I was thinking more along the lines of brushing up against the limit - as in frontier - of thought, all thought whether it be pyschological, practical or emotional. Coming to terms with the fact that the future will be pretty much the same as what we are now,.
I used the word hope in another post — there too I am taking liberty with words, unabashedly making them mean what I choose them to mean - and using hope in a much more comprehensive sense than you did. I equate hope with ‘free’ will, inspiration, anticipation, future-bound. And so for me will too springs eternal. Will is the movement of (hopefully) rational thought that we are all familiar with. To come to the precipice is to realize that we have no control over that movement - to oppose is to continue, to not oppose is to continue. That is what to me it means to understand our human condition, to understand the nature of thinking, the good the bad and the ugly of it. To deny it passively (not active denial), to fall into unconscious meditation if you will, might be the realization - not as a reaction but as seeing an unambiguous fact - that there is nothing I can consciously do to curb the momentum of thought. - having gone into why that might have been a worthwhile course of action if it were possible beforehand of course. Just letting it be, embracing the suffering and respite thought/will brings in its wake, may mean, I don’t know for sure, cannot sustain it for long enough to make a determination, something different is taking place, and that distancing, may re-wire the brain in a way we cannot do consciously. Circling back to the op, this may have something to do with what the mystics term awareness. Making way for it. Not as a verb, not I am aware, but awareness as a thing arising, maybe it was there all along, lying there unobtrusively, unnoticed, in the recesses of the mind, an independent phenomenon, me having nothing to do to with that.
“You know, you should never meditate in public, or with another, or in a group: you should meditate only in solitude, in the quiet of the night or in the still, early morning.”
Isn’t K giving in the above the “ideal” way to meditate …? Isn’t K defining clearly the time and the place for a meditation - K says “you should never”…and then K says “you should…”
When it comes to our relationship with thought, there is no “to be or not to be” moment. I can’t choose to be without thought; to be free to think or not to think. I have no choice but to adapt to my confinement, my prison of self.
But I can choose how to adapt to my imprisonment. I can choose to get to know my prison so well, so completely, that my imprisonment is a process of discovery, a series of awakenings from what I thought to what I now know, to what will soon be upended by what I find out.
The original passage from which I made the excerpt is quite poetic. I take it that K is merely indicating here the quality of solitude - the ‘quiet of the night’ and the ‘still, early morning’ being archetypal times of the day when human beings are usually alone.
You are quite right of course that elsewhere K explicitly discourages his listeners from setting aside a regular time for meditation - the point being, I take it, that meditation ought not become a routine, a habit, something taken for granted.
What you write is interesting, although I’m not sure I understand it completely.
I think you are drawing attention to what one might call a (non)movement of resignation: meeting the movement of one’s life (or one’s will) which is caught in an eternal return - the future being merely a repetition rather than a renewal.
Then, remaining with this fact,
may slow down the mind enough to make us aware of another factor than our own egotistic needs and wants: (the whispering of) awareness itself.
You can never say that you are meditating or set aside a period for meditation… It comes only when your heart is really open. Not opened by the key of thought, not made safe by the intellect, but when it is as open as the skies without a cloud
Yes perhaps but I am reluctant to use the word resignation. You can’t resign yourself to a fact, can you? Well I suppose you can but then … I feel there is something much more emotionally forceful at play when you see a fact for a fact, at least when it comes so close to home as the workings of your own mind.
Personally speaking, it’s more of a realization that my life will not, cannot, change fundamentally through direct intervention. No amount of study, further understanding, mini-epiphanies will result in eventual total freedom from the thought-based suffering that is my constant companion. This is where @inquiry and I are at odds as far as I can tell. I don’t feel empowered to do anything consequential. Sure there is change, we all change from moment to moment, we are continually being influenced, life gets better, life gets worse, but the core dynamic remains the same. I am what I am. What I am now is what I will be. So to acknowledge the situation for what it is is not a choice. There is no other recourse for the second or two you are able stop flailing about and see the activity of mind for what it is.
Slowing down. I feel more of a numbing. paralysis, but I guess that might be described as slowing down. That is an effect though rather than a sought after activity. A side effect even.
What role awareness plays in all this or its relation to slowing down I can only guess at. They may be one and the same phenomenon. I would be happy if I could remain with a fact , any fact, and not move from there, not automatically and unconsciously incorporate it to suit my purposes - and from there let happen whatever follows. That feels like real intelligence/meditation to me. Or at least the beginnings of that.
Can I know that no “further understanding, mini-epiphanies, will result in eventual total freedom from the thought-based suffering that is my constant companion”, or is that just the conclusion I’ve chosen?
All I know (or seem to know) is that I’m a prisoner of what I don’t know or understand, and that leaves me with nothing to do but find out what I can within the confines of the prison of thought.
If, in this process of discovery and understanding I reach the precipice/frontier/limit of thought, the suffering that has been “my constant companion” may be as uncomfortable with living on the edge as I may be content to remain there. And who knows, it may be only there on the precipice/frontier/limit that we can part company.
Remaining with a (psychological) fact inevitably changes that fact in subtle or obvious ways - but one cannot force oneself to stay with a fact. One cannot force transformation. It’s probably sufficient to stay with a fact - for example suffering - for a few minutes at a time. Having the honesty to face oneself is already a big deal.
I wonder if it is helpful to consider that the energy of suffering (or numbness or boredom) is essentially the same energy that is spacious awareness.
