Is it insufficient?
Insufficient for what? Some kind of transformation I suppose.
If we seriously go through, read and re-read K; what is supposed to happen? Does it happen? What are we expecting?
What is supposed to happen is that you have an accurate understanding of what K was saying. What this amounts to is that the seed is planted, so to speak, and it may or may not germinate.
Individuals who, through diligent study of Kās teachings, have an accurate understanding of what K was saying, and some of them help others to understand the teaching.
This is all the self-centered brain can do, and Krishnamurti knew that he could only plant the seed - he couldnāt make it germinate.
What can we say about this germination? What is it?
Apparently our brain is holding us back somehow?
Iām assuming that Krishnamurti knew what he was talking about, and that talk was the only medium he had to work with. Presumably, he was a living example of the brain transformation he spoke of, and he knew that our dependence on thought, words, images, were the problem, the solution of which was for the brain to see this. So, all he could do was talk about it, and do so with the hope that listening to the talk would awaken the brain to what it is doing.
Apparently our brain is holding us back somehow?
āUsā is this condition of the human brain.
Can the brain awaken to its dependence on the past, breaking the spell it has cast?
This is the effect we are expecting, it seems. The effect of Kās words in our brain should somehow lead to freedom from conditioning?
Is that correct?
Ever since I realized I didnāt have a clear or accurate understanding of the teaching, my only expectation was of getting an accurate understanding of what Krishnamurti was saying. I feel I have that understanding now, and I have no expectation that it will have any more of an effect than it has nowā¦unless there are things about what K said that I still am unaware of or donāt understand.
If Kās words are being processed and understood only through thought, will there be any effect at all? Or will it just be adding to K knowledge?
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All we have is the intellect to receive Kās teaching, so if we donāt have it correctly weāll never know what effect it might have. āK knowledgeā is all about the need for self-knowledge. The effect of the teaching is to bring attention to the activity of self.
What effect has your understanding had? I kinda gather from what you say that its nothing spectacular - like say the effect of understanding some philosophical viewpoint (which I think does sometimes make people go waow)
Yes, thatās all it is, but itās a big deal because Iāve been interested in Kās teaching for decades, and it isnāt until lately that it has come together.
I question that. If that is all one is using, then yes that is all you have. But there is much more to a person than only learning through the intellect.
Maybe, but my point is that the self-centered brain can know only intellectually, what K was pointing to because it is beyond what the noisy, self-centered brain can commune with, know, completely. All the self-centered, isolated brain can do is make sure itās not interpreting or misunderstanding what K was saying
For instance, K made it clear that the self-centered brain cannot know what compassion is, so what is the response of the self-centered brain to that statement? It makes sense to me, but you may take issue with it because you think you know what compassion is.
Are you referring to anything in particular here? What do you have in mind, and how is it different (better/worse?) than the intellect - in terms of āgrokingā the Teachings, and provoking some kind of radical psychological transformation (if that is in fact the goal?)?
Does your present understanding bring about any differences in your mental state? More so than any other philosophical world view might do. Or is it just a question of being able to argue from a new point of view?
Does the intellect do anything more than accumulate K knowledge and from that imagine some understanding beyond intellectual? When thinking, not observation and doing, is the only process involved, how can there be any transformation?
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What is this āobservation and doingā of which you speak? Especially in its difference from any observing and doing that one might have been involved in before listening to K.
Observation and doing is not something unique to K. There have been others who have pointed to the same thing. One doesnāt have to have read K or heard K talk to be doing this. But K made it a very central point to do this to rid oneself of conditioning. In my words, when you become aware that you have reacted to anotherās words or behaviour, which means that listening to the other has stopped and one is having a conversation with oneself, one fragment is talking to another fragment, then observation of the reaction until it flowers and reveals the conditioning allows one to either let it go or to hold on to it. The letting go of oneās conditioning is the freeing of oneself from the āwhat should beā. Then the āwhat isā is.
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So, did this practise that you are describing come about solely thanks to an intellectual understanding of Kās (and others) teachings? As in : you heard, you understood, and then you decided to act in this way.
Mr. macdoug
Why is intellectual understanding insufficient?
Your title implicitly suggests intellectual understanding is insufficient.
Othoh your op here is asking if it is insufficinet.
Is this discrepancy because you, I, or we, have taken (and presenting) the words of K literally but we arenāt sure?
What are you trying to investigate in this thread? Is it if intellectual understating is sufficient or insufficient?
No method. Find out for yourselfā¦
Yes, my āmental stateā is very different from āany other philosophical world viewā because philosophy is all about the intellect, whereas Kās teaching is religious (using Kās definition of the word). What this means is that when the intellect realizes its limitation, its inability to find out what it needs to know/realize, it stops trying, seeking, striving.
Or is it just a question of being able to argue from a new point of view?
Since weāre arguing about what K meant when he said this or that, and I feel I may have a better understanding of what he meant, then Iām arguing from āa new point of viewā.