KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America
You are not logged in.
Announcement
Kindly be mindful of the following points regarding the forum. Dialogue is thinking together - it isn’t debate - and it's inquiring together without end point or agenda. People come into the dialogue from their own place of understanding, which is not going to be your place of understanding. We’re here to communicate together, learn together and gain insight into our own thought; to receive and share our observations, not impose our views on others. Address the comments in a polite, considerate manner. By all means, ask for clarification, but challenge the comment, not the commentator. We don’t know enough about the others to make those judgments and we’re here to learn about ourselves, not to correct another's perceived personality flaws. If a comment brings an emotional response, look at that. Do you feel the need to defend? To attack? Time for some looking inward. Self protection results in war. Besides, the war is in each of us. Stop that war, and the rest will take care of itself. (For some suggestions on the nature of dialogue, please click here)
Make friends across the globe, post your photos and videos, write a blog or start a discussion, just go to jkrishnamurti.ning.com
#1 2012-08-10 08:37:46
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Meeting the new
Every moment is utterly new and unprecedented. Yet my brain/mind meets these new moments by comparing them to old moments (in memory). "Oh yeah, this (new event) is like that (old event) ..." In a thousand thousand variations, like a grand kaleidoscopic collage. A colorful and entertaining way to live. But also sad: Everything is always new, but my little brain keeps seeing it as a variant of the old.
How can I meet the new head on without seeing it through the lens of the old?
Offline
#2 2012-08-10 08:44:12
- awareness
- Member
- Registered: 2011-09-03
- Posts: 4038
Re: Meeting the new
isnt the "how" a wrong question, the new takes place within the ending of the old, so there is no opposite possibe. the possibility of an opposite is within the old.
Offline
#3 2012-08-10 09:08:11
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
I see that asking "how" creates a mind-based division into "the way things are now" and "the way things might be." But I don't see that this creating of a mind-based division is necessarily within the old. Can't my mind create an utterly new division in this moment?
Offline
#4 2012-08-10 09:18:01
- awareness
- Member
- Registered: 2011-09-03
- Posts: 4038
Re: Meeting the new
the new IS the ending of the old
Offline
#5 2012-08-10 09:23:27
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
Here I am, meeting the new through the lens of the old.
Someone (you, Krishnamurti, whoever) says: "the new IS the ending of the old."
And: Here I (still) am, meeting the new through the lens of the old.
Offline
#6 2012-08-10 09:32:41
- awareness
- Member
- Registered: 2011-09-03
- Posts: 4038
Re: Meeting the new
hmm, come on, swim through the river of fear, i am waiting here
Offline
#7 2012-08-10 09:40:01
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
I swim by moving my arms/legs the way I learned so many years ago. Thus here I am again, repeating what I know.
Offline
#9 2012-08-10 09:59:40
Re: Meeting the new
Pablo Sitauskis wrote:
Every moment is utterly new and unprecedented. Yet my brain/mind meets these new moments by comparing them to old moments (in memory). "Oh yeah, this (new event) is like that (old event) ..." In a thousand thousand variations, like a grand kaleidoscopic collage. A colorful and entertaining way to live. But also sad: Everything is always new, but my little brain keeps seeing it as a variant of the old.
How can I meet the new head on without seeing it through the lens of the old?
likely you can not, pablo, but this does not stop the potential for understanding this as it is actually occurring.
Online
#10 2012-08-10 10:29:07
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
joe wrote:
Pablo Sitauskis wrote:
Every moment is utterly new and unprecedented. Yet my brain/mind meets these new moments by comparing them to old moments (in memory). "Oh yeah, this (new event) is like that (old event) ..." In a thousand thousand variations, like a grand kaleidoscopic collage. A colorful and entertaining way to live. But also sad: Everything is always new, but my little brain keeps seeing it as a variant of the old.
How can I meet the new head on without seeing it through the lens of the old?likely you can not, pablo
I cannot, or one cannot?
In your opinion, can some? Could Krishnamurti?
