Yes - dialogue can be a very thorny experience!! All relationships have their challenges after all.
Yet, I think the experiments we can make (with listening/observing, etc) in our immediate relationships are the most fertile grounds for meaningful discovery (although a dialogue with strangers has its place too).
Before trying to be a Buddha in the marketplace, a few baby-steps on our own might be helpful.
If I haven’t lost my ability to step confidently, with assurance and authority, can I honestly step like a baby? Wouldn’t it just be methodical?
We are talking about freedom from our habitual dependance on self.
Baby steps means tentative experimentation, outside the assurance of habitual authority.
What you say seems to have been the case for K as far as I understand. All I can say is that things normally don’t happen completely out of the blue. I mean that a certain level of awareness probably needs to exist before such a flash of insight takes place. How do you see this Dan?
I think ‘awareness’ is key to understanding. Thought has to be aware that its own ‘desire’ for insight is a movement away from ‘what is’. Thought creates and holds an image of a state of ‘satisfaction’ that is always ‘out of reach’ , just around the corner, a permanent state of happiness, etc. It also has created a ‘future’ time where it hopes this state might be ‘reached’ and the present moment is constantly sacrificed to the ‘dream’. Thought itself can be aware of this ‘trap’ it has created.
Awareness of the desire to ‘become’, is key.
One must be acutely aware of everything one can be aware of, but I wonder if it isn’t misleading to attribute desire or any feeling or motive to “thought”, as when saying that "thought has to be aware of its desire, etc.
Isn’t thought just the mechanism by which emotions and motives are articulated, named? Wouldn’t it be more accurate, less misleading, to speak of “will” as the agency rather than thought?
Thought itself can be aware of this ‘trap’ it has created.
Has thought created the trap, or has the creator of the trap used thought to construct it? Isn’t thought just the tool?
Shouldn’t we make a clear distinction between thought and the will to use it? Where there is no will to think, there is no thought, but what we know is perpetual, incessant thought, which means we are always willful, always striving, struggling, determined to achieve, arrive, accomplish, thus never entirely present, completely attentive, whole, undivided.
The human condition is desperate, but attributing this condition to thought is a mistake because relentless thought is the symptom, not the disease. We say there is no thinker, only thought, but thought is only the means by which the will, the would-be thinker, expresses itself.
K:Thought must be aware of its own ways, of its own cunning deceptions. In being aware of itself, without any desire to be or not to be, the mind comes to a state of inaction. Inaction is not death; it is a passive watchfulness in which thought is wholly inactive. It is the highest state of sensitivity. When the mind is completely inactive at all its levels, only then is there action. All the activities of the mind are mere sensations, reactions to stimulation, to influence, and so not action at all. When the mind is without activity, there is action; this action is without cause, and only then is there bliss.
Why do I want something?
Yes, Krishnamurti blamed thought for our condition, even though he knew there is no thought without the will to think. Maybe someone can explain why he did this.
Is there desire without thought to reify it? Yes, but it’s nebulous, inchoate, until thought gives it form.
Here K blames not thought, but the fact that it is deceiving itself - the deluded identity of thought.
Thought might even be essential, in the above claim by K.
The “will to think” : I want x. “I” am a feeling and a concept/thought. My “Will” is a feeling determined by thought - Thought determines what and why I want. “X” is a concept/thought.
And when there is motive, it is the “I” thought being/in action. Motive and the thoughts that arise from it is the “I” in that moment.
The I that exists when we review/analyse that moment, after it has passed, is merely a concept, an extra participant, imagined and stored in memory (the thought/knowledge/experience bank) - which in turn ferments and becomes/provokes motivethought
PS - nebulous desire is thought arising from sensation and conditioning that has not yet been articulated in a civilized grammatical manner. (chocolate yumyum => An adequate portion of your finest cocoa based confectionary would be most appreciated)
How is this to come about? Why is psychological thought “cunning”? Did thought invent psychological ‘time’? Practical time is obvious. A beginning, middle and end… why bring this into the psyche? Is it ‘will’ that made thought “cunning” or did it become cunning all by itself? If will willed it to be cunning can will will it to stop being cunning? Can ‘will’ put thought back in its right place and if not why not? Is it because will isn’t aware of what it is willing? Can will be aware of its own cunning deceptions and end them? And as a result, psychological thought along with them?
Dan,
from my excerpt file:
“What is will? I will do this. I won’t do that. I must and must not. What is this will, which plays such a tremendous part in our life? Please go into it with me, not accepting what the speaker is saying, find out for yourself in heaven’s name what will is, because that plays such an extraordinary part in our life. “I must give up smoking”. “I must not do this”, and so on. What is that will? It is a movement – isn’t it? Obviously. A movement in a direction, in a particular direction, either the negative direction, or the positive direction, but it is a direction. Please listen carefully. When there is a direction there is time involved. I am here and I must be there. I am angry, I must get rid of anger. So, will is a movement in time – right? Please. And what is the essence of that will? What brings about, or what generates that will? You understand my question? As long as you have a directive, an end, you must have a will. So, what is the nature and the structure of will? When you say, “I will do that” – what is that? And when you say, “I will not do that”, or mustn’t do that, the movement, what is it that takes place? Is it opposing desires, the desire that says, “I will”, and the desire that says, “I will not”? So, desire, desire strengthened, concentrated, is will. Right? Opposing, or completely unified.”
