Why say such a thing, that Humanity can never live peacefully, without war etc, since you can’t possibly know such a thing. Why assert it?
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Maybe I got a “Third” Eye?? It might be possible.
Power/Domination/Control cannot go off. It will increase or decrease but never becomes Zero in Humanity as a whole, even in other living beings.
War and Violence is Inevitable.
Life is Death.
This is Fact.
The need for certainty in the self is what seems inevitable.
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Yup. Is this said/observed by whole humanity or only by Dan and few? Is whole humanity aware of this need?
No. Busy in Pleasures and Entertainments and Psychological Desires, by escaping fear and sufferings.
True but if ‘Dan’ can say / observe it, anybody can. For Humanity, this could all be just the beginning, don’t know. The self also finds security in conclusions.
The war, the conflict between two nations, the upheaval of a million lives, the prospect of worse to come, none of this is hypothetical. What is our very own first reaction? This is the question. The notion of a bundle of things only comes in later, once thought has got to work.
Yes. Anybody Can. But not all serious. I’m sorry. It’s a curse. Like how Satan gives pleasure to make Slaves, there are immediate firsthand pleasures to forget all fear/sufferings, no seriousness happens there.
Say, you were given a Chicken at your door, and if you want vegetables and they come again and again to lure you to eat Chicken, they market you and hypnotize you, so eating vegetable and seriousness goes away, and Chicken becomes important.
I don’t know what’s my first reaction is. I see people very much fearful and run for their “Sacred Life” in Ukraine. I see people react angrily against Russia in name of “Humanity”.
Fear and anger and Sufferings are there I see. Also I see pleasure in some Russians and Chinese and Cuban and Venezuelan and Iranian and few other.
The truth is we have no answer. There are no different sides to the truth.
Alright, was your first reaction to run off to thought, to look at the historical, political background? If so, that’s a very strange reaction.
No. Not Historical background first.
My first reaction is to “Witness” the people’s reaction.
Yes, I feel it’s the first. No Emotion on any Kind or Cruel act, but to check out how Humanity reacts to it. Not to Adjust to it, but just to learn what’s people reaction is, like how you said “I am fearful” and Nobody said “There is Fear,etc.,” and James another. Like this to witness what actually goes on in people.
But, as you say, there is also checking of Historical Background too. It’s second after witnessing few people’s reactions.
Wait. Wait. I think Historical Checking is the first.
No. I feel it’s to witness people’s reactions first. Because, I already observed and learnt in December 2021 and before itself, about the Historical Background of what is going on, and truly seen War is Approaching, at time of “Quads” meet and many hatred against US world domination.
So, after war broke out, my first reaction is to look at the “reactions of People”
Why is this ‘the question?’ Immediate gut impressions (almost) always lead to deferred deliberated impressions, and this is what we normally act on. What’s the benefit of going with one’s initial visceral response?
We have plenty of relatively correct answers. Absolute answers are what’s missing.
Isn’t your first sentence contradicted by your second?
re: post #90
Of course, the problem is not just one man. And in terms of human folly and brutality, nothing new has happened in Ukraine. There has been folly and brutality in Yemen, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Ethiopia, in China, in U.S.A. and in so many other places, times and circumstances, but there has been no similar global outrage and solidarity for the suffering people in those places. Is it partly because of the nuclear threat involved? Is it the nuclear threat which makes “this” crisis to be perceived as more serious than those other conflicts, more serious than global warming, more serious than drought, starvation, poverty, disasters, more serious than all the brutal, corrupt, selfish, greedy political, corporate and family regimes?
The world is on fire. Perhaps it cannot be solved at all, perhaps it can. But what is clear is that it cannot be solved by the intellect through analysis, or through putting together a plan, through authority and conformity. Perhaps there’s nothing to do about it. Do we see the immovable fact of the impotence of knowledge, thought, analysis, time and politics in action? Are we bound to turn endlessly to thought and knowledge for solutions? Is the limitation of thought, the inability of the intellect to solve any problem of relationship still not clear to us here?
