By solution you mean like " i let myself be angry and it began to change"? or “choice less awareness”? Alas not all can afford the luxury of a bird brain.The prerogative belongs to those who can’t seem to stop lauding the virtues of the brain. So yes we can respectfully disregard such fatuous solutions to toy parrots and their bird brains.
I happened to see this video .There is a nagging feeling it may be somehow related.No matter how hard i try i don’t understand what he is trying to say. Do you? If you understand i will be obliged if you explain, Maheshji.
I don’t understand a thing about myself. That’s the starting point. This absence of understanding may be a blessing and not a curse. But can I endure the absence of any scrap of understanding? My consciousness is then more about an absence of something than about the endless presence of contradictory fragments. (I am not explaining anything. I am just seeing something, asking something.)
The important message I’m getting is that it is total foolishness to deal with Anger as if I am some clever fellow. Rather that it might be possible to see what anger is clearly, without any hope at all. In which case (in my opinion) the shallowness and petty violence of selfishness instantly withers away in disgust at itself.
The only other option is to continue on as we are, acting and speaking the way we do. Building ourselves up through violence and accumulation.
Whether this (psychological death) comes at all depends mainly on whether I care.
Whether I care about all the suffering that I impose on the world, or not. Or whether I am much more important.
But this is not a choice - as long as my selfishness and violent behaviour seems valid to me, I have no choice but to continue acting and feeling horribly.
Psychological death huh? It will be meaningless to ask you to explain psychological death since you seem to admit unfamiliarity with it. Yet you do not hesitate to use words you have simply heard or read,
Like you say a selfish building of yourself through some clever regurgitation in support of one’s selfish violence seems to be the norm.An accumulation of years.It appears that’s the only option for many at this time.
Although disgust is a strong reaction, it still sounds like consciousness is attempting to judge, control and change itself. Therefore I don’t think ‘disgust’ gets at the truth of it.
Still - it might be interesting to try, so here goes : Psy death points to a sudden end to suffering that is noticeable - eg. from great pain to silence in an instant (without effort) - like when a long distance runner gets “second wind”.
An ending of self rather than the mere absence of self (like when we stare vacantly into a crackling fire)
No trying involved, like when you smell vomit, or notice a snake at your bare feet - instant recoil.
Though it is probably correct to assume that even a deep revolt against the movement of self is a form of conditioning, is not separate from causes and conditions.
I wondering if there is an action that is quite different from what you’re suggesting, one that has no reactive quality whatsoever. We’re all familiar with the notion of receding from horror or danger but this is still a response from within a faulty or broken system, a movement away from that which is deemed bad towards that which is seen to be good. What if there is a space where there is only goodness?
How do you receive such a radical prospect? It is radical because it removes the necessity for any form of revolt.
What is faulty about taking my hand off a burning stove? Before we look at your question, can we make sure we understand what we mean?
Please explain what the fallacy is - demonstrate that there is a fallacy, before we continue speculatng.
In your examples, the threat is coming from outside: from the environment, from an animal or from another person. Psychologically, however, there is no outside. The threat and that which perceives and responds to the threat is all the same entity. So I am saying that goodness doesn’t come about as a result of any such kind of psychological interaction.
There may a threat to my self-esteem. But the self-esteem itself is what invites the attack. If I think I’m a great man then I have to maintain that image and I am open to all sorts of perceived threats. So the threat has its roots in what is happening inside me and the way in which I deal with attacks by projecting the blame on to an outside agency. Psychologically, I am the problem. Therefore anything I do to remove myself from the problem - from the pain of anger or violence - is maintaining the belief that I am also the problem-solver. It’s only when there is no separation at all between the problem and the solution that any talk of action makes sense.
Hoorah! That’s the point. In the very middle of that sense of not being able to follow what is going on is where we are most likely to find a space where there is no separation between the problem and the solution, between confusion and clarity, between the student and the teacher, indeed between any two individuals caught up in the same moment of existence. There is only a question in this space, in this moment, not an answer at all because any single answer only throws up a welter of alternatives and we are back again in a land of competitive discourse.
What is our question? Be careful about it. If it comes from the self it will take us back to the self. If it comes from thought then it will have within it a hidden motive that only keeps thought happy.
