Fear, identity and experience do not dissapear forever - the idea is that the worst behaviour and actions of the self (aka from fear) are mitigated by the loss of dominance that suffering undergoes through freedom and clarity.
A bit like how bungee jumping becomes less scary once you get into the habit/realise that you don’t die when you fall off the bridge.
Its not so much my knowledge/opinions about “magical illumination” that is important, but how I feel and interact with my daily life, once freed from my self delusions and angst.
I think there is a danger of reifying certain statements that Krishnamurti makes so that they become impossible ideals, abstracted from daily experience. Although Krishnamurti uses the term total attention to imply the complete non-existence of the self at any level, his language around awareness and choicelessness is more nuanced and subtle. Awareness is simply awareness of whatever is arising in the mind at any given moment (whether it be thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations, etc).
The term choiceless awareness shares a family resemblance with a group of terms - such as nonjudgmental awareness, bare attention, open monitoring, etc - that are used in ‘modern mindfulness’. The influences on ‘modern mindfulness’ include the so-called “bare attention” of Burmese Vipassana (beginning with Sayadaw and Nyanaponika), and the so-called open-presence (or open-monitoring) styles of approach that have been articulated in the Dzogchen and Mahamudra schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, the “father of modern mindfulness” - Jon Kabat-Zinn - directly appropriated Krishnamurti’s phrase “choiceless awareness” to describe his own syncretism of these traditions. (Of course, ‘modern mindfulness’ is highly contentious among more traditional and conservative communities of Theravada Buddhists, because they hold to an interpretation of mindfulness which emphasises the roles played by memory and conscious choice - but there is no need to go into the weeds on this issue here).
In the academic literature around ‘modern mindfulness’, the attitude of choiceless awareness has been summarised as
A kind of non-elaborative, non-judgemental, present-centred awareness in which each thought, feeling or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is
In principle this is simply an effortless awareness of the present situation that anyone can have in the moment, from children to adults. It’s not an impossible prescription.
Yes - That this is impossible can be intellectually understood.
Is that sufficient? I don’t know - what happens when you realise (intellectually, logically) the limits of thought?
Is that necessary? I think so - its a start, and maybe an end. (if there is a strong enough need/energy/willingness/courage to end suffering)
I kinda think that some understanding of the process of self needs to happen intellectually. As a starting point at least. Where else would we start from? Emotions?
I mean where does the realisation that freedom from suffering cannot be achieved through thought start? Thats what we are discussing isn’t it? What provokes the attention to the mental chatter, and the understanding of where it leads?
Are you proposing that someone who has no concept of thought and suffering - other than personal experience - can be free of it without the intellect?
If self knowledge is ‘learning’ about myself from moment to moment, there must be freedom. Freedom from motive. If there is not total freedom in the ‘watching’ there will be as K put it, a “choosing “. Then what is chosen “occupies” the mind. The content of this occupation is the past carried into the present moment.
Is it possible to listen to something that, for now let’s just use the example of someone speaking, something that someone says, to hear it and not then start thinking about what you just heard? To just hear it. Can you do it?
I don’t know. Thought happens so fast - there is also a sort of preprepared unconscious knowledge that reacts almost immediately -and if I’m told beforehand to make the effort, that kind of creates a weight/effort of forced silence that doesn’t seem right.
I am interested by your question, and my intellectual conclusion is : no - or, its tricky.
I am asking - can you just listen without the intellect following, being engaged? If not, why not? If not, can there be observation of the content of the response (can be thought and/or feeling and/or sensation)?
You are well ensconced in your intellect, in your prison, macdougdoug, No one but you can get you out. You have successfully batted away any response by me, without exploration, and, I have no doubt, that you will continue to do so. And although I am loath to quote, as Yoda said, ‘That is why you fail.’
Hi Dan. There is the intellectual understanding that the self must dissolve and the process of the dissolution which seems to have a different quality altogether. This process of dissolution doesn’t seem to be a thing of intention or intellect at all. Does it simply happen when conditions are right? Like the breeze coming in the open window?
