What can we learn from nature?

Kinfonet Discussion
42

Charley

I hope you see a drop in temperature there soon, as the heat being experienced in some parts of Canada sounds horrendous and on a par with what I understand Australia was getting last summer. It’s all looking ominous for the human species, and others, since the drive behind much of this is insatiable on the part of humans, and is not going to change anytime soon, if at all. Human desire sustained through thinking has precipitated a crisis for real, and the response of most is to simply seek more of the same.

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Hi Dominic,

Thanks for your response and care; actually, the temperature has dropped, and I am no longer sweating buckets and drinking buckets of water… Unfortunately, Canada (and B.C.) has still not prepared adequately. I think there should have been some extreme alert (not the politically correct “nice” “advisory” that had been going around) that should have warned us all immediately as to the extreme danger. You know, like an extreme danger alert (like a bomb dropping). Apparently, Canada is the first country that is seeing what Katharine Hayhoe, climatologist, has stated, “cited studies and government reports, showing Canada was warming twice as fast than the rest of the world…” So what we have been living through now is what most people in other places will eventually have to go through. So, I am deeply concerned about all this and hope that everyone on this site is taking whatever precautions they can.

Tomorrow is Canada Day, a day I don’t celebrate. I just happen to live in this area. What is really terrible this year has been the discovery of all the unmarked grave sites (so far, @ 1000) around the Christian residential schools. “At least 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families to attend the notorious schools. They were given new names, forcibly converted to Christianity and prohibited from speaking their native languages. The last residential school closed in the 1990s.” Years ago, I attended a potlatch and was seated with elders (I wasn’t exactly a “elder” but so many elders don’t live that long so their idea of who is an elder was at a lower age than that of a Caucasian’s life expectancy). They told me of all the damage that so many had suffered at the hands of organized religion - the residential schools. So many who had lived through all that had no idea how to be parents, having been separated from their own parents. So, all I did was listen, and listen. It was so tragic. And then they fed me - what a feast, and then they gave me gifts. I am sure that there will be more unmarked grave sites. And now quite a few churches on indigenous land are being burned down to the ground… The police are calling such acts of arson “criminal”. For god’s sake, what was done to the children was far worse! It is all too terrible. Little wooden crosses by the roadside with little orange shirts…I wept.

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44

I learn that I haven’t been really listening when I hear what, until now, I notice. Does this mean I’m learning to listen, or does it mean that what I’ve failed to hear henceforth is louder than usual?

I assume I’m learning to listen because questing for what-should-be is what I’ve learned to do.

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I have followed that particular tragedy, and am familiar with the pathology in question, having experienced it close up in my own life. The disturbing fact about all this, is that everyone of the perpetrators was once a child who was exposed to everything this is psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, and is the reality of the term conditioning. Conditioning is the most damaging and dangerous of things, and is a self-perpetuating cycle the brain is initiated into without being aware. Moreover nothing which has made for this has gone away today, as there is nowhere for it to go away to. The corruption and the violence it embodies is all around. Self is the repository of a great deal that is too disturbing it seems for most to face.

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Is it the wind that blows, or the trees that move? Just the other day I thought maybe that unusual experience is what was the inspiration for that book, “Wind in the Willows”. I mean it gave inspiration to give character to all the creatures with a life familiar to us all.

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Thought will always jump in to analyse and conclude. I was talking about people who spent their lives living in woodlands and who, by living close to nature, learned some things that are hidden to most people. You seem to have a problem with that but I have no idea why.

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Hello Peter. You might well be right about what inspired “The Wind in the Willows”.

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Hi Dominic,

You live in Oz, right? The indigenous people there too were and are still being brutalized by the Caucasian invaders. I have seen news reports there where such perpetrators are still trying to take over water rights to use for their farms (land which they stole from the indigenous people in Oz).

Yes, conditioning is indeed a vicious cycle. Many on this site use “thinking together” as a healthy (wholesome) means to awareness of this conditioning. So, I see nothing wrong at all with doing that. Personally, I really did not have the option of “thinking together” when I got into K, as I didn’t even own a computer then. To me, it was only the suggestion by K to allow his words to saturate deep within by reading some books of K, and having a silent communion with those words (a communion of which I wasn’t even aware at that time that I was doing). I did attend one dialogue group meeting in my area, but was turned off by the moderator, when he began to speak - as I saw this yellow layer of consciousness in his eyes - and he was speaking out of that field. At that time, I had no idea what that meant, and only now use the words “layer of consciousness”. What I understand is that K spoke out of intelligence - not intellect - K spoke out of mind/heart, and not out of one particular layer of consciousness. I felt at that time (correctly - seeing that in hindsight), that there was something wrong in this moderator’s particular approach; and at first break, I left - quietly. I had occasion to speak with an older woman about that meeting, a woman who had known K, and was told point blank that their little group of some older folk had come to a conclusion that - to use their words - that it was a “wrong way”, which I now understand is what K and Bohm referred to as a wrong turn - in other words, maintaining and sustaining the intellectual layer of thought/thinking. For me, the only danger of thinking together is that it may be seen by some as an end goal, or in other words, as a means of bypassing the facing of the conditioning. So, what I am saying is that for someone who is an intellectual, this “thinking together”, may appear to be seen as an ultimate remedy in itself, which of course, I see as being false in itself. Now, I could be wrong in seeing that, but I don’t think so, because I have seen on this site more than one person using “thinking together” come to a conclusion because of their conditioning.

