consciousness is overrated
its content an unconscionable mess
let’s play with it so lightly now
as if it isn’t worth a sou
friend,
this thinking together question means
we have much better things to do
K: 11:11 Do we see the importance or the quality of a mind that’s capable of thinking - not about oneself, not about what you are going to do, about one’s hurts and so on - but can we think without all that interfering?
K: 12: 46 To listen without the interference of your own attitudes, your own values, without projecting your own understanding - or not understanding - but just to actually listen.
simple enough
Krishnamurti says here when you understand or don’t understand, it means intelligence is working together with listening. Then, listening and seeing are one and as we know, seeing has a compulsion for action: ‘the seeing is the doing’.
Seeing a process clearly and completely is the action of no longer being confused and deluded by that process.
When what I know is not the cause of resistance and confusion, then listening can happen naturally.
Yes, macdougdoug, I agree that listening can happen naturally implying that I care for what I’m listening. Intelligence then says I understand or I don’t understand and at this point you see why you understand or why you don’t understand. It may be some phoney stuff you’re confronted with or it may be your lack of inclination for that kind of thing. With Krishnamurti’s experiment with poetry, what he wanted to convey would not fit the conventional metrics, so you can still listen to it, but the listening is not so complete as when he simply talks. So, listening requires both internal and external conditions, it comes naturally if there is harmony in the different circumstances only. I would say that to listen to Krishnamurti, really listen, you have to attend in the sense of really caring for what he is saying.
I understand the internal conditions : curiosity, openess, interest - freedom from our divisive mind. But I’m not sure about what these external conditions might be.
Is there something in the words themselves that makes them harder to listen to?
For example, if I say : “watermelon, oh watermelon, thy geometric inconsistencies trouble my heart and soul”.
If there is confusion or resistance what is the source? Where is the trouble located?
Where does K say all this? Can you quote his exact words?
If I can listen to ‘my’ thoughts without judgement, I can listen to ‘yours’…it’s all just thought.
There is no “instead”. The fact is that we get caught up in our objections to the what the other says, and we need to attend to that before we can do anything different.
Shikantaza: just sit. Listening: just listen.
Saying, “just listen” to a self-centered brain is like saying “don’t be what you are”. Better to attend to my reactions to what I hear than pretend to “actually listen”.
If there is confusion or resistance what is the source?
“If”? Isn’t there always “confusion or resistance”? It seems there are moments of clarity, but how can one be sure when confusion and resistance are the norm?
Yes, it’s all just thought, but my thoughts are right and everyone else’s thoughts are either wrong or of use to me. I’m all judgement and nothing else.
Hello, Alba.
The quote is yours! Krishnamurti says when you listen either you understand or you don’t. For the rest of my post, yes, it’s me saying so.
Hello, macdougdoug!
I’m not sure about your example! Well, maybe it’s because watermelon doesn’t agree with me, but I’ll try and get over it. I think that external conditions may be of all sorts, including appropriate language of course as well as the environment or the time, you name it. You don’t listen because you’re told to listen, you may pretend you’re listening, but that’s not what we’re talking about, I think.
What do you mean by “attend to”?
What are you doing when you attend to your objections?
For example, I hear someone say something, and I have a reaction of rejection - what would listening with attention look like?
PS. @Inquiry you don’t have to post your initial instinctive reply, you can just let the automatic rejection get lost, reread the question, keep rejecting the resistance until there is only the question without any conflict and confusion - that might be attending to the objections?
They’re so frequent and so identified with that their absence is more conspicuous than their presence.
reread the question, keep rejecting the resistance until there is only the question without any conflict and confusion - that might be attending to the objections?
I don’t know about “rejecting the resistance”, but scrutiny after the fact enables me to see my reaction for what it is. Doing this makes me more aware of how triggered, how locked and loaded I am to react.
What do you mean by “scrutiny after the fact”?
What I’m asking for is a kind of description/explanation of what you mean, what this “attending” and “scrutiny” looks like.
For example, do you react, write your reply and post it on the forum, then analyse it intellectually?
I would agree that that is the situation. In a way it had to be so. Once isolated from everyone and everything, that isolated psychological structure of ‘me and mine’ had to be formed out of past experience and knowledge. Had to have judgements about everything. Division and conflict ,not to mention fear and loneliness, were inevitable. And all maintained by an almost constant stream of thought.
So seeing that, our responsibility is to see if it is possible to somehow go beyond this…before the death of the body.
I post it, review it, and revise it for brevity and clarity.
May I ask you all something?
In this “listening” that you are all talking about, is one aware that one is listening, is one aware that one is thinking-together?
K: 12:46 To listen without the interference of your own attitudes, your own values, without projecting your own understanding - or not understanding - but just to actually listen.
this is not ‘either you understand or you don’t’ - you are interfering
is it possible to be aware of the impossible
is one aware of the new without making it old
is one ever aware of another without making it about oneself
is one aware of love without losing it to desire
so let’s first be aware of what we actually do
not what we wish for
for our awareness of the world
of each other
of the new
of the sacred
of love and death
of silence and meditation
is mere interference
thought’s playing with itself
we are only ever aware
when we are not here at all
thinking together
happens
when we listen to our own noise
without adding to it
i like the name Fraggle