What does it mean to learn?

As far as I can make out : insight is not due to any wilful action on my behalf. At the most it would seem that I must be absent (as in not flailing around in ernest mentation) - in some way silence allows insight to answer the question at hand, although in no way is insight guaranteed.

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Watching the stream of consciousness takes time; finding out how to learn takes time; being absent and silent also takes time. Why? Because we now have to be clear with each other what these very different answers mean.

But when we say to each other, ā€˜I really donā€™t know what to do,ā€™ does this need further elucidation? And I really donā€™t know. Therefore I drop altogether any thoughts about the right action.

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To want X, but have no clue how to have X (or if X is even have-able) ā€¦ sounds like a recipe for disappointment and failure to me.

Then learn about disappointment and failure. Thatā€™s far more real than X.

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Why? To what end? Disappointment is a downer, why would I open myself to it?

Thatā€™s up to you. One canā€™t learn and yet be selective about what one learns at the same time.

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When pure being implies no subject or object, it also implies no feeling.

Feeling of pure being implies thought, obviously.

Do you see what is happening here?

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Not true, and characteristically absolutist. You can choose what to learn and you can learn about what you havenā€™t chosen. Sometimes you have the freedom and the leisure to learn what you choose to learn, and sometimes you have no choice but to learn about what you canā€™t escape.

Disapointment is practically pure self. And at the same time at its most fragile.
Happiness and success, just makes us more addicted to self.

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Attention, which is necessary for learning (I think weā€™d agree on that, right?), is by nature selective. Out of the innumerable mental events/arisings that stream by every second, we pay attention only to a select few. We canā€™t do more than that. So a selection is being made, whether consciously or not.

Why would someone choose to learn about disappointment if doing so causes them pain?

The jury is still out for me whether there is feeling without thought and vice-versa. They seem to arise together in mutual feedback. Thoughts cause feelings, feelings cause thoughts. But there might be exceptions: pure feeling, pure thinking.

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And the selection may not be a conditioned response. It may be intelligence acting.

How many times do I have to be disappointed before I find out whether disappointment is inevitable or dependent on expectation?

When you use a phrase like ā€œpure beingā€, donā€™t expect it to go unquestioned. I have no idea what you mean by it, and even if I did, itā€™s just an idea, a notion, a belief.

The pain, actual and psychological distress, is what will for some people, lead them to seriously examine their lives, and stop playing games. They will not make a fuss about some word, some definition, when the context actually provides the meaning, if they did not react and want to give an obtuse opinion.

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After going through the content in this thread I got a question,

Can I say learning could be watching things around just for nothing?

Ask Sisyphus!


And other people will find a different way in. There are no Ten Commandments for this kind of work!

By pure being I mean being with no psychological time or content. More or less the same as pure awareness or pure consciousness. I donā€™t know if 100% pure being (or pure anything) is possible. But I know, from experience, that time and content can be more in the foreground or in the background.

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