It doesn’t mean much if one’s enslavement to thought is not felt.
Are you telling me that you don’t know what you do when you watch what you do?
When your motive for watching is to change, you’re invested in what-should-be instead of interested in what-is, i.e., what you’ve been ignoring, overlooking, and denying in your quest for what-should-be.
You asked for an example of someone persisting in foolish, dishonest, or dangerous behavior. Just look around. Don’t you see examples of this kind of behavior everywhere, all the time? How about the millions of Americans who believe Trump won the election, and who believe all kinds of conspiracy theories because they are more credulous than discerning, and not inclined to examine or question things. Watch The Three Stooges.
How can anyone have a clue when one is clueless (heedless)?
You’re conflating “clueless” and “heedless”. They are not the same.
When you find yourself looking back on your behavior and hear yourself asking, “What was I thinking?”, or when you reflect on an incident when you reacted reflexively instead of reasonably, you know you were behaving heedlessly, and you now have a clue as to what your problem is.
I don’t feel subjugated by thought. Thought is a tool and I use it like a hammer or screwdriver or gun even. Having lived in America all my life, I feel an affinity for firearms. I know this is a cultural conditioning that has shaped my psyche through the watching of western movies as a kid. So far, all I have gotten for myself is a pair of cowboy boots and a Stetson. Owning a gun is still on my mind but the gun was invented primarily for killing people. This fact doesn’t sit well with me. I admit that I am somewhat enslaved by the thought of owning a Smith & Wesson revolver.
Doesn’t freedom mean the ending of desire for things that have nothing to do with the well-being of the body?
I am asking, aren’t I, while I can see my traits, my actions, my behavior, etc, how can I actually not repeat these, and be a better person, something like that. It might be on my mind, I might be conscious of my bad habits, my anger, my volatility, but what is the actual way to change and not be like this? Isn’t that what a lot of people are asking? It might be said I can control this, but in spontaneity of it all, what is it there to control? Then it is also said, that a control is a suppression, and this leads to more problems. We are working in a day to day environment, where conflict is the norm, although a civilised conflict, and as part of this, it is asking of ourselves, a deep change, a very major change, not a petty modification, not a change in performance, not a more sophisticated way of talking.
Most people don’t because the subjugation is so effective that, for all intents and purposes, they are thought. To avoid this realization, they imagine themselves as separate from thought.
Isn’t the conflict of life obvious? Not just in my individual habits and desires. Why do we keep at it, cultivating the division of thought? Self is in the nature of thought. The separateness is thought. Thought is all that stuff, all that we all have on the mind, which has been growing culturally, socially, technologically, since it all began.
What harm does this subjugation do to me personally if I am enslaved by thought? Both you and Peter seem to be on the same page. He is pushing for deep change and you are calling for freedom. Dan is also in the mix and wants banishment of the divisive separateness of the “me”.
Your consciousness is what it is. Krishnamurti said it is causing outer and inner conflicts to the detriment of humanity and must undergo fundamental change and be transformed. I heard him, just as you did, and renounced my way of life which was as selfish as everyone else’s. Dan said that it was a wrong move because the renouncement was horse-trading. Be that as it may, I am now living alone by myself taking care of my body and avoiding outer conflict with everyone. Do I still need ”a deep change, a very major change” (Peter) to be a better person?
I have no issue with separateness from thought which I use as a tool. However, inner-conflict still exists on account of my resentment to being subjugated by the body. I fear its vulnerability to disease, injury, and mortality.
A neighbor is still alive some five years after letting me know that she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the lungs. She is no longer her bubbly self, full of life, the center of her book club, and pursuing an exciting career as a writer of novels. She is now holed up in her house, alone, and I hardly see her. She told me she was undergoing cutting-edge treatment. God knows how much medical expenses she must have racked up by now. Someone told me lately that the medical bill for his wife and him came up to just under a quarter of a million dollars for a two-week stay in the hospital when they contracted Covid. Thankfully, he had health insurance.