To me, this crisis is not a NEW crisis. It is more dangerous globally, but it is still the crisis that originates in consciousness. It is the condition that has plagued mankind for all of history, the one that gathers us here. It is the crisis of the human mind enslaved by knowledge/thought/time. And knowledge is just as incapable of solving our problems of relationship now as ever. Knowledge cannot tell us how to respond to life’s challenges, how to act in the face of compulsions, desires, fears, and so on. It is incapable of right action, of doing the right thing. The legacy of action which is based on knowledge, analysis, time, and so on, is more suffering.
But there is something else in us as well. There is a flame of enquiry or discontent, which pushes us towards understanding, just as hunger pushes us towards food. This flame is not put together by thought or knowledge. Its energy comes from an altogether different source. One might try to dismiss it as something that is unreal, imaginary, unimportant, insignificant, invalid, silly, neurotic, unworthy of consideration, and so on — but one is unable to get rid of it. Isn’t it so? And is this “insignificant” flame in fact the whisper of God in our ear? Don’t be distracted by the word God. I mean by it the unknowable ground of everything, the eternal mystery of everything known and unknown.
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You asked: what is the intelligent way to understand and react to this situation? So we are looking at our own reactions, our actual reactions, not at some idealised or theoretical responses. If there is no reaction, this entire dialogue is all rather pointless.
My reaction is: I am afraid. Before anything else comes in, that’s it. What is your initial reaction?
But what was the feeling behind your own reaction?
We have no answer, absolute or otherwise. So what shall we do?
Hey Huguette. You raised many serious observations.
Yes, it’s the threat of Nuclear weapons create more panic among humans more than normal conflict more than Justice and Injustice Wars.
As you said about the “whisper”, I too feel that pushing me to rightly understand things as it is. Some religions calls this pushing as Nothing beyond but “one’s own karma”, some call it “Grace”, some call it as “One’s own choice”, actually I don’t know what it is, whether it is inside me or from outside. Just a feel to understand things rightly.
But, for me, that feel don’t urges me to think/assume/idea of “There is right action”. Actually I don’t see any right or wrong action. Whether the thought/action is from Knowledge or from something outside, every action has both Life and Death. Every action has this opposites. Every action benefits one and harms another, even if it is not from Knowledge.
Actually, I see, there is no such thing as right action. Only Awareness. Awareness about actions/thoughts. No New right actions come from such Awareness too. Action continues, benefitting one and Harming another. K wore clothes. Didn’t he aware that “Clothes are made by harming/killing Silk worms”.? K drank herbal tea and ate spinach items. Didn’t he aware that he ate and drank only by killing plants? He had not just ate “only fruits” like Sages, but by killing plants. Didn’t K is aware of “Tree Wood” that are placed in Foundations are by killing trees?
There is no such thing as right action or wrong action. Every action has harm and every action has benefits to some.
This is Life. No one can escape this form of life. Maybe a mendicant like Buddha/Sages, can live without harming plants/animals/etc.? It might be possible. For a Mendicant and Yogi, it might be possible to live a harmless life, refraining from food,cloth,shelter. But they don’t live a life, they strive to put an end to life. They don’t seek life even in such harmlessness and ready to face death willfully.
Actions contain both Life and Death. Both Benefits and Harm. Both Peace and Violence. Both Pleasure and Sufferings.
Not attaching oneself to actions but just witness it choicelessly and aware of it, is what I feel as the “whisper”, but not expect any “peaceful non-violent Humanity/Life”, not dream for “right action”.
Feeling??
One should always have emotions as “response”?
I don’t know. I don’t know what I “was” feeling emotionally. Joy?? Fear?? Pleasure?? Sufferings?? Eternal Peace?? Blissful?? I don’t know.
no. 50
Yes the “insight” can take place. I can’t say about an ‘ending’. I recall K saying in relation to that, that if the self didn’t end, that it wasn’t a real insight. Maybe there are degrees but that a real insight into the fraudulence of oneself would dissolve the whole structure. I don’t know.
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