KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Tom wrote:

#59
I've put this question about patience because I have a sense that it is one way in which we can explore this bigger question of psychological time, of waiting for clarity, certainty or insight. [.....]

So have we the patience to go into the question? Do we have the patience to follow any question right through to the very end?

Can the impatient mind investigate patience, except as an idea? Being impatient (that is, obsessed with time, stressed by time, anxious, aggressive, inattentive, driven by desire, fearful and so on), what can the impatient mind observe but impatience? It can only speculate and theorize about patience.... but impatience it can observe.

Isn't observing impatience the same action as observing inattention - observing thought, self, time, relationship, conflict, fear, desire, duality, suffering?

In observing the negative (“no patience”), the positive (“patience”) can be understood. Where inattention is understood, there can be attention. Where impatience is understood, there can be patience.

It seems to me that the question of impatience is not at all separate from the "question of psychological time, of waiting for clarity, certainty or insight".  One is not a stepping stone to the other.

hermann wrote:

Tom wrote:

Are you saying that you want to become something else different from what you are now?

There can be no becoming if we see becoming as a device of time. But it may be possible to drop that device. It may also be possible to drop the self. What would it mean to drop the self? And what would it mean to drop time? Is it just a linguistic sleight-of-hand? Can my life become a question? I don't know. Perhaps: can my life become the unknown?

Life is always the unknown; it's only the dead leftovers that we can call the known. So we should we should first ask ourselves this: we do we cling to the leftovers? Why do we store the residue of some experience as a memory?

Huguette wrote:

Can the impatient mind investigate patience, except as an idea? Being impatient (that is, obsessed with time, stressed by time, anxious, aggressive, inattentive, driven by desire, fearful and so on), what can the impatient mind observe but impatience? It can only speculate and theorize about patience, but impatience it can observe.

Isn't observing impatience the same action as observing inattention - observing thought, self, time, relationship, conflict, fear, desire, duality, suffering? In observing the negative (“no patience”), the positive (“patience”) can be understood. Where inattention is understood, there can be attention. Where impatience is understood, there can be patience...

The trouble is, I doubt whether an impatient mind will even bother to observe impatience. I see your point however and I'm certainly not advocating that we focus all our attention upon an idealistic notion of patience. As I said to someone else earlier, the word 'patience' is just being used as a way of dipping our toes into the water. So by all means, let's look at the nature of impatience too. I think it's an excellent place to start. Why is the mind impatient?

Tom wrote:

I don't know. Really, I don't know. What would it mean for a man or a woman to say, 'I am conditioned'? Would such a statement have much meaning? I suppose in one sense it would have meaning because it shows that they are agreeing with the accepted wisdom that we are all conditioned, and to agree is itself a symptom of conditioning. So I'm very hesitant to say what I am or what I am not when it comes to this question.

I'm surprised you say that you are half free. It's like being in an open prison perhaps, but you are still a prisoner.

That is why you must find out as a matter of fact that whether you are conditioned or it is just an idea you heard, or you spin ideas around it in an entertaining way. I don’t just agree because suffering is real for me, attachment is clinging on to me, fear is lurking and aggressive attitude toward life and people is a fact in me. You must know, like you must know your own sorrow and the sorrow in life, and being not ignorant I see I am conditioned to react in a certain way.  But if you have no self knowledge at all, then let’s go into hurt for example, which is more specific and see. Conditioning is a broader issue. I am sure that you just wanted to beat around the bush and that is fine with me because on the other half I am free, meaning I can go on investigating life myself.

Tom wrote:

But if suffering, attachment, fear and aggression are real then what does that mean? What's the reality of fear? On the one hand, we could say we know all about fear because we live with it on a daily basis. That's one aspect of reality. Yet on the other hand, we could say we know nothing about fear precisely because we live with it on a daily basis. Do you see what I mean? We could say that to live with any degree of fear is a stupid way to live. But yet you are saying that fear is a fact in you. Why do you accept that fact? Even for a second, why do you accept it?

I understand what you mean. I don't accept it as an idea, but it is there. And by way of communication I say fear is operating in me. That is the first fact to begin. I don't say I am free and I will help you because that is not true in me. Then, tracing the fact step by step, going carefully from fact to fact, the inquiry becomes factual.

