The words “wiping” and “denial” sound reactive. What more can one do than be aware of the “movement of self” that isn’t the self reacting? As K said, “the seeing is the doing”.
Yes - there is the danger of giving the impression that wiping, denial, and indeed observation or awareness/attention - is a thing that we do voluntarily, as in some effort we apply via the movement of will.
In fact, once we have seen clearly what thoughts are, the mere fact of noticing their arising, is their death.
They don’t really die…they’re never dead…they’re just not charged with special significance anymore.
Thought is overrated.
day·dream
(dā′drēm′)
n.
A dreamlike musing or fantasy while awake, especially of the fulfillment of wishes or hopes.
intr.v. day·dreamed or day·dreamt (-drĕmt′), day·dream·ing, day·dreams
To have dreamlike musings or fantasies while awake.
day′dream′er n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Where there is hope there must be despair .They always go together .
Yes. If we knew we were dreaming, humanity wouldn’t be such a nightmare.
What do you mean? We are always thinking? Or even when we are not thinking, thoughts exist somewhere?
I, me, mine is a continuous stream of content. If this means “I am always thinking”, the stream is not seen for what it actually is, but for what it appears to be, if I has anything to say about it.
“I am always knowing” does that work better? Do you mean that we are always knowing?
Knowing is believing when you can’t prove or demonstrate the validity of your belief.
Do you mean that people can’t become aware of the movement of thought? How can you be so sure?
Hello Emile. This is very much how I see things. It seems that K was extremely sensitive to the slightest movement of thought and was acutely aware of how thinking would separate him from what was going on around him.
1 Like
No, I don’t mean “that people can’t become aware of the movement of thought”.
Phew, that’s a relief!
1 Like
Would you say the movement of thought is what thinking is, and that thinking is more than its content?
Can the movement of the thinking process be sensed as well as the content of thought be seen?
I would say that thought and its content are inseparable, but because it is compulsive and unending, it serves a psychological purpose, i.e., the maintenance of the self, and not just a practical purpose.
I’m proposing that thinking is different from thought.
Thinking relies on knowledge stored in memory, in order to clarify ideas, beneath which there is a movement taking place which one can sense. This movement has no content. It is just a wave upon which ride the words.
When we think of a wave, the question is What kind of wave? There are many kinds of waves we know of, and they can be described, measured, etc., but you’re proposing that thought is a kind of wave we can’t know anything about?
Krishnamurti said that thought is a material process. What do you say?
I find that no matter what words I use to point to insubstantial existence, they can never get to the true meaning of I want to convey. The best I can do is replace a word when a more precise one shows up. Obviously the thing is not the word, but if there is an urgency to find the words that take us to the edge of the precipice where the void lives, we might get a glimpse, or as some might say, an insight into it.
A metaphor:
The wave is energy which moves through the water but is not the water. Thought and memory are the water and if not disturbed remain still. Thinking is the wave and the wave energy is not thought.
I’m saying one is a substance and the other a movement. One can sense or feel the movement of thinking, and this movement is behind the words. The energy of thinking can’t be known but It can be felt or sensed. It’s not provable. Right now I can’t think of a better way to describe it.
Re: thought being a material process:
We are back to my definition of thought:
thought is formed as the process of thinking unfolds.
Also the definition of matter. The images and memories are stored in living cells and so in some sense the memories are alive. If by a material process is meant effect following cause, then that is certainly the case. But I don’t actually know what K meant by a material process, and I don’t know or understand what a material process is. But I still want to distinguish thinking from thought. Writing now this reply, I do feel the movement of thinking; and at the same time make sense of the production of the thoughts.
Usually when we say that something is a material process, it is to convey that whatever we are discussing is not magic.
Thought is a material process, it is produced by the brain.
Wind is a material process, it is produced by material processes. (the sun and stuff I think)
God (in its modern form) is the only fully magical thing (non material process) I am aware of.
Doesn’t ‘materiality’ have levels, from coarse like a rock to fine like air and finer still like thinking and then awareness? K speaks of ‘attention’ as a “different dimension” of awareness. A different dimension of ‘fineness’?