We could sit in the same room together or go into an online forum, but the issue isn’t in the words. We shall never be able to abandon words, nor should we. When this is a tremendous problem, the only problem we have, then the words come out right. It is only if we speak from confusion and fear that the words get jumbled.
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The personal response is from a fragment (‘me’ or ‘you’)…from the past…from knowledge and limited experience…and can’t see the issue other than from it’s own narrow, biased, prejudiced, and limited view. So it’s the ‘me’ that IS the problem, then? If I see that, that ‘I am the world’, then there is responsibility for the ‘problem/s’. Just exploring here.
No, not the ‘me’ - me. The ‘me’ in quotes assumes there is a centre which exists separate from me in my everyday life, me as I am without any quotes. I doubt there is such a centre at all. There is only the peripheral activity of daily life with its habits, worries, neurotic behaviours and all the reactions that spring from this activity. It is this activity which causes any sense of a centre. But there is only the periphery as actuality. One can never observe the centre; but the outer activity is always there, open to observation: how I speak, how I walk, how I react and so on.
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Maybe not ‘observe’ but it can be felt. Fear. The ‘wall’ is built around it like blood cells attacking an infection?
Is fear at the centre? Or is it a peripheral reaction? After all, fear can’t exist in a vacuum. It is composed of sensation, recognition, memory and naming. It is only when the memory is brought into play that the centre arises with its sense of threat. In other words, the peripheral elements are already there, waiting to react.
I don’t know of course Paul, but what I see / feel is a deep fear. It may be primordial, inherited, and then added to through childhood. The only thing that would bring about the desire to see it for what it, is a wish to know the truth about it. In oneself. To be free of it, if that is possible… ‘Staying with it’ feels like approaching the third rail. But when that happens, it dissolves. It isn’t ‘real’. But it is the source of suffering, of conflict, of fear,etc.
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Yes - this is the greatest problem - one goes through in these discussions and everyday in our life - and is unaware/unable to ‘see’ it.
So what are we to do?
Does one must respond not from the ‘centre’?
or
Does the ‘centre’ can see/aware of itself - before responding?
or
Does the ‘centre’ should not be there (i.e. come to an end) - as this is the ‘problem’?
So in these - which question makes sense and would make us move forward in discussing this ‘problem’?
Here - the ‘centre’ i meant is - our own beliefs,images,knowledge,experience of words,teachings,persons,etc…
The essential human problem seems to be that:
thought has gotten into the habit of incessantly manufacturing images of reward and punishment,
in order to satisfy the desire for pleasure.
But where is fear? It is only when thought starts to play with its images of past and future that fear arises. For example, I may be afraid of going to the dentist because the memory of earlier pain and discomfort gives rise to images of possible further pain. But when I am in the chair and the drill is at work, there is nothing for thought to do because the body takes over with its own natural responses. There may be fear right until that moment, but at the moment of actual crisis fear is no longer a useful response. So where is this deep fear that you see and feel? At this very second it doesn’t exist as a feeling. It is only when memory comes into play that fear starts up.
Yes, this is the key question: am I aware of my reactions? Therefore I am not trying to suppress them, which is another reaction, but just to give them proper space.
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I am thought. So the desire for pleasure is at the heart of me, isn’t it? But what is pleasure? It pleases me to drink a cup of tea or a glass of water when I am thirsty, to eat a good meal when I am hungry, to meet a friend whom I haven’t seen for many weeks or to solve an urgent domestic problem. Here it is the pleasure of having a simple need satisfied. And our daily life is full of such pleasures. Then there is the pleasure of watching the birds on the fence, the clouds caught in the sunlight or the trees covered in a layer of snow. These kinds of pleasures are around us in abundance. And then there is the pleasure embedded in time as the anticipation of a rewarding future event. So we know the daily pleasures associated with our various needs; the pleasures of observing nature; and also the manufactured pleasures of thought which can’t exist without the use of images.
The point is very simple. It is only in this third category of pleasure that pain enters. In this third category, pleasure itself has a very different texture from the other two categories. So I wonder why we even call it pleasure. It may not be pleasure at all. It may be another form of fear.
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so,
1st pleasure - is from daily needs
2nd pleasure - it’s joy/beauty of ‘seeing’ nature
3rd pleasure - is created by thought. - and this 3rd is not a pleasure but a pain on ‘time’.
