KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Very true but only half truth.

I don't stand on the side, fixed in one place, and watch the mountain climber. If I climb myself then maybe I discover the top. But I wait till my old age, ready for the grave and then say, I knew truth, I knew its face, I knew where it was, but, but now...

It is really funny about the mountain climbing business. Someone climbs, someone camps around the base, someone paints and writes poems about the mountaintop... That is just a fact of life.

It is a fact in life and no need to label. 

I think in the bible, there is a similar story about sowing the seeds. Some seeds got scattered in rich soil and grew into another 100, 50 or 20 seeds in return. Some just got carried away by birds. And some just fell onto rocks and withered away.

It is a fact of life, a fact of life.

definitely, the thing that people threw away becomes the cornerstone of something worthwhile. How do I know anything?

snguyen wrote:

And many times by the end of days, the mind just goes to play.
It is an innocent mind, leaving all the knowning stuff, behind...

then it does not know that about itself at all, if it truly is an innocent mind.

James (and may I continue to call you that?), let me teach you something, not because you do not know it, but because I want to meet you on other than that *never mind* level; and all of this just to say hello.

When one of us, say you, asks me a question that requires a certain reflection to answer, and I, not entertaining that certain reflection, for whatever the reason, answers out of context, how would you go about teaching me how to use that certain reflection?

James, I was having a bit of fun doing a wacky wonk on your response to awareness of 'never mind' after he did not see what you were asking.

And, yeah, wonk is a weird language; maybe I need to carve out a Rosetta Stone of some sort...

Understand the known for the known is the door to the unknown. Obviously, without the known, the entire life as we know it, there is no next step. That unknown, only describable in a few single words as “and the door may open…” is definitely not known.

Understand the known but the known cannot be understood through words, naming, or description. Without the words, the naming, the known transforms into something unknown, some transient unknown because its depth can be extended and extended over the whole content of the known. Is there any corner, any hiding place, any reserved comfort, any forbidden and untouchable security not explored into? Or does the mind take comfort in the twilight zone between light and darkness?
If you put the known into words, images, memory, it is not just true as it really is but also, you cannot come near it. How can you come near pain, boredom, sorrow, fear, with vivid memory and images of them? Naturally you will be expelled, ejected, like when you try to come near a huge wood fire at a camp night. Also naturally or forcefully you will be pulled into the enthrallment of pleasure on the opposite side. If you don’t feed the camp fire with more dry and combustible logs, the fire must die down and comes to an end.

Here I don’t know what the known is. I call it the unknown and it is beyond words, not that the door shifts to open, but words have no places. Then I can live so peacefully with what is called fear, boredom, routine because they are not what are meant by words.

The known is created by words and images. This known cannot be silent, quiet, and cannot exist on its own without the constant feed of words and images. It has to be referred to, reflected upon, again and again, to have its imagery existence. Such an existence must be nothing but constant noise. When this is deeply seen, understood, meditated upon every day, why can’t silence come very naturally?

To hold up an illusion for the mind, energy must be used. For without energy life even as an illusion cannot go on. In silence this energy is not used to build anything but gathering itself. Energy is life. When this energy is leaked into building up an illusory known, life is drained into dry emptiness and it dies.

Does this energy have the intelligence to do the right thing?

WhiteShaman wrote:

wilbro99 wrote:

Hi James, I have some thoughts on your following question:

<<On a more serious side, I am wondering what your thoughts are on excessive mindless chatter.
What is it? How do you stop it......mind chattering stopping exercises?
I seem to have worked my mind into a groove of constantly thinking and most of this is just babbling chatter. I try to be aware of it but I can only last minutes, if not less.
What do you know about this subject (in english please....lol)
Anyone please feel free to share about this...>>

In English, yet, lol. I'll try.

Heavens, I never had that problem. I suspect that is because I like to think about things so I never really watch my thoughts other than to recognize that I am thinking about something. If the thoughts do not have to do with the inquiry I am engaged in, they stop when I see them going on.

What I learned to do a long time ago with thoughts was to slow them down by thinking at writing speed, which allowed me to see the way thought changed levels. I chatter like mad when I wonk.

But then again, I do not know what you mean by endless chatter? What are you trying to end?