Dominic, I wish you well in your journey of self-discovery.

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I have no problem with that. It’s our tendency to assume things I’m addressing.

Krishnamurti said that listening is an art, and if this is true, the question is whether it takes time to master this art, learning it through practice, developing skill, etc., or whether it’s simply a matter of being quiescent, sensitive, able to hear and feel everything within range, including one’s conditioned responses.

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Hi Charley

No I’m in the UK but I knew someone very elderly in Australia and events in the ‘commonwealth’ countries are reasonably well-covered in the British media. I’m aware there is another disturbing issue there in Canada around missing and murdered indigenous women. Australia seems on the face of it a racist society, built on the notion of white supremacy.

There is evidence to suggest Europeans had contact with African and Middle Eastern peoples down the centuries without any notion of racial superiority intruding. There were Africans in Britain as Roman Legionaries during Roman times, and there was contact with other groups whilst trading, and warfare via the Crusades etc. The Moors inhabited southern Spain for centuries and even reached as far as Vienna at one point.

What seems to have changed and brought about the systemic racism in evidence today, is the expansion and empire building from the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries onwards, culminating in the various European powers taking over the continent of Africa, and the British, India. This required an army of troops and officials to oversee things, and it is at this point an ideology of racial superiority was built up to justify the process involved. Settlers and civil servants alike were indoctrinated with the mentality required to enable this expansion, all of which points to the malleability of human thought with its greed, and its separation, and all that entails.

Ironically, Krishnamurti was in part an outcome of that ‘white saviour’ mentality. Brockwood Park, the centre of all things Krishnamurti here in the UK, is a concept born of the typical English boarding school, set in the English countryside, which all his middle class sponsors would have known as part of their upbringing, and which served for over a century as the incubating chambers for colonial administrators.

Yes, unless thinking is informed by something other than itself, then it soon degenerates into what is really the attempt to block awareness. I have noticed that Krishnamurti forums are almost exclusively populated by males, with females rarely popping their heads above the parapet, and when they do, they are quickly despatched by the ‘superior’ male intellectuals finding fault with what they say. In fact I detect an element of misogyny, born as I see it of a certain mistrust, and fear of a different mode of expression, which is not theirs; one which can speak to things which are not in their comprehension, and therefore under their command and control.

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Gee, Dominic,

Wonderful post, I really have never studied history, not one course in history in all those silly years of university, thank you so much for explaining the origins of “systemic racism”. Much appreciated. The only form of racism that I studied online, out of curiosity, was the hatred that exists in the Middle East, Israel and Palestine, that never really existed until the Brits got involved and separated the two, both sharing common ancestry, previously living together without the hatred that is so prevalent today.

You said:

I found it so odd how K stressed thinking together in the later years, when originally he had stated:

“So, similarly, if we could, together this evening, commune with each other, not think together – you cannot think together, that is the ugliness of thought; but we can commune together, which takes place only when you and I are both vitally concerned, responsive, eager to feel the problem, to touch it, to smell it, to taste it, to go deeply into it – then communication has an extraordinary significance. It is like communing with oneself, so that in that communication, in that communion you see the hidden things, you see the beauty, which you had never felt before, you see the quality, the intensity. Then from that communion action takes place. And in that action there is no contradiction, because that action is not based on an idea.”
K, New Delhi, 3rd Public Talk, 14th November 1965

Of course, I understand one must be able to be sensitive to both beauty and ugliness, not suppressing what is ugly, but being aware of it all…

Having said that, I still find the operation/process (not sure whether that is the right word) of thinking/together an ugly business. It may have been that K realized (because of being surrounded by so many intellectuals) that thinking together was the only way he was able to talk with them, to reach them. Communing is where it is at as far as I am concerned, communing together. When the mind has not fused with the heart - when the heart is barren and devoid of love - it is then that those kind of intellectuals may be attracted to the possibility of thinking together - a kind of last refuge for them. Because thought itself is limited - because it is based on knowledge, which itself is limited - whatever thought does is limited, so thinking together must in itself be limited as well. Personally, I understood that long before reading K, and refused to study anything that involved accumulating and memorizing reams of knowledge, which would in time require adding more knowledge as more information in any branch of science increased. So, at that time, much to the great disappointment and shock of my parents, I decided not to study medicine. No regrets. :smiley:

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I would refer any misogynists to the talks between Pupul Jayakar and JK.