I hope you folks have the vaccination for shingles. An attack of the virus on your face can lose you an eye. Meningitis will kill you and that would be a blessing; especially, if you don’t have health insurance. I think subjugation by the body ought to be more of a concern. I am convinced that this is the sane and rational approach to understanding Krishnamurti’s teaching. The other route focusing on psychological transformation is a distraction from the problem of living.
**Hello sree - What Dan was pointing to is that this horse-trading is just another reaction stemming from the psychological conditioning. The belief in a fictional “me” that has “renounced.” There is no ‘I’ that needs a “deep change.” That’s the fictional story thought has created. This psychological belief in a ‘me and other’ still seems active in this attempt to “avoid external conflict.” You aren’t alone. You’ve ‘apparently’ only walled yourself off, physically and psychologically.
**If you’re comfortable living in isolation, avoiding conflict, imagining you’re separate, then carry on. But I would suggest that it isn’t sane to wall oneself off from the what is. Psychological discomfort generally reflects psychological disorder, not sanity. To imagine you are separate from humanity is not what K was suggesting.
K: The moment I realize I am humanity, that is the greatest action.
Buddhist Scholars Discussion 2 in Madras (Chennai), 13 January 1985
This is interesting. As I see it, we all here are living inside our psychological conditioning, our consciousness, a psychic reality that is unique in its content for each of us but universal in that we all share this situation. Analyzing it piece by piece is how I generally approach it: my fears, hopes, hurts, joys, etc. But now it has been seen that what is necessary is to include the analyzer himself, me into the observation. That is what somehow always gets left out, overlooked. Without that inclusion, the situation stays the same…but with the inclusion of the ‘me’ that is observing, then the whole picture changes. It is interesting that this insight is perhaps not necessary for our survival personally. And so evolution has no reason to bring it about. We can survive, some quite well , without the brain being free from the false (personal) reality it lives in. Brutality succeeds. But we’re too clever at it for it not to become an extinction event over time. Another interesting point is that this ‘total insight’ can only come about through my own effort. No one can do this for another. So in short, your renunciation and my non-renunciation come out to be the same thing, albeit yours must have caused you great pain.
No pain at all, other than constantly facing the fact that I am subjugated by the body. Renouncement may mean living in isolation but it doesn’t mean walling off and denying myself fellowship.
I am celebrating today with strangers scarfing down Irish stew and drinking Guinness Stout in a downtown bar this evening. I would rather do that with you and Howard and Inquiry and Peter if you guys haven’t walled yourselves off from meat and alcohol.
I am not proposing “living in isolation” as a solution to dealing with human disorder. Krishnamurti was pointing to conventional life driven by self-interest as a reflection of disorder. To find out what he meant, I had to renounce the way of life he condemned so that I could examine the problem he was pointing to. Krishnmaurti could be right or he could be wrong, but unless I step out of the life I was living, a psychologically self-centered life that you and Dan and Inquiry are living, I would not be able to see for myself what he meant.
Renouncement amounted to giving up everything thought had put together: my livelihood and my personal relationships that defined my ego/self-identity. To ensure that there were no traces of “me”, I traveled like a mendicant monk and lived abroad to erase any sense of national identity.
First stop, India. To soften the drastic cut off from a familiar reality, I visited the Krishnamurti Foundation, at Greenways Road in Chennai, where people didn’t speak Tamil only and were also familiar with the esoteric meaning of psychological transformation. I can still remember chatting with a fella brimming with enthusiasm about the teaching, a dark-skinned devotee who told me that he was not an Indian because nationalism led to war. I asked him, “Are you an Englishman?” He said, “No”. “Then, you are an Indian,” I told him. He kept quiet but later came up to me and chided, “You shouldn’t have taken me by surprise like that.”
**The issue that Dan pointed to, is that this language, “I had to renounce,” appears to have the confusion K was trying to expose in it. The confused idea that there’s an I choosing to renounce. That’s what the language implies.
**Same thing here. It’s ‘thought’ that’s saying, “I need to renounce.” That language reveals the psychological conditioning driving the action. Again, that’s what the language ‘implies’. It implies the common confusion in thought, that the brain gets caught in.
But like I said…if you’re comfortable with this notion of a ‘me’ that ‘chose to renounce’, then, “carry on.” Whatever the case, wishing you the best on your journey.