Yes, perhaps “experimenting with the teachings” is more accurate than “experimenting with choiceless awareness”. Is the “open window” having an open heart and mind?
I wonder if Bob’s question can be put not in terms of listening to someone’s written or verbal expression (which ordinarily - though not necessarily - invites an automatic intellectual response), but rather in the most general possible terms.
That is: can there be a listening or watching or awareness - of an animal, of a person, of a plant, of a landscape, of the sea, of a piece of music, or of any inward sensation or reaction - in which one’s thinking (the intellect) is temporally in abeyance?
This is obviously an experimental question, requiring free time (leisure) and a spontaneous moment of inner space or freedom which cannot be willed or consciously chosen.
It is unlikely to occur while sitting at a computer or during a discussion with other people. But I think we’ve all experienced moments when on holiday, or taking a walk, when thought (as intellect) is in abeyance, and there’s just a simple awareness (aka listening, seeing, observing) of what is going on (whether inside or outside). No?
Wouldn’t there have to be a flash of ‘insight’ (seeing into) that illuminates the psychological situation, psychological thought, the illusion of the duality of thinker / thought, observer / observed etc, illuminates it all so clearly, to the degree that there is no returning to it? What is ‘insight’? How or why would it occur? I don’t know.
How would I know unless I’m “freed from my self delusions and angst”? Why do we talk about freedom (of which we know nothing) when it’s our self-imposed bondage we’re concerned with?
Thank you James - Staring blankly into fire, or sitting on the beach watching the waves, without any accompanying mental narrative, is something that does happen - there are also moments of silence in zazen.
But I am still not getting the gist how this works in dialogue - what is the parallel with the union that sometimes arises when the intellect is not sollicited - like a walk in the park, a sunset? And I am concerned with the danger of implementing some method when talking or listening to someone speak.
With dialogue this becomes much more of a challenge of course - as the use of words and the involvement of relational feedback (i.e. the various tensions that arise between people, the misunderstandings, egotism, dissension, etc) are apt to stimulate the intellect.
However, even granting this, the principle is the same. The same capacity of the mind to be quiescent when looking at a fire, the stars, or a sunset, is present when dialogue is going on.
There is no method for this - because if there really is misunderstanding or dissension then perhaps all one can do is to listen to the other as though one was listening to music: that is, listen to the sound of the other person (or oneself) as sound, or watch the physical behaviour of the other (or oneself) as biological phenomena (in the same way that one might watch birds at the feeding table).
But when dialogue is harmonious (which is a rarity!), when there is comprehension and full participation between people, then there is a possibility of a deeper non-verbal quality of communication which can yet be carried through the words that are spoken. David Bohm called this “impersonal fellowship”, but it isn’t of course restricted to group dialogues.
In fact, it is far more likely to occur between two or three people, where the gap between misunderstanding and correction is swifter, and intimacy is more accessible. - In such an atmosphere one participant can simply say a word, and that word takes on a non-verbal charge (of significance) that resonates through everyone. In such a situation the intellect is completely subsidiary to comprehension (which is principally non-verbal), and so one can receive the word (in its whole non-verbal significance) with little or no intellectual reactivity.
This attempt to have true dialogue seems just as tricky to apprehend as a poem by Nagarjuna or Schrodinger’s cat.
When in the presence of a wounded or traumatised animal, we react. Sadness and a desire to help might instinctively arise in us. At the same time, fear and a desire to escape may arise in the animal. We are both in a relation with our internal conditioning - No meeting with the other seems to be taking place.
I wonder whether a group hug might be easier.
Wikipedia tells me that in Bohm dialogues we are to “suspend judgement” in the converstaion, yet “be honest” and try to “build on other people’s ideas”.
In such a dialogue, when one person says something, the other person does not, in general, respond with exactly the same meaning as that seen by the first person. Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the 2nd person replies, the 1st person sees a Difference between what he meant to say and what the other person understood. On considering this difference, he may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to his own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go back and forth, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants. Thus, in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that two people are making something in common , i.e., creating something new together. ((Bohm, On Dialogue , p. 3.))