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Charley, I am in agreement with you about this. I think Krishnamurti observing how the intellect was so highly regarded within human culture, and how intellectuals of all hues effectively functioned as, what in today’s terminology, might be called an ‘influencer’, that he felt it necessary to try and communicate with them on their terms, starting with writers such as Aldous Huxley, and then gravitating towards academics, scholars and scientists. I’ve watched videos of the ‘dialogues’ he held with people, and I find the mostly male participants dull as dish water, and slow with it. Even the ‘poster boy’ for many of the intellectual types attracted to Krishnamurti, David Bohm, though he may have been good at physics, never had anything that insightful to say, and I never felt Krishnamurti needed any of these conversations, but was essentially just nursing ‘broken’ men.

The thing I observe about intellect in the wild, and there’s no better example of it than in the case of the religiously-minded, and their schools which I have experienced first-hand as a child, is the attempt to effectively colonise the mind or the consciousness, through what can only be described as an obsession with control. It is equally insightful to observe how, throughout the ages, males seem always to have regarded females as somehow irrational, and dangerous, and have sought to extend control over every part of them.

Those who lack an awareness of the nature and extent of controlling in themselves, cannot then be aware of much else. As you rightly point out, communing is of an altogether different nature from thinking together, and it is clear that for many, that which is communion is instinctively feared, because it cannot be made subject to control, and cannot be rallied into shape in the way their thinking can. This whole business of trying to force entry through having a specific question, as part of proceedings subject to the tightest of control, is antithetical in a sense to that which is spontaneous and organic in nature.

You appear to be an instinctive sense of what is good for you, with the presence of mind to act on it :slight_smile:

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Dominic,

I tried to send you a PM, but you do not have that option available on your homepage. I would like to chat with you in real time. Let’s be friends. There is skype. I don’t have enough money to do that by phone. I am quite poor, don’t even have a credit card. Walmart hassled me several times to apply for one, so I relented, and applied. Several weeks later I received a letter refusing me a card, saying something to the effect that they could find no record of me. I thought that was funny, like “I” don’t exist.

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Charley I’ll sort out my email address for you tomorrow.

Imagine being told you don’t exist by a computer algorithm! Who does that algorithm think it is :slight_smile:

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There are the changes which we can call industrialization. It is the superiority with technology that has highlighted differences between inhabitants of different regions, and differences within. We still see this as the dominant ethos for development. Life now is all about industrial, technological and economic productivity. We may analyze it as different genders, different skills, different lifestyles, different religions, but this is just breaking it down to our own level, and we are part of it.

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Peter,

I broke away from society quite some years ago; and boy, does that ever annoy those who are stuck in it! You wouldn’t believe how badly people behaved towards me when they suddenly realized that I wanted nothing to do with that way of life. And still some do… even those who are caught in the web of thought/thinking - but, because of meditation I no longer mind. So, I do not consider myself part of the “industrial” society to which you referred - I refused to participate in the GDP, I just stopped, all because the meditation began - so, I ended my identification with any community! To this day, I can honestly say that I have never met a single person who understood what I did. So, I ask you, Peter, who is this “we” are you referring to? Please list all the names… that constitute this “we”, this royal “we”, this nosism… of which you (plural) are a part of.

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I am referring to what is maybe called existence. No doubt some people have freedom from conditioning, or have opted out, but it would be a total awakening, to be actually free from conditioning, wouldn’t it? This total awakening is perhaps clear to some people, but I don’t think they are very much interested in, or bothered by what I have to say. I am just making it clear what this conditioning is in a way we can understand what we are faced with, and then we can see what obstructs a true place in nature.

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Peter,

“I” have no personal sense of being free!, but “I” asked the mind/heart, and the mind/heart said, “you are home free”. “I” also have no sense of being “awakened” or of the word “enlightened”.

Peter, you are speculating as to who would know or even understand what the word “awakening” means - so, who could judge/discern whether or not someone else was awakened? To say whether someone else is awakened, one would have to use thought/thinking, which is limited, and is the source and signature and mark of conditioning; therefore, any conclusion which thought would arrive at would be flawed/contaminated (not sure if that is the correct word) by that very conditioning. There are no words that could ever come even close to describing what that means. To sit besides someone who has no conditioning, both are silent. No words pass between them. There is just this silence. There would only be the seeing of the white light that is the essence of intelligence in each other.

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What can be learned from nature (and everything else for that matter I suppose) is that there is a ‘superficial awareness’ (perception) by the senses: the trees, the water, the birds and animals, the sounds, the smells, the breeze, the people… and along with that simple sensing, there is the conditioned response to all of, or part of that. The conditioned response is a product of the past, of memory. There is a range of responses, continuously undergoing modifications perhaps, but they are all conditioned, all from the past, whether that past is a moment ago or years… The conditioned response is the ‘me’ that creates the imaginary psychological distance or separation from what is simply perceived by the senses.

‘Awakening’, then, simply put, is an awareness of the conditioned response as it arises and the “negation” of it.