K: Saanen, 3rd Public Talk, 15th July 1976, Chapter 11, from J. Krishnamurti, Truth and Actuality, Inscriptions
“Will is really an illusory necessity of fear, not a divine quality. It is but the perpetuation of self-protective memories. Out of fear you make yourself invulnerable to love, to truth; and the development of the process of self-protection is called will. Will has its roots in egotism. The will to exist, the will to become perfect, the will to succeed, the will to acquire, the will to find god – is the urge of egotism.”
K: Madras, 4th Public Talk, 28 Dec. 1936, 3 Aug. 1936, from Collected Works Vol. 03 – The Mirror of Relationship*
Krishnamurti: Organized disorder, which is the organized disorder of a society that rejects the good. Because the society is me. I am the society; if I don’t change, society cannot change. And here is the deliberate intention to hurt another, whether it is organized as war or not.
Naudé: In fact, organized war is the group manifestation of the phenomenon you are speaking about in India – putting the thorns through the little statues.
Krishnamurti: This is well known; this is as old as the hills. So, I am saying, “This desire to hurt, consciously or unconsciously, and yielding to it, and giving it sustenance, is what?” Would you call that evil?
Naudé: Of course.
Krishnamurti: Then we shall have to say that will is evil.
Naudé: Aggression is evil. Violence is evil.
Krishnamurti: Wait, see it! Will is evil, because I want to hurt you.
Naudé: Someone might say though, “The will to do you good” – is that will also evil?
Krishnamurti: You cannot will to do good. Either you are good, or not good, you can’t will goodness. Will being the concentration of thought as resistance.
Naudé: Yes, you said that goodness is the absence of a blueprint.
K: The Awakening of Intelligence, Part III, Ch. 2, 2nd Conversation with Alain Naudé, Malibu California, 28 Mar. 1971, ‘On Good and Evil’
This is only the second time that I have heard K Use the word “evil”, once with the self: “ the self is evil” and now, “wait see it, Will is evil”.
K“Will being the concentration of thought as resistance”
Dan: I see something attractive and the desire to have it arises. If it goes no further than that, the desire fades. But if the attraction is strong enough then ‘will’ arises and takes me in the direction to get what I ‘must’ have…
K** So, desire, desire strengthened, concentrated, is will.**
Dan,
K didn’t really like using that word… In Mary Zimbalist’s book, she mentioned how K (in later years, while there were the legal matters going on), K wouldn’t even touch the letter that came from Rajagopal.
She wrote:
“In one of the discussions, Krishnaji made the statement that, “there is, in effect, nothing to do but listen, listen with affection.” That’s the way he put it. He said that if a statement is made that is true, it has its own action if you listen. He illustrated this with that story of the robbers—he’s told it many times—of the band of robbers is made by their leader to close their eyes and ears as they go past a teacher who is teaching. The youngest robber steps on a thorn, and drops his hands, and hears the words, “stealing is evil,” which he truly hears, and he could no longer steal.” [Dec. 1965 to May 1966]
Mary: Well, especially in his last few years, he had this feeling about darkness, that there was kind of…when the sun is gone, the forest, which he loved, and he felt a wonderful place to be…evil went into the forest at night. He said he would never go into a forest alone at night.
Scott: I remember something like that, that he felt there was a very strong sense of menace in a forest at night.
…
Mary: Well, he said very categorically, if you like, that there is such a thing as good and evil.
Scott: Evil, yes.
Mary: And one is not the other face of the same coin. There is no relation between the two. But both exist.
…
Mary: Well, I was about to say that very thing. He said to me many times, not many times, but several times, it’s better not…you shouldn’t talk about evil…it invites it.
…
Mary: Well, I was about to say that very thing. He said to me many times, not many times, but several times, it’s better not…you shouldn’t talk about evil…it invites it.
Mary: He said that, I know, in Ojai, he said it to me. And he also felt the contamination, as it were, of people who had evil intent or something evil in them. For instance, again this is way out of the progression of this saga, he told me I must never let either Rajagopal or Rosalind come into the cottage. Those two, he said…
Scott: Mm, hm. Mm, hm…
Mary: Never let them come into this place. [Issue 8 - Sep. 1967 to Apr. 1968]
There are many other instances when K spoke of “evil” privately to Mary… which she mentioned… too many to list, but what one got out of that was that K understood that “evil” was a force that existed in itself…
One understands that most people are encouraged by society to desire/want, but the “will” to go out and seize it… well… is something else entirely… perhaps because this kind of action is entirely exclusive of any consequence re: the other.
What’s the difference between will being “determined by thought” and being articulated by thought? Either way, thought is the means, the mechanism by which a feeling becomes motive, intention, a sense of direction and purpose. When thought does not respond reflexively (unintelligently), feelings arise and pass when they don’t need to be acted on.
If thought responded intelligently rather than conditionally, feelings wouldn’t become motives, desires or fears. Feelings blossom and wilt when nothing needs to be done about them, but the conditioned mind reacts to every feeling, naming it, reacting to the name, and responding accordingly.
The conditioned mind is like a gun, and thoughts are bullets. When it is triggered by a feeling, it shoots what bullets it has at the threatening/promising feeling and gets a response that frames everything in familiar terms, reducing everything to something it knows. Then, when the gun acknowledges its mistake, it blames the bullets.
He also often spoke of power as being evil - the search for power, or to be “near” a power (that is, near a powerful person, such as a dictator, a powerful political leader, etc).
There are three points in the above .
Maybe an absolute clarity about the hollowness of ambition is necessary - the desire to “be someone”, be respected and have status applies to all fields, surely. I mean in terms of the teachings, this desire to become enlightened is probably no different to having the desire to become a top lawyer, is it?