Where Are We?

[macdougdoug]

@Adeen

Going further, can we say that the reaction in my mind occurs only as reaction to the opinions of others.

Is this what you meant to say? or is there a typing error?
It seems like its in complete contradiction to what we agreed on just before.
Like this :

@macdougdoug

the idea, for example, that I am a bad person, has less impact when spoken to me by some random guy on the street, than when its my own thoughts.

or this

@Adeen

If someone says something only if I consider it important I will react to it. If I consider an ideology to be important, I will react to opinions on it.

It only what I consider to be true that has power - my idea of truth is what can cause damage and confusion. As you say rightly :

@Adeen

if we consider their word as truth we are caught in it. If we however see that is not truth, all those things are temporary,

What we consider to be true has the ultimate authority over us - who said it is besides the point (irrelevant, not the issue).

[Inquiry]

@Adeen

my thoughts, there is no choice, thoughts come on their own.

If I have no choice but to live with this constant stream of thoughts (most of which are just filler, background) causing confusion and conflict, wouldn’t I be better off being choicelessly aware than being choicelessly streaming thought?

Could it be that this constant stream of thought that seems choiceless now was chosen over choiceless awareness so long ago that we have no memory of making this choice?

[Inquiry]

@rickScott

You see the train running by, but you don’t get on?

You were born on the train and have no choice but to live on the train until/unless you jump off, fall off, or are thrown from the train.

[rickScott]

Maybe you suddenly see the whole process of the train and your relationship to it, you are free from captivity, and calmly detrain?

[Inquiry]

No, I don’t “see the whole process”. I just suspect we weren’t born with immunity to the onslaught of conditioning we were subjected to.

Krishnamurti may have been born with that immunity, but who knows?

[rickScott]

What Krishnamurti refers to as practical conditioning can be hugely beneficial to ourselves, others, the planet, the universe! I doubt anyone here would disagree. It’s the other type, the psychological conditioning that does us in. It also gives us pleasure and meaning and (the feeling of) stability, which makes liberation from it all the harder.

[Inquiry]

@rickScott

What Krishnamurti refers to as practical conditioning can be hugely beneficial

I thought what K meant by “practical” or “technological” thought is what we learn from experience more than what we’re taught by authorities.

[Adeen]

@Inquiry

If I have no choice but to live with this constant stream of thoughts (most of which are just filler, background) causing confusion and conflict, wouldn’t I be better off being choicelessly aware than being choicelessly streaming thought?

Could it be that this constant stream of thought that seems choiceless now was chosen over choiceless awareness so long ago that we have no memory of making this choice?

Is it because we mistook thought to be truth? We accepted thought to be truth and were caught in it. For example if we accept something written in a religious or ideological book as being truth and then we are conditioned by it.
Same thing is happening in media, opinion is projected as truth. If we accept opinion as truth we are caught in it.
Is choiceless awareness when we realise thought in it’s very nature is false, both thoughts in my head and in the heads of others, all the opinions are not ultimate truth.
Seeing thought in it’s very nature is false, then we won’t be trapped in it. Is that choiceless awareness?
Mindless streaming thought is when we accept thought as being true.
If we see all thought is mere opinion, not representing truth, will we be caught by it, whether words of our own mind, words of some politician or religious leader.

[Adeen]

If we see thought in it’s very nature is false, will we be trapped by it, both our thought and the thoughts of others projected from outside?
Is that stepping out of the stream of thought, that stream including thoughts in my head and projected by others outside in media, books, opinions, gossip, Internet.

[Inquiry]

@Adeen

Is choiceless awareness when we realise thought in it’s very nature is false

Thought is not false “in its very nature” , It serves a necessary purpose. Psychological thought, however, is false in its content.

[Inquiry]

@Adeen

Mindless streaming thought is when we accept thought as being true.

Acknowledging one’s stream of consciousness does not mean accepting its content as “being true”.

[Adeen]

@Inquiry

Acknowledging one’s stream of consciousness does not mean accepting its content as “being true”.

If someone is absorbed in something, that person is unaware of truth which is outside of the absorption, so the absorption becomes their truth, their way of looking at life like the allegory of Plato’s cave.

[Adeen]

@Inquiry

Thought is not false “in its very nature” , It serves a necessary purpose. Psychological thought, however, is false in its content

The practical thought like at what time the train leaves comes from silence. Silence can use thought but is not itself thought.

[rickScott]

@Inquiry

@rickScott

What Krishnamurti refers to as practical conditioning can be hugely beneficial

I thought what K meant by “practical” or “technological” thought is what we learn from experience more than what we’re taught by authorities

My understanding is that ‘practical thought’ is thought that enables us to function in the everyday world: planning, identifying, performing tasks. Practical conditioning provides us with the skills to do this, mental and physical.

As for your understanding of what Krishnamurti meant by practical thought, I’ve never seen it put that way, do you have any quotes?

[Inquiry]

@Adeen

Silence can use thought but is not itself thought.

If you’re equating silence with intelligence.

[Adeen]

It’s difficult for us to know what is action which is undivided.
A military General or a politician might think tactically in a war. From their perspective it is practical but war is still division. That’s the reason I feel thought is in itself divided. Only silence is compassion and undivided practical thought that doesn’t cause destruction flows from that.