking not from a perspective, - may be all that love really is.
I don’t know. Thinking may be employed by a person with insight in order to communicate something about the nature of that insight. Maybe the thinking done by the brain of a person with insight is more objective than usual; or perhaps thinking occupies the brain of a person with insight less than usual. But the thinking is still thinking.
What is thinking? This is the question the thread makes central (imo).
If thinking depends on memory, then it cannot result in love, insight, emptiness or ‘salvation’ for mankind.
You have been proposing a thinking which does not depend on memory, and I have been attempting to clarify what is meant by this statement.
Because it has not been made clear what is meant, I will clarify it for myself.
Thinking as thinking inevitably depends upon memory. If one had no memory, one couldn’t think. And this thinking takes place in the soft tissue of the brain (it is neurochemical).
But thinking as a tool of communication from insight is merely a tool of communication from insight, and the insight doesn’t depend on memory.
So while thinking as thinking still depends on memory (or else there would be no thinking at all, no words, no verbal communication whatsoever), a thinking arising as a mere tool of communication from insight is directed by insight, and insight does not depend on memory.
This means that it is insight, not thinking, that is capable of transformation; which then can use thinking as a tool of communication to communicate something about the nature of that insight.
This is how I understand what is being said.
Thinking as thinking is always from a perspective, because it is conditioned by knowledge and memory. But insight has no direction, no perspective - which may be the thing you are wanting to point to.
We need to be in the same place at the same time in order to find out together the answer to this question. Two of us, ten of us, a hundred of us; it doesn’t matter. Otherwise, we are forever caught in thought. Thinking is a shared activity; it is not something that can be done alone or from a distance. One can’t make love from a distance.
One can say, ‘I love you,’ from a safe distance, but we have to be face-to-face if we really want to find out what it means. And thinking is love.
It is really quite impossible to be able to think without first being in a place where we can literally hold hands, look into one another’s eyes and find out the secret together.
Rather than respond to the issues that have been raised about the nature of thought and thinking (and their relationship to memory) you would rather talk about holding hands and looking into each others eyes? I have no interest in holding hands or looking into people’s eyes. The OP makes dogmatic claims about ‘thinking’ which have not been investigated or explained, and yet I feel you are repeating the same dogmatic claims without taking into consideration the criticisms that have been made.
I am also very skeptical of people who glibly speak about love, insight and emptiness. Let’s just agree to disagree.
Of course! That is what K does. Why should you be any different? The only issue here is relationship and your fear of it, your strange, unfathomable fear of all those other people who are just as lost and afraid as you are. K has no answer for that; it comes from your own heart and brain thinking in tandem, so that all the feelings and the thoughts are revealed and resolved. That won’t happen when the words that come out of our observation of the world remain in the abstract.
That’s a waste of time when there is no-one here who will either agree or disagree with you. You came in on your own and you will leave on your own. So you have wasted your time if you are hoping that someone here will explain things for you and collaborate with you on achieving a false sense of clarity or psychological security. Love is divine insecurity. You could have been thinking about all this for yourself from the beginning. I hope you don’t blame me for your own failed motives when you won’t even tell us what it is that you are looking for here. If you want to understand K, stick with K, not the stupid interpreters. If you want to understand other people, good luck! And if you want to understand yourself then it is right here now in what your feelings are telling you. Only you know that, no-one else. Probably they are painful. Put them immediately into words and you have begun to think.
The central issue, as I understood it, related to the claim being made that thinking is mankind’s salvation, that it leads to insight, love, emptiness, etc, and that it can take place without a content of memory. Holding hands and staring into people’s eyes is something you have introduced.
When I said ‘let’s agree to disagree’ I was merely being polite.
That’s the worst thing in the world to be. It means you have polished and made smooth what really is there underneath, which is anger or fear, loneliness, self-disgust, powerlessness, inadequacy. Being polite is then as much use as polishing a turd, to use a vulgar expression. The smell remains, which is the smell of thought.
You won’t show your real feelings because you think the world will condemn you for them. Probably it will; the world is just as stupid as you. If you were here anonymously, as I am, it wouldn’t matter and things would take a different course. But you want to protect at all costs the image you have of ‘James’. Either way you are lost, whether you are here anonymously or not, because you still have to live in the world as ‘James’. No-one cares about ‘James’, so I don’t know why you do.
Only when you stop caring about ‘James’ does real anonymity come into being, the anonymity that K talks about. Thinking is anonymous and thought is not. Be anonymous and you will understand in an instant all that I am talking about; and there will never again be any problem between us or between you and another that your thinking cannot solve. You have never known what it is to think without thought and therefore you turn to thought to help you make sense of it. Don’t turn to thought and you have made sense of it.
Let’s finish with him, our old friend:
Neither have you Anonymous, because the word ‘thinking’ implies a content of thought. What you are doing on this thread is an expression of your thinking. Clearly you think that you know what it means to love, that you have insight, that you have no motives, that you are humble, etc. All these things you have written are - at least in part - the product of your thinking. That thinking may be correct, maybe mistaken, maybe absurd, maybe truthful - it is your own thinking which you then share with another person. You can call it the putting into words of your own observations if you like; but in the very doing of it, it becomes thought. And your observations maybe pervaded with bias. Which is why all thinking is to be doubted - as well as any conclusions arising out of observation (because it may be tainted with background thought).
I really don’t know.
I have given you a heart but you get a sneaky virtual hug too! (No more words; we give K the last word.)
Could unrequited love be the source of the rage?
Sometimes with One I Love
By Walt Whitman
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs).
Thinking is tool. Use it .