Please could you list out all our ‘daily needs’ (i.e. like water,food in 1st pleasure) - so that - it can be differentiated by ‘thought created needs’ (i.e. 3rd pleasure) - and can be ‘seen’ by all - as it is.
Because ‘one’ may get confused of ‘physical’ needs and ‘psychological’ needs - and i do have a question in this - please clarify this too,
Here - this comes under daily needs pleasure (i.e. 1st) - or when we see this person - the psychological ‘time’ comes in - which is limited - and thinks from knowledge - and brings back an image of ‘having pleasure with that person(friend) when we saw him lately’ - and creates the pleasure feeling (i.e. 3rd).
Because - we get excited only seeing a “friend/parent/children/person on whom we have a ‘pleasure image’” and not get excited on a “neighbor/enemy/employer/colleague/person on whom we don’t have a ‘pleasure image’”. (i.e. pleasure based on thought,image,security)
Please inquire this and clarify.
Krishnamurti made the useful distinction of joy, which is new, which is non accumulative, and pleasure which is accumulative. Further it may be said that pleasure is from and of a centre. With regards to a problem which is the greatest problem, not that I see it that way, then it is being itself surely, which is the being of a centre and thus isolation, and it is reality itself. Krishnamurti’s concern was with wiping the centre, and with ending reality, which he said was death.
Yes. Paul also say this too, in a manner that, the response we give, not only in our dialogues, but also in our daily activities, that response is only being from the ‘centre’ (belief,image,experience,knowledge,etc…) - which is the major problem.
That response from centre is the cause of pleasure - which later brings pain,fear and isolation.
In case of ‘death/end’ - in my view - it also means that - thought/‘I’ being aware of itself every time.
Though i said in the previous discussion with Paul that “thought never arises when we are choice-lessly aware - and the fruit lasts forever”, i inquired and learned ‘not-so’.
Because it is thought’s nature/beauty - to keep on arising like waves, and we cannot stop/end it. (as united78 said in the boatman’s song - about creation, beauty, nature and mistake)
But i ‘see’ when we are choice-lessly aware - “thought arises and immediately gets aware of itself and calms down - and that fruit forms and dies moment to moment”.
So every second - there is continues ‘death’ and ‘New’ and ‘Beauty of nature/creation’.
A question is put, what is our greatest problem in life? and the response to that is that there can be no problem, and no greatest problem, if such there be, that is not being itself, that is not reality. Being may be considered the theatre or arena in which problems manifest, but the content is not different to the container. So the notion of a problem, which is a specific problem, becomes redundant at this point, since problem is the problem come to that, and it can be seen that a concern with end and ending is too, since that leads to a looking past any issue to the imagined ending, which is not then looking.
What do you mean by this “not in itself/reality”.
We are facing issues of our responses from ‘centre’/‘self’/‘i’ right?
Not your ‘centre’ or my ‘centre’. Every conflict between persons - because of this - in my view. And i ‘see’ this response as the specific/major/greatest problem in one’s life.
It’s form may change - but content is same everywhere.
Yes. But - we are not seeing the problem - to end. But if we escape from ‘looking’ that ‘problem’ - we continue in conflict, right?
What I mean is, if I conceive of a problem being at all while being myself, then that very being is the issue, and not anything else. To consider anything less at this point than being itself, reality itself, is an avoidance.
Yes, and this is psychologically arduous when facing the fact of isolation without a get out clause, or escape. This is where energy is required which Krishnamurti always spoke of in this regard. And where is this energy to be found? It is locked up in the evasions and escapes I ordinarily am.
So,
You say that if we say the response from ‘centre’ as ‘problem’ - we escape from looking and creating an image of it as ‘to end it’ - right?
If so - yes. We just observe about this response from ‘centre’ and not make a word/description about it as a ‘problem’ and put all our energy in this ‘looking’.
Exactly so. And as alluded to earlier in the thread above, there is a sub-conscious and an unconscious component to this. When looking intensely at a things to the extent required fear is aroused, and the brain needs to cope with very strong fears here that would ordinarily be considered crippling, or panic inducing.
So when we try to look this ‘centre’ - strong fear arises - and in my view - this strong fear is an illusion created by ‘I’ to not see itself - so it can roam inside the brain comfortably and dominating the ‘awareness/attention’ by spreading an image of pleasure.
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