What would I say she is guessing about if she said she is not free? Wouldn’t she know if she is not free?
One might be of the perspective that the “self” cannot experience freedom and yet that very knowledge is the key to freedom.
Maybe not? It might very well be that no experience can be trusted. Human beings are prone to self-deception as you @inquiry are wont to point out.
We can only speak of what the conditioned brain can/cannot do.
Beyond that, the real challenge is to find out for ourselves whether it is possible to be ‘cognitive’ of said conditioning without naming it as such. Isn’t K’s contention that as soon as naming is triggered - essentially the movement of thought, knowledge, understanding, etc - thought splits itself into two fragments - the observer and observed, giving us the impression we are looking out at reality? Whereas it is nothing but knowledge of the past (the observer) generating knowledge of the present (the observed). A self-contained system.
From that perspective, you are right to assert that (as long as naming/recognition occurs) it is conditioning looking at conditioning while claiming to be awareness.
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Yes. When what is seen is ‘named’(evaluated) there is identification between the observer and the observed? The challenge is for there to be pure awareness. To see the conditioned state without the desire to change what is seen. Is this what K was pointing at when he said: “Change is the denial of change”?
When the conditioned brain believes that it can rise to this challenge and prevail, thereby ceasing to be a slave of its conditioning, it is deceiving itself, pretending to know what is true. The only time the conditioned brain is not lying to itself is when it acknowledges what it does not really know.
So whats the problem here?
Is it that we are only relating to the ideas, to the narrative, that our only action is to produce more narrative?
There is no action, apart from the repetition of further narrative?
There is no relation to the wolrd, what the ideas are pointing at. The ideas seem to bear no relation to my life, my experience?
I just talk about about the ideas (conditioning, projection, suffering) but don’t actually feel personally concerned?
Rather than coming to a precipice, we have merely talked ourselves into a merry-go-round? (or a sorry-go-round)
The problem is that we don’t really feel that there is a problem? merely an interesting paradox that I can identify with.
For the conditioned brain, what is “action”? Is there any action that is not reaction? The action, it seems to me, that the conditioned brain is capable of is honestly admitting what it does not know, can neither believe nor disbelieve.
If you’re tired of hearing this and want to go in a direction that is not “narrative”, what do you think the conditioned mind can do other than be honest enough to know what it does not know?
Rather than coming to a precipice, we have merely talked ourselves into a merry-go-round? (or a sorry-go-round)
This “merry-go-round” is our confusion.
The problem is that we don’t really feel that there is a problem? merely an interesting paradox that I can identify with.
That may be true, but I don’t know if it is or is not…do you?
I don’t trust feelings any more than I trust beliefs.
If the last words of your statement are really a question, then the answer is obviously not.
I would change “partial” to “tainted”.
Just yesterday I was watching a film on TV and I realised that there is something that no one seems to be talking about, and that is that just as we become attached to someone or something, deep down we want others to become attached to us as well. So is there real freedom without dying to both attachments, especially the second one?
Would you say that it is the brain that feels fear when it becomes aware of its situation, or is it something else? And if it is something else, in what way is that something else related to the brain, not being it?
It is said that once, Lama Tsong kha pa was giving some teachings on emptiness when he observed how a monk attending the teachings suddenly clung tightly to his clothes. Did that fear of disappearing appear in his brain or somewhere else?
Who knows, maybe this could be relevant here… or maybe not.
Anyway, The [sutra of the] Shorter Discourse with Māluṅkya