You are both answering the question from what you already know about thought. Therefore, you are both providing limited answers. Can thought shut itself down? There isn’t either a Yes or a No at the end of this. There is only this question at the start, a new and simple question. Our answers are complicated and old. So let’s ignore the answers for the moment and just remain with the question, if I may respectfully suggest. This we can only do if all other questions are put aside. Therefore, first of all, let’s see if all other questions have fallen away and there is only this one question.
Okay: Can thought shut itself down?
Thought is memory. When we employ thought, that’s what we are using: memory. Do you have memory of God? Or memory of love? Or memory of pain? If you do, the memory is not the thing itself, is it? So is it possible to meet something like pain without the memory of all the previous pains? Otherwise, we are just meeting memory over and over again. We are never meeting the thing itself.
And the thing itself may not exist at all without memory. But unless thought shuts itself down so completely that there is only the actuality of the present moment with no shadows of the past, we shall never find out the truth of the matter; and those shadows will be our life or our version of life, which must always be limited.
That’s why this question is enormously important. But I am not sure it is our only question. There are possibly other questions in the background preventing this solely urgent question from being heard.
Yes. Above all: What’s so urgent about this question?
I experience the world indirectly by drawing upon memory. When I see a tree, I see a particular instance of a known set of objects stored in my memory: trees. I also see the particularities of this one tree, a leaf turned prematurely red, an impossibly long horizontal branch, but even that seeing involves memory.
Or on the more psychological level, when I see a friend, a warm feeling comes over me due to my drawing upon stored memories of affection. If this friend starts to obsess about video games, I think-feel: Sigh, this is boring for me, but I know from past experience (i.e. memory) that it would be very unpleasant for my friend if I interrupted his obsession, so I’ll sit back and let it play itself out.
Where’s the urgency to change any of these ways of being in the world?
But that’s not our question. We started out by asking who or what we are. Once we discover the answer to this question, maybe nothing needs to change. But the question of what we are, we said, is itself determined by the nature of the questioner. And the questioner is conditioned by thought which is the past. Either we remain content with a conditioned answer, which generally we do, or we look to see if it is possible to go beyond the limitations of this conditioning. A limited, conditioned way of living must always have conflict built into it because the ideals and expectations of the past will always be challenged by the actuality of the present. Generally, we meet these challenges by making compromises, by changing goals and beliefs. But we are asking these questions now to find out if there is a different way of living, one in which conflict between the past and the present, between the image and the actual, doesn’t determine the course of the rest of our life.
Fair enough. And I agree, our tendency to see the world via words and images does determine a great deal of the content and perceived quality of our lives.
It all makes perfect sense when we spell it out; intellectually, the argument is strong. But, even so, are there other questions in the background?
Nobody,
When one considers whether thought can end, that also includes whether one is interested in breaking away from the world, more specifically for what the world stands for - but not becoming a monk or a recluse. One must live in this world, right? Now, what the world stands for is status quo. And status quo implies that there won’t be change. Obviously, one will change when one breaks away from the old way. And this may mean that one must finally come to terms with a so-called “friendship” based on a lie. You see, withholding what you are (what you think, feel, etc.) from a “friend” is lying by omission. Always understanding that affection one has/had for someone else is not love, one moves towards the love of all. The urgency is always present, and that is because the world that we have known is not about to stay the same. Climate change and endemics will forever alter the face of the earth and of our lives. Tomorrow, the cost of food will rise exponentially. Are you prepared? So, yes, the urgency is part and parcel of any question, even more urgent than in K’s time.
Yes, what is thought? If we disagree, we’ll end up talking past each other.
I assume thought means in this context psychological thought, mental activity that is grounded in psychological time and a sense of self-as-center: words, images, feelings, emotions, everything that arises. I also assume thought means conscious thought, i.e. that it doesn’t include mental activity that takes place below the threshold of awareness.
When thought is the only intelligence operating, there is only choosing between one thought or another,
Paul, you have said that questions only matter and posed some questions on the aspects of the disorder and facing the facts. After reading your comment, I got the following question,
Q. What is the whole purpose of this questioning?
@nobody
@charleycannuck
@Inquiry
@DanMcD
Please share your thoughts after reading my question.
Okay…
Then there should be intelligence without thought also.
I posed the question “What am I?” along with five possible answers at the beginning of the thread, because I suspect there is not a single ‘right’ answer, rather as many valid answers as there are answerers.
Drop the ‘I’ and replace it with ‘there is’.
DanMcD,
Both are same
I can put in simple words. The purpose, I posed the question “What is the whole purpose of this questioning?” is because of the fact that I question if there is some motive to know or clear something. In the present case, I want to know is it same with everyone in this discussion or not.
Otherwise for me questions are pointless.
What drives the questioning for me is the desire to know what I truly am, what we humans truly are, what life truly is, what the world truly is. It’s kind of a burning curiosity. It’s not primarily a desire to heal or fix myself, others, the world, though that wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’s the urge to know, to get it.
How about you?
That was an honest answer. Then you are having a view on what you want clearly?
I said previously, I am my desire.
So without desire is there a sivaram?
Should be?
Krishnamurti spoke of thought, and he spoke of the “awakening of intelligence”. He said that thought, the intellect, is not intelligence, but that intelligence (once awakened) uses thought.
Whether this is true or not, I can’t say because thought is the only intelligence I know, and it fails so frequently and falls so short, I know it isn’t intelligent.