Obviously the form the energy takes as suffering is entirely different (from that of spacious awareness), because mental suffering is made primarily of thought and emotion. But the energy of thought and suffering is merely limited or trapped awarenes (congealed awareness if you like).
So by remaining with suffering (or boredom) one is actually liberating the energy of those mental states and making it available for (spacious) awareness.
It’s like being given a glass full of ice-cubes to drink. The ice-cubes are freezing, hard and uncomfortable to swallow. But if one puts the glass out in the sun, then the ice-cubes will slowly melt and the water will become liquid and tepid enough to drink.
Remaining with any mental-emotional complex - according to the analogy - is like leaving the glass out in the sun.
“What is awareness?”
I think that awareness is in relationship to something , there is no awareness per se.
The awareness of nature, awareness of politics in the US, or awareness of one’s own loneliness or fear.
At this moment, as I write this I see that you are right. It is a chosen conclusion. Right after, I see all my thoughts, free as I feel to choose them, are conclusions as well.
Are there different types of conclusions? Some stemming from other conclusions and others stemming from an agenda-less looking, from a genuine attempt to get accurate information? Is this psychological thought vs practical? One mapping back to imagery and the other to some tangible fact? One ‘valid’ the other more iffy? Maybe, but I wouldn’t presume to trust in my ability to make that distinction, or to be genuine for that matter.
This quality of immediacy in perception - is this what awareness is? A broader quality of perception capable of seeing the general as opposed to the specific? I realize this is dangerous territory rife with the possibility for self-delusion . Curious what others think awareness actually is, We know it is not a tool we reach for for personal gain, because we have become convinced it is a panacea of sorts. That is all too silly. So what exactly is it? How does intelligence come about if it isn’t another conclusion pretending to be something else. Is it an activity of mind or a state of one? What does leaving the window open mean? What does putting your house in order mean? Creating a fertile ground for the seed of awareness (seeing what is actually the case) to sprout means what exactly? A passively receptive mind.
K once said, “There is no such thing as freedom of thought. That is sheer nonsense”. Can one confirm that for oneself or is hearing that bound to lead to another conclusion, something we agree or disagree with. We know that the prison of conclusion, the sorrow of authority, is formidable and cannot be breached by a direct onslaught. Living vicariously through the words of another is equally useless. What then, when one is faced with such an intractable problem? Are we doomed to accept conflict as a way of life, internally and externally, as individuals and in the broader society?
But we’re already self-deluding, so it’s no more dangerous than usual. We’re just more acutely aware of the ever-present danger of what we’re doing.
Curious what others think awareness actually is, We know it is not a tool we reach for for personal gain, because we have become convinced it is a panacea of sorts. That is all too silly. So what exactly is it?
I think of it as the illumination of what’s unfolding to which we react by distorting it to conform with our conditioning.
How does intelligence come about if it isn’t another conclusion pretending to be something else.
Good question, as are all those that follow. Why don’t we address them one at a time with the leisure it takes to do justice to them?
What then, when one is faced with such an intractable problem?
How do we know it’s intractable? If Krishnamurti knew this, he would have been a charlatan, another guru playing the game. Why not be open to the possibility that the limited brain can be so familiar with its limitation, so close to the precipice, the frontier, that it has no place to go it hasn’t been, and no desire to go anywhere because being here now is all there really is, regardless of what it feels like.
Are we doomed to accept conflict as a way of life, internally and externally, as individuals and in the broader society?, internally and externally, as individuals and in the broader society?
If we are “doomed to accept conflict as a way of life”, Krishnamurti was leading us up the garden path and it’s time to abandon the teaching. But if we are not “doomed to accept conflict as a way of life”, we can only live with conflict until/unless we can live without it.
Of course! Amoebas react without the need for images (of the objects, such as themselves and the others).
The images are mainly useful for delayed reaction - action within the relational melodrama that can happen at a separate time. (separate from right now)
As usual Douglas, I am left scratching my head a little…
Is your comment intended as a response to what I wrote (in reply to Dev) about the ‘quality of immediacy’ in the absence of any specific object (of perception)?
[For what it’s worth I think there probably is something it is ‘like’ (albeit absolutely minimally) to detect light, temperature or oxygen, as amoebas do - but I think this is irrelevant to the present issue.]
The question (for me) is whether awareness is only ‘awareness of’ - as it ordinarily is in the immediacy of perception - or whether there is (or can be) awareness per se, in itself.
I’m reacting to the notion of “immediacy” and “objects of perception”
The theory being that immediate reaction to stimulli is a more primitive form of awareness (if thats the right term - I’m not sure what we’ve agreed on in this thread) that does not necessitate concepts about the objects involved in the reaction - no idea of self/nonself necessary - which is a more modern tool that allows for interaction over time between the perceived protagonists
You may be aware that in classical Buddhism they also talk about the significance of the ‘initial attention’ (what they term avajjana or manasikara) to objects of perception. In this ‘initial attention’ - according to the Buddhists - there is no concept, no image (the image or concept only comes slightly afterwards).
This is why Nyanaponika - a 20th century German monk who developed the notion of modern ‘mindfulness’ - stated that it is
the manner of our initial attention to objects of perception [that] is the seed of mindfulness.
He called this ‘bare attention’.
What is being suggested is that this ‘bare attention’ (or ‘initial attention’ of perceptual immediacy) may be the clue, the seed, of an awareness without objects (i.e. awareness in itself, or what has elsewhere on this thread been referred to as spacious awareness).
