Bob
Can you lay this out in more detail so I might understand it? Thanks.
What is observed if a reaction is not seen through a lens of âthe problemâ?
If we are together, DanMcd, we are at the moment when someone has said or done something and there is a reaction to it and an awareness of the reaction. The reaction could be a thought, a feeling, a sensation in the body or some combination of them. An observation of the reaction points to the conditioning that created the reaction. If the self , psychological thought, observes the reaction there will just be another thought, which is our habit of dealing with a reaction, yes? A thought like, I shouldnât think that, or itâs my conditioning or who wouldnât react that way or he was wrong and so on. The effect of those thoughts is to move away from the reaction and nothing is seen. So no change or at best a decision to not react that way in future, which is just a modification of the reaction and not an ending of it. So the reaction will occur again under similar circumstances. If one stays with the reaction, then through observation of it, which requires the mind to be quiet, not think, there is the opportunity to see the falseness of the reaction and the seeing is the ending of it. That is transformation. At this point in our dialogue there is nowhere further to go by talking about it. There is only the doing. That is the responsibility that we each have. So what happens when you stay with the reaction? We can dialogue about that.
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See my response to DanMcD. Does that address your question?
Whoa! I was with you until, âand the seeing is the ending of it. That is transformation.â Do you know that for a fact? Is this seeing real for you, or are you just doing what every K-school boy does, parroting the teacher?
So what happens when you stay with the reaction?
You just told us that âthe seeing is the ending of itâ, and now youâre asking what happens. Are you confused?
Yes. I wouldnât be describing it if I couldnât do it. That would be hypocritical.
Iâm asking you what happens when you do it. You need to do it to see what happens. Can you do it?
Youâre not âdescribingâ anything - youâre just repeating what K said.
Thus endeth your inquiry.
Just giving yourself the name âInquiryâ does not mean that you are inquiring as you so aptly demonstrate.
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What determines whether it is the self that reacts to oneâs reaction or just the âseeingâ and ending of it?
To paraphrase your question âBefore doing, I want to know what it is that I canât know until I do it.â Isnât your question just an avoidance of doing?
This is the point at which Sisyphus wonât give the next push, moves his attention away from the moment and the rock rolls back down the hill.
Are you going to do it and find out for yourself? Or are you going to collect more knowledge; knowledge that just makes it more difficult to see, to find out?
Is the rock going to roll down the hill and later you will start another dialogue, another pushing the rock up the hill.
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Of course!..
âWhy is intellectual understanding insufficient?â
Do you know the difference between intellectual understanding and direct perception? If you do, would you say that intellectual understanding of what is direct perception is the same as direct perception? Only direct perception has the capacity of acting.
Yes. Done and I agree with you. The awareness of the reaction, if thought does not move away from it but stays quietly with it, the reaction âfadesâ or as you put it, is transformed. There is a âtransformationâ.
Is that necessarily transformation? Transformation is the ending which makes space for the new. Wouldnât transformation be evident only when similar circumstances re-occur and there is no reaction? No reaction of thought, of emotion, of sensation.
If there is a reaction then staying with it, as you have, has the benefit of a peaceful ending of it.
However, doesnât the recurrence of the reaction indicate that the conditioning is still active? The thought that creates the reaction has not been seen and seen as false and ended. Arenât these specific thoughts in the general category of âwhat is not and should beâ or âwhat is and should not beâ which is why there is a reaction?
That you will only see when the conditions, whatever they were, re-occur.
Yes. The reaction in that moment undergoes a transformation, a dissolution. If it arises again it will have to be met fullyâŚbut it may not arise again.
Is this how you feel about self-knowledge?
Can I do anything that is not more I? Anything I do is nothing new, so I canât expect anything radically different. Yet you say you have done it, as if this doing is just choosing to do it. This is self-deception, is it not?
Whatâs new is what happens when I do nothing.
Do you believe the unknown is approachable only through effort?
Sorry I dropped out for a bit there.
I am getting 2 things from the discussion above :
The idea of âQuietismâ, a form of anti-thought. The idea that thought is bad, and no-thought is good. That if we can arrive at a form of silence, meaning the absence of mental narrative based on knowledge, that this will lead to some psychological prize, some clarity, some transformation.
With Quietism, comes of course the worry that we are following a method, with a goal, which obviously strengthens the me and leads away from what is.
The second thing is this idea of âstaying withâ whatever - that this might be the transformative act. Here again we have the problem of the observer acting upon the observed.
We could continue to share our opinions and ideas about all this - which would be more intellectual data points - are we at least in agreement that the sharing of data points will not lead to transformation?
@BobHearns suggests that we find out what âstaying withâ means. Has anyone had any experience with âstaying withâ? What does it entail? Is it a form of Death, or Transformation?