Thanks wilbro for the english......lol
I guess what I am hoping to do is to just be more present. I want to take a shower and notice the warmth of the water, not be caught up in what sounds like me talking to myself. It's not "thinking" really...it's just chatter.
I decided this morning, as I was working on this issue, to surrender to what is happening instead of trying to be more present.
In other words instead of trying to enjoy the warmth of the shower...to instead not try and force what being present is in any given moment. That seemed to help.

Hello James (WhiteShaman),

You seem to be on to something here with regard to the issue of 'making an effort' - whether it's trying to enjoy "the warmth of the shower" or attempting to stop "excessive mindless chatter". It may be useful to consider whether the entity trying to do these things actually exists apart from thought, first of all, or does it stem from the same source (ideas, thoughts, memories, etc.) as the thinking one is trying to stop? And what might happen if this inward division were to come to an end, simply by seeing through the illusion of the existence of a separate entity that can somehow act on itself, rather like a dog chasing its tail?

Eric

ehassett wrote:

WhiteShaman wrote:

wilbro99 wrote:

Hi James, I have some thoughts on your following question:

<<On a more serious side, I am wondering what your thoughts are on excessive mindless chatter.
What is it? How do you stop it......mind chattering stopping exercises?
I seem to have worked my mind into a groove of constantly thinking and most of this is just babbling chatter. I try to be aware of it but I can only last minutes, if not less.
What do you know about this subject (in english please....lol)
Anyone please feel free to share about this...>>

In English, yet, lol. I'll try.

Heavens, I never had that problem. I suspect that is because I like to think about things so I never really watch my thoughts other than to recognize that I am thinking about something. If the thoughts do not have to do with the inquiry I am engaged in, they stop when I see them going on.

What I learned to do a long time ago with thoughts was to slow them down by thinking at writing speed, which allowed me to see the way thought changed levels. I chatter like mad when I wonk.

But then again, I do not know what you mean by endless chatter? What are you trying to end?

Thanks wilbro for the english......lol
I guess what I am hoping to do is to just be more present. I want to take a shower and notice the warmth of the water, not be caught up in what sounds like me talking to myself. It's not "thinking" really...it's just chatter.
I decided this morning, as I was working on this issue, to surrender to what is happening instead of trying to be more present.
In other words instead of trying to enjoy the warmth of the shower...to instead not try and force what being present is in any given moment. That seemed to help.

Hello James (WhiteShaman),

You seem to be on to something here with regard to the issue of 'making an effort' - whether it's trying to enjoy "the warmth of the shower" or attempting to stop "excessive mindless chatter". It may be useful to consider whether the entity trying to do these things actually exists apart from thought, first of all, or does it stem from the same source (ideas, thoughts, memories, etc.) as the thinking one is trying to stop? And what might happen if this inward division were to come to an end, simply by seeing through the illusion of the existence of a separate entity that can somehow act on itself, rather like a dog chasing its tail?

Eric

You know, the one and only thing that I have learned from JK is that we can come to know ourselves thru our relationships. That "ourself" he is talking about stems from thought, not apart from it.
For some reason I wasn't doing that here and you just set me straight.....thank you.
That is exactly what was happening.

Meditation is the understanding of life as a whole without excluding anything. To exclude anything is to seek a result away from what is, and hence conflict. To include everything is to be with a fact, and a fact cannot be changed by the choice of thought. The fact of sorrow, the fact of getting caught in time, the fact of thought’s incapability to go beyond itself, the fact of self contradiction, the fact of fear… are all there. To be with them is to give up all futile escapes. To be with them as to be with the sky, the trees, the air and the birds, is life in its totality. The mind is quiet and conflict ceases.

Without meditation, where all challenges are dropped and responses are lost, without the center-less boundless attention where the mind enters by a shift into a different state or dimension, there cannot come about a deep change in the brain itself. You discover the way it works to cleanse the brain deeply of its conditioning, thought habituation, chattering and searching, memory and time, and you know where to push deeper into that unknown realm. It becomes your regular essential work daily.

A meditative mind then can look and see clearly the facts of life, not as manipulated ideas by the hidden multi-faces ego or self, but as immovable concrete facts created by the self itself, as long as that self exists. The self is all that. The self realizes itself, and therefore it does not enter into meditation.

Meditation is a movement into the unknown.