So, to "know" it yet to put up with it, fear, is a confused state of mind. Is that the next fact or just a conclusion?

Tom wrote:

hermann wrote:

Tom wrote:

Are you saying that you want to become something else different from what you are now?

There can be no becoming if we see becoming as a device of time. But it may be possible to drop that device. It may also be possible to drop the self. What would it mean to drop the self? And what would it mean to drop time? Is it just a linguistic sleight-of-hand? Can my life become a question? I don't know. Perhaps: can my life become the unknown?

Life is always the unknown; it's only the dead leftovers that we can call the known. So we should we should first ask ourselves this: we do we cling to the leftovers? Why do we store the residue of some experience as a memory?

Yes, life is always the unknown.  And yet when I look at my own life, I first look at those elements that are somewhat within my reach.  I look at those aspects that demand some form of closure.  But I never look fully.  I always get entangled with noisiest portions and I start to rearrange them somewhat.  Which means I never look at the whole.  We can look at the whole only when there is no 'residue'.  But the residue is the whole of the self.  The self gets seen as my life itself.  Life itself can show itself only when the clouds of the self get dissolved.

Tom wrote:

#99
The trouble is, I doubt whether an impatient mind will even bother to observe impatience.

So you hope to bother them enough to want to observe it?  ROFL.  Or wait...maybe you are hoping to trick them into observing it!

Tom wrote:

hermann wrote:

Or the question might be: Can I be that patience? Can I sift out all the other qualities that I have acquired in time, so that nothing remains beyond that quality of patience? Or seriousness? For then there may be no difference between patience and seriousness. K would sometimes ask: How much do you want it?, or what will you pay for it? Can I become that question, or such a question?

Are you saying that you want to become something else different from what you are now?

Aren’t we all talking here about necessity of changes?

hermann wrote:

Tom wrote:

hermann wrote:

Or the question might be: Can I be that patience? Can I sift out all the other qualities that I have acquired in time, so that nothing remains beyond that quality of patience? Or seriousness? For then there may be no difference between patience and seriousness. K would sometimes ask: How much do you want it?, or what will you pay for it? Can I become that question, or such a question?

Are you saying that you want to become something else different from what you are now?

There can be no becoming if we see becoming as a device of time.  But it may be possible to drop that device.  It may also be possible to drop the self.

A self drops the self.
Many spiritual practices have been trying that. Many saints appeared from those practices. It’s a complicated question, actually.

Well, as soon we are here on this specific forum, I should say, it’s not about dropping or adopting anything.

It’s rather about understanding thins so as they are; in firsts place our own self.

Understanding is not the same as dropping.

hermann wrote:

Can my life become a question?

Doesn’t it yet?

Well, it might be a good question.

It might be a meditation-life, provided, you wouldn’t be satisfied with any verbal answer.

hermann wrote:

snguyen wrote:

hermann wrote:

Can my life become a question?

What do you mean???

I don't know.  Perhaps: can my life become the unknown?

It seems to be the same question.

Last edited by natura (2012-01-20 01:55:53)

Tom wrote:

snguyen wrote:

Tom wrote:

Wait a minute though. Is it a fact? We may say it is, but actually is it? If we're not careful, we'll start from a false assumption here. What makes you say, 'Yes, it is a fact'?

I am half free and half conditioned still, and therefore being conditioned is a fact in me. What about you? Are you conditioned or free?

I don't know. Really, I don't know. What would it mean for a man or a woman to say, 'I am conditioned'? Would such a statement have much meaning? I suppose in one sense it would have meaning because it shows that they are agreeing with the accepted wisdom that we are all conditioned, and to agree is itself a symptom of conditioning. So I'm very hesitant to say what I am or what I am not when it comes to this question.

I'm surprised you say that you are half free. It's like being in an open prison perhaps, but you are still a prisoner.

It rather might be like a goat tied to a pole with a long rope.

It’s not personally, of course, snguyen.

Tom wrote:

basically, there is no 'this', there is no subject matter as a background of knowledge from which we might converse.

Finally!!! Good lord...it took you long enough!  We are done now, yes? It's finally finished!  My god it's about time.  Let the celebration begin!!