I asked if the end of suffering is not the greatest comfort?
What’s “deliberately obtuse” about it?
Just to clarify the discomfort that I mentioned was related only to the intentional following of one’s thoughts and not facing a ‘volcano of emotion. Our usual thinking has its well worn patterns and is automatic like our breathing or a physical activity like driving or tying your shoes. Becoming aware of these automatic actions disrupts them. So with our thinking.
And it triggered an eruption…
No your posts did that.
Aren’t you trying to get intellectual understanding from your questions in this dialogue? Have you been doing that in other dialogues? Is it working yet? These aren’t ‘gotcha’ questions I’m asking. Can you look at your questions and stay with them? See what comes up. If it’s thoughts, stay with them, just observe them without looking for an answer. Same with feelings. Same with physical sensations.
I think that dialogue is an opportunity to see if communication on these issues (mind, self, and the teachings) is possible. Are we able to see what is being said, to learn, to share our intellectual or emotional narratives, or even a description of insight?
Are we able to hear and share? Or are we always relating to some internal motive?
Isn’t the point of exchanging here to put forth what you’ve found and to point out to others the ‘traps’ that you feel they’ve fallen into? And they will do the same for you in a civil way? We have to pull ourselves out of the trap but we can’t do that if we don’t see it. Sometimes it’s easier to see the others situation than our own.
Ah yes - if only the world were as simple as we wished it were - if people were capable of listening to advice, then they probably don’t need it. 
Anyway - its tricky, to see exactly where other people are and where they need to be - impossible. Where I need to be if I was where I imagine them to be 
Anyway, the best I’ve come up with is to ask what people mean, so that they might hear what they are saying
In terms of breathing and driving I can see the benefit of awareness, as in realisation of the experience that is taking place - “coming back to the now” as I have heard it termed. In the seeing, for example of our state of stress and tension, is a window of liberation : for an instinctual letting go of the diaphragm, relaxing of the jaw, relaxing the grip on the steering wheel etc.
But what I am worried about is the idea of making the effort for continual distruption - why would one want to disrupt one’s driving continously, or one’s breathing - a natural habitual, unselfconscious driving and breathing is certainly preferable, no?
The same goes for being/thinking - awareness should not be a thing that one does and holds, rather an awakening to the moment that is allowed to arise.
Misunderstanding…
Don’t do anything in driving but keep eyes on the road. Leave breathing alone unless you’re into some breathing ‘thing’. Can you follow your thought? Do you want to try? To see what ‘comes of it’ if anything? An ‘insight’ perhaps or nothing? Thought wants to be left alone to stay in its patterns, the sinner in his the saint in hers. Psychological thought is divisive, destructive as I see it. K says it IS fear and the entity it has created is “evil”. Why that may or may not be so, has to be seen in ourselves. But follow it without judging.
Whatever language your thought used, simply follow the sentences. If they are questions, frustrations, whatever you are thinking at any moment, be aware that it is going on. You are questioning the excercise, follow that. Nothing to ‘gain’ like nothing to gain looking at a tree, just an awareness of it. I find it pretty hard to do…and most of the time impossible!
“Intellectual Understanding” is a privilege of the well educated & and financially comfortable, not the whole of humanity. Thus it is exclusive from the get go.
Waoh ! Great take @Michael - does it follow that all this guru stuff is for the upper crust - or are you saying that IU is not actually necessary? (for freedom from pain)
So are you building up a state of doubt? Warning: the next question could be considered offensive - Or have you just got an impossible hobby?
Didn’t say it was “impossible”, it’s not. Said it’s hard. How do you find it?
Just going off of the initial question rather than reading all the comments in the thread.
But to answer your question, the pain I experience is more resolvable in the physical and behavioral realms. For example, vacuuming, dusting, practicing yoga, eating healthy, and getting to sleep early is more tangible than coming to some sort of intellectual understanding of the human condition. Not keeping my life in order compounds the hardships, superficial as they may be. Perhaps my psychological capacity is limited, but transformation has always felt fleeting and temporary. I don’t know much about gurus.
1 Like
How do I find Awareness? There is no effort involved.
If I have understood correctly what you have been saying, you start from a technique - based on the words of K that one should try to watch every word in the thoughts that one has. Which incidentally might just be a starting point for self inquiry, rather than a regular practise.
In my case, I start from the understanding that psychological thought is merely a movement of self perpetuation - the reification of suffering itself. And thus awareness is a welcome breath of silence - it is the opposite of thought and the ending of any need to know. Thought has no importance in that moment, and awareness of that moment provokes no need for any effort in any direction whatsoever.
As to why this is the case, I put it down to my religious upbringing (K and zen) combined with a period of suffering where, when I decided to accept pain completely, it disappeared.
Nowadays I put aside a moment everyday, where I make no effort at all to achieve anything whatsoever, and welcome awareness whenever it arises.
1 Like
Yes that’s it. It shows that thought operates ‘on its own ‘. That a thinker ‘me’ does not ‘produce’ the thoughts, they arise on their own. Identification with the thoughts (the ‘stream’) is where the ‘danger lies as I see it.
1 Like
Can we just look at the question. Does the question imply that intellectual understanding is only part of what is required and that there is something more to do?
Is intellectual understanding false and needs to be not done at all? Are any questions that are coming from thought moving away from wholly understanding? Isn’t it with the absence of thought that effortlessly, the ‘what is’, is?
Isn’t the question ‘Why is intellectual understanding false and not to be pursued at all?’
As far as I can make out : Intellectual Understanding is unavoidable.
“Reality is conditioned” as they say, my perception of it doubly so : perception is conditioned by biology etc and interpretation is conditioned by the brain, culture etc;
We cannot help but understand via knowledge - the error is confusing our interpretation of reality with the truth.
As we said earlier : the first hurdle we have when listening is dogma, or discriminatory thought - the incapacity to hear and understand what is being said, due to our dependance on knowledge.
The second hurdle is that intellectual understanding (whether reasonable or completely confused) tends to come to conclusions - and to confuse those conclusions with truth. And thus perpetuate and strengthen our conditioned reality.
Intellectual understanding is insufficient (for freedom from the known) if it does not realise that it is merely a movement of conditioning.