We believe that “love is no I”, and it may be true, but we don’t really know what I is, do we? We have what seems to be a good idea of what I is, but a good idea is just a guess, a supposition.
The more aware I am of my self, the more it is revealed to be about division, separation, what Krishnamurti called “fragmentation”. Thought is what divides and separates, and the conditioned brain is under the influence of thought. Instead of being sensitive to wholeness, sensation and sensitivity, we are obsessed with words and images. This emphasis on separation has made us more complicated and confused than simply aware.
Beyond being aware of our upside-down condition, I don’t know what can be done to upend it.
Not quite. What does it mean to live without a story?
Are we actually putting this question to ourselves? If we imagine what it may be like, this is still a story. If we call it ‘nothingness’, this is still a story. Any answer takes us into storytelling. But the question itself is not a story.
We may be able to listen to the question as sound rather than ‘meaningful’ language. This may happen when you listen to someone speak in a distant foreign tongue or, if memory serves, when you are under the influence of a psychedelic. Sure you could say the story is a sonic one, but that would be stretching the definition of story.
What is the basis of anger? Is anger separate from me? And what is anger without the story around it? What am I without the thousand and one stories I tell about myself?
In the absence of these stories, which is the absence of me and my anger, me and my pride, me and my whole psychological existence, isn’t what remains in the space between us merely the simplicity and austerity of love?
Thank you for remind me that. I is not real so thought is not real., I is the cause of not peace and suffer . I think, the most confusing illusion is that the body is real . So all things we do to serve it.
‘What is the basis of anger?’ Krishnamurti says that the answer is in the question, which means you can’t say one is a story and the other isn’t a story. Probably, if we maintain this idea of story, it is more accurate to say they - question and answer- are part of the same story. But stories don’t have to be all just fiction, they can be a way of addressing truth in a tangible sort of understanding.
Everything arising from thought is a story: what we do, say, think, feel, believe. Here we are sharing stories around the digital campfire. Some of the stories may be ‘closer to the truth’ than others. But the story is never that which it storifies.
It seemed to me that we more or less agreed that questions beget stories, and stories raise questions. If we had only practical stories, e.g., how to grow food crops, how to capture and store water, how to create shelter, etc., practical knowledge would always be updated by new discoveries and never be beliefs upon which to built something as solid and sacred as a self.
The same would apply to self-knowledge. If awareness of how thought operates reveals the danger of identifying with it, thought would be a tool used only when silence must be broken for a good reason, e.g., communication.
The theory sounds good and makes sense. But in practice we humans are often non-sensical, driven by irrational impulses. We have seen, quite clearly, definitively even that the rope is not snake, but we forget or make-believe it is a snake when this fulfills powerful desires/needs.
Because we aren’t aware of being “non-sensical, driven by irrational impulses”. It’s only in hindsight (if at all) that we know what happened. If we are aware enough to act on irrational impulses, can we not be aware enough to know when we’re doing it?
I still feel you are assuming that knowing you are thinking/behaving irrationally will stop that irrationality. But this is not always how it works (imo). There are times that people embrace irrationality while knowing it is irrational. They abandon or even thwart reason intentionally. Thinking/behaving rationally is not a top priority for everyone.
Is this actually so or are you just voicing a nice non-dualistic theory? Is this actually how you are living, without space and without stories? It isn’t it, is it? Therefore why not just be quiet about it and allow the question to answer itself?
But have you ever lived this way, which is to have no stories operating at all? Then you may discover it is absolutely unnecessary to address the truth. After all, what is there to understand when there is no you or me? We are out of that silly game forever because the truth has put us both in our rightful place.
We are divided. That is the truth in our daily lives. While we remain divided, there will be wars across the globe. No story, explanation or clever theory will put an end to this division. So we have to start from love and work from there. There is no other way forward. This is our first and only step. Take it and see what happens.
Hello, Maheshji!
There is war in this world because there are corrupted people. That is where your first step is: ask yourself if you are corrupt and watch from moment to moment. Division is a false issue. We are all different, it does not mean we are divided. The question is whether you want to take advantage of people you may think are different from you and then be corrupt. Love will come to you, it isn’t you that takes it, as you say… you actually seemed to be telling a story, but I don’t mind a good story.