What is "the art of seeing" according to Krishnamurti?

What is seeing according to K?

K has explained it in many talks. My understanding of the ‘art of ‘seeing ‘ is choice less awareness of what is taking place at any moment in the organism and around it: an “expansive awareness’ as he calls it. Especially embracing the totality of the thinking process as it moves, free of any ‘identification’ with it.

How can it be an art when it is doing nothing? Or is doing nothing the ultimate art?

Could it be that what we think of as art is actually doing nothing? Could it be that an artist is someone who can turn off everything imagined or believed; someone who has discovered the ability to disable itself so as to be nothing but human?

It may be that an artist is a human with the ability to be nothing but a human…someone able to express and communicate what happens when the human brain can identify everything it identifies with, thereby discerning the difference between acquired identity and actual identity?

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I think it should be called “no-choice-awareness” because the concept of “choiceless” is inconceivable to the brain that knows only what it chooses to know and is paralyzed/traumatized by what it can’t believe it is seeing.

It may be that there is an area of the brain that has rarely been activated except to modest degrees? Choiceless awareness may be such an area? The ‘art’ then may be this area awakening?
Also the phenomena of ‘awareness’ may be located outside of the brain but the brain empty of the ‘I process’ may be capable of resonating with it without the limitation of identification?

Yes, the brain is operating in a way that, instead of serving the best interests of all living things, serves whatever terrifies and tantalizes. It hasn’t learned how to exist without excitement. It’s too dull to be quietly, sensitively aware of its relationship with its environment. It’s addicted to stimulation.

The ‘art’ then may be this area awakening?

I don’t think any part of the brain can awaken until the brain starts losing its appetite for stimulation; feeling its need for rest and recovery.

Also the phenomena of ‘awareness’ may be located outside of the brain but the brain empty of the ‘I process’ may be capable of resonating with it without the limitation of identification?

Yes, that may be. But I think the problem with identification has to do with being an identifier. We can’t help but identify certain objects, beings, procedures, behaviors, etc, as distinct things that, if not constantly updated or negated, get established, acquired, and the brain is stuck with them.

The addiction to stimulation may be the very thing that keeps us from “participating in the mystery”. And in Christian language: “ selling one’s birthright for a mess of potage”?

Yes, this is where our ancestors went wrong, and why we are addicted to stupefaction and stimulation.

Pitfalls of the new brain?

No. This is the old brain, the brain that learned how to customize actuality; to see things in accordance with one’s most exciting, stimulating, stupefying, comforting emotions, fear and desire. The old brain is traumatized. We don’t know if it can recover, be renewed.

Sounds ‘new’ to me, know any other brains that can do what we do?

We don’t know enough about the human brain to know what it was like before it learned how to deceive itself.

I think we ate them?

The human brain may not have taken a wrong turn, but did the only new thing it could do, and will continue to do until (having seen the results) it learns to quit.

Very optimistic note to end on. :pray:

Would you be here if you were not optimistic?

What’s the alternative?

The word art means putting everything in it’s right place according to K. So the art of seeing is to put thought in it’s right place which is only in the technological fields .I am sure that there is more to it. We use thought to solve our psychological problems which leads to more problems. Because thought is the creator of the problems.

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And the ‘art’ implies a sensitivity to the fact that one’s thought/thinking is moving ‘unnecessarily’? There is no ‘stopping’ it…the “seeing is the doing”?

It seems to me that the brain can never “participate in the mystery” as long as it is occupied by this constant movement of psychological thought which maintains and reinforces its conditioning? And if we can’t truly ‘participate’ in it in the moment, rather than infantile stories about it, we will inevitably suffer.

What is seeing according to K?

A good question.

As I understand it, K talked about being aware, both inwardly and outwardly. He seemed to talk a lot about the silent mind and seeing without the contamination of thought.

On a practical level, I think we can at least play around with this. Am I aware of the people around me while I’m sitting on a train? Am I aware of how I eat? Am I aware of when I’m really listening with attention and when I’m not really listening? How do the rest of you see this?

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