I don’t feel like I’ve “gone beyond” anything. I’m just watching something I was unaware of.
So you watch that you don’t react to “what should be”. You react to “what is”. You say that those who react to “what should be” have shoddy minds. Have I got this right?
A great quote from Mark Lee and another below it from K. Thanks for posting those Howard. I feel these words are very important.
**Isn’t this idea/thought about “what another person will do,” the sort of “psychological thought” K suggested to “die to each moment?” Are we meeting ‘what is’, choicelessly, if we have an image in mind of what they will do? Are we listening to them, or forming images about them?
We’re not talking about the ‘probability’ of physical danger, we’re talking about psychological images about how someone is going to “not look free of the conditioning,” aren’t we? What probability do we need to know, to listen?
**Doesn’t this also apply to, “Right up to the moment you realize you are reacting to ‘what shouldn’t be’.” Like, “You shouldn’t look from knowing?”
Wonder if we are all understanding the same thing when we use words like affection or love. Here below Krishnamurti appears to be saying affection is the same as integrity - which he then goes to
define as ‘integral’, whole, not fragmented, not coming from a position, belief or experience, that is everything that goes to make up our personal identity. Nonetheless surely affection - as we normally use the term, not as K does - is necessary in dialogue with each other as we non-integral beings feel our way into these matters? Perhaps not necessary but certainly better, no? Affection arising from us all facing a common problem.
K: It is definitely possible to bring about a totally new mind. But there are certain indications, certain necessary characteristics which do bring about that quality of newness. They are affection or love and integrity. Most of us do not know what it means to be affectionate. To us, it is a word which we casually use without much significance. Love is of course something very carefully guarded, something with which we are not so familiar, though we use the word so glibly, so facilely - love of the country, love of truth, love of life and many many loves that we talk about; and I do not think it has anything to do with this. The ingredient - if I may use that word - which is absolutely necessary is the quality of affection and integrity. I don’t mean by integrity any form of pattern of belief, nor do I mean it as integrity according to the experience through which one has to live; but I mean that integrity that comes about when you begin to observe every movement of your own thought and when no thought is hidden. You do not wear a mask, you do not any longer pretend to be something other than what you actually are; and therefore there is no discipline, no fancy, no worship; and out of that comes the external sense of integrity I mean that kind of integrity, not the man who has belief and lives according to that belief, not the man who is sincere but with certain ideals, not the man who follows a certain discipline or tries to bring about an integration emotionally or intellectually. Such efforts do not bring out integrity. On the contrary, they increase conflict, misery. Whereas the integrity that we are talking about is the quality of seeing the fact every minute, not trying to translate the fact in terms of pleasure and pain, but letting the fact flower without choice, without opinion - out of which seeing comes integrity which is never altered. Now these two, affection and integrity, are necessary.
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No. I have no intention other than to see what happens. You’re using “watching” to mean doing something remedial. I’m using “watching” to mean experiencing what’s happening.
Of course not. We wouldn’t be here if we could be choiceless. We can’t even conceive of choicelessness because choice is all we know. It’s the only freedom we have. We’re slaves to our appetites and our fears, but we can choose how we practice our slavery.
Your psychological “shoulds and shouldn’ts” are what reacts to what-is. If you believe you “shouldn’t look from knowledge”, you’re obeying fear/desire; responding emotionally - not reasonably.
I don’t get that @Howard is advocating that at all - that one “shouldn’t look from knowledge”.
I understood what he wrote to mean that if you have a motive of any kind, you are acting from knowledge, and thus nothing new is occurring. It is not a question of right knowledge or wrong knowledge.
Understanding is seeing directly the nature of something- in this case the entire nature of knowledge, of belief, of opinion based on experience, what all that entails. It is looking at fragmentation but not from another fragment. It is not related to knowledge, is not a product of analysis, of working stuff out. It does not work backward from a particular desired outcome like knowledge does. There is no benefit being sought when you just look without the weight of your opinions. Opinion is what controls.
For any of this to not be theoretical, understanding and doing must be one action, an action that has relevance only in a single moment – there is no carryover. Understanding the nature of knowledge does not generate motive (which introduces time), it has consequence only in the present moment.
That action of understanding need not become “new” knowledge. It can, but it does not need to. If it does, it is no different than any other piece of knowledge. And then that too must be ‘understood’ afresh.
Awareness as I understand it is hard work, even though from another point a view it is the simplest of all actions, and is only applicable in the moment. There is no retention that you can fall back on so it can become less energy-consuming in the future, more efficient. That is the role of knowledge and memory and recognition.
So I guess the question is: can knowledge be dropped without a motive for doing so. Just to do it because we have fully understood what it means not to. If action without motive is not possible then we are doomed to remain in a world of our own making.
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If by “motive” you mean conditioned response and acting to get a desired result, acting without motive would mean spontaneity and its consequences; not knowing what you’re doing until it’s done, and not regretting the result.
At the base we are all humans and there is conflict, regardless of knowing or not-knowing. Aren’t we thinking of that which cannot be expressed knowingly or verbally? The word for this action without motive, is love, isn’t it?
As far as I can see, you have made a division between those with “shoddy minds” and others (which presumably includes yourself) who have a mind which is without belief, and therefore without conflict. This division sets the writer apart from others and the words “shoddy mind” convey a feeling of contempt. Isn’t this another example of thought creating division?
As regards pure awareness, is there any difference between “should” or “shouldn’t”? What is, is what is. Any motive to have something different than what is, i.e. what should be…is still always only what is. Any ‘resistance’ to what is, the duality of suppression say, is still for awareness without choice, pure awareness , only always, what is.
I am as conflicted as anyone, conscious of my conflict, and interested in how it operates.
Yes, but the mind is conditioned to be partial, not wholistic, not choiceless.
Alright, but awareness is not conditioned.
Yes, no one said it is. Why state the obvious?
Because of your response to this:
As regards pure awareness, is there any difference between “should” or “shouldn’t”? What is, is what is. Any motive to have something different than what is, i.e. what should be…is still always only what is. Any ‘resistance’ to what is, the duality of suppression say, is still for awareness without choice, pure awareness , only always, what is.
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