KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

You may be right, but I'm not sure that I can take it in.

dear hermann you are staring into the face of this fact for so many years already..
you know it, you see it, you understand it.. and still.. but at the end there is no choice.

it's alright to take it as such,
but is that a reason for you to not dive into it ?

kirsten wrote:

it's alright to take it as such,
but is that a reason for you to not dive into it ?

You aren't making a contribution to anything I'm saying.

kirsten wrote:

it did feel like summarizing your stand.. sorry if i missed.

Look closer. It's more likely that you are shamed...sorry is a conditioned of the shamed.

this sorry is about being sorry that my words did not speak..
does that have to do with being ashamed ? yes i am looking.

Tom wrote:

Jayaraj wrote:

Tom wrote:

You see, much of the fear of dying stems from the belief that after death there is yet another form of living, call it resurrection, reincarnation, the next dimension or whatever else you like. We don't just fear death; we fear the continuity of living in another form.

Nope, sir. I disagree fully. It is letting go man is scared of. Man is clamoring for continuity & made many theories. You have stated the opposite!!

Yes, man may be clamouring for continuity, but it is nevertheless continuity on one's own terms. After all, one clamours for heaven, not for hell. Therefore, the moment one starts to believe in the continuity of a spirit or a soul or an essence, there is always the possibility of being wrong about it. So belief in continuity inevitably breeds fear. It is not the letting go that scares us; it is where we might find ourselves after we have let go.

I find your answer very interesting indeed.I never thought of it. What you say too is possible. It is about a mind conditioned differently! Yes, a person believing in heaven & hell will fear where the person would go.

hermann wrote:

You may be right, but I'm not sure that I can take it in. Maybe I don't want to take it in - because I'm simply too committed to the status quo. But the status quo is also unacceptable.

If you're just looking for something acceptable then you'll surely find it one way or another, via one belief or another. Whatever might be deemed the status quo, at the very centre of it there is always oneself. It's oneself who finds it acceptable or unacceptable. So that's always the status quo: the self. And you can't throw over the status quo because whatever you put in its place it is just another version of the same thing, it's the self in a different guise.

Jayaraj wrote:

I find your answer very interesting indeed. I never thought of it.  What you say too is possible. It is about a mind conditioned differently! Yes, a person believing in heaven and hell will fear where the person would go.

You see, it is only possible to let go of that which one actually possesses. It is only possible to let go of the self if there is an entity who holds on to the self. I say there is no such entity. All our beliefs, however trivial or profound, create a peripheral circle; and because every circle has a centre, we believe that we are there at the centre. We are not. The peripheral beliefs create the centre, and not vice versa. Without its peripheral beliefs there is no centre.

pitfalll wrote:

Yes, fear too is imaginary. It festers in the gloom of inattention, but unfortunately we are not very good at attention.

That's because there is nothing to be good at. It's not like a skill that one can hone and get better at. There is attention or there is inattention; but there are no experts in attention. And yet perhaps we desire to be experts in it. Do you follow what I mean? Perhaps we think we can improve our levels of attention or increase our degree of attentiveness. But who is it that is being attentive? Who is it that is paying attention? If the entity who is paying attention is the same as the entity who is inattentive, then it's all about different shades of the same gloom. Or attention has no entity at all. And perhaps that's why inattention is so attractive and addictive: it reinforces the belief in a central figure of the self.

pitfalll wrote:

[...] but unfortunately we are not very good at attention.

And why is that?

Last edited by night (2012-02-29 15:27:21)

Still wondering...obviously dying to something not because someone said so, not because you are told by your guru, or because you were told you'll get something in return when you get to heaven...to be clear, obviously all that is not death but continuation.  But to understand death, ending, must we not find out what it means to die to something whilst still alive?  Just some things that came up...there seems to be a connection between all this, desire, fear, death...