Offline
#11 2012-08-10 10:40:11
Re: Meeting the new
yeah, it was not personal to you pablo. I do not know for sure one way or another whether K always met the new fresh but I would tend to say no, not always. The real issue is understanding what is happening in perception, not an attempt to end it. I tried to initiate this conversation with Hermann in the presence of mind thread but it never went anywhere. I say the issue is understanding *as it is actually occurring* that the mind is meeting the new with the old.
Online
#12 2012-08-10 11:12:16
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
Cool, let's go with that:
What occurs when the mind meets the new with the old?
Speaking for my mind -- whose else could I possibly speak for with "authority?" -- I often perceive something (see a field of brown, green shapes) and then almost immediately categorize it: I know this, it's a tree.
Offline
#13 2012-08-10 11:17:02
Re: Meeting the new
Sure, and it is a pretty good thing that you do, lest you drive into a swamp, right? That is what I am saying, the old is necessary in so many ways on the practical level. To be done with it is likely just a search of the mind for what it thinks things should be. That said, understanding that we carry with us our knowledge tends to release the importance of this knowledge beyond its needed functioning of driving on the right side of the road.
Online
#14 2012-08-10 11:30:08
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
joe wrote:
the old is necessary in so many ways on the practical level. To be done with it is likely just a search of the mind for what it thinks things should be.
Yes. And yes.
That said, understanding that we carry with us our knowledge tends to release the importance of this knowledge beyond its needed functioning of driving on the right side of the road.
So the question isn't "Can the mind fully drop the past and meet now as new 100%?" rather "Can the mind meet now as new AT ALL?"
For this to happen, the mind must somehow *take in* a moment without drawing upon its storehouse of memory reflexes. Would you agree?
Offline
#15 2012-08-10 11:33:38
Re: Meeting the new
Pablo Sitauskis wrote:
joe wrote:
the old is necessary in so many ways on the practical level. To be done with it is likely just a search of the mind for what it thinks things should be.
Yes. And yes.
That said, understanding that we carry with us our knowledge tends to release the importance of this knowledge beyond its needed functioning of driving on the right side of the road.
So the question isn't "Can the mind fully drop the past and meet now as new 100%?" rather "Can the mind meet now as new AT ALL?"
For this to happen, the mind must somehow *take in* a moment without drawing upon its storehouse of memory reflexes. Would you agree?
I am not sure that is the right question at all, pablo...again it seems that the mind always draws upon its knowledge, in any and every situation, and that is an evolutionary must. The issue (it seems to me) is can the person understand that the mind is doing this, thereby keeping the necessary functioning without extending it beyond where it is useful in our living.
Online
#16 2012-08-10 11:54:46
- Pablo Sitauskis
- Member
- Registered: 2010-01-17
- Posts: 1933
Re: Meeting the new
joe wrote:
it seems that the mind always draws upon its knowledge, in any and every situation, and that is an evolutionary must.
What about:
Insight. True insight = ekstasis (standing outside of (mind)), not the faux insight that arises as a reshuffling of memories.
Non-goal-oriented perception, attention, awareness.
The issue (it seems to me) is can the person understand that the mind is doing this, thereby keeping the necessary functioning without extending it beyond where it is useful in our living.
Good. Let's come back to this a bit later, okay?
Offline
#17 2012-08-10 12:37:06
- awareness
- Member
- Registered: 2011-09-03
- Posts: 4038
Re: Meeting the new
In ending, there is a new beginning. If you end, there is something, the doors are opened, but you want to be sure before you end that the door will open. So you never end, never end your motive. The understanding of death is to live a life, inwardly ending.
Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.
k
Last edited by awareness (2012-08-10 12:39:56)
Offline
#18 2012-08-10 12:47:03
Re: Meeting the new
Pablo Sitauskis wrote:
joe wrote:
it seems that the mind always draws upon its knowledge, in any and every situation, and that is an evolutionary must.
What about:
Insight. True insight = ekstasis (standing outside of (mind)), not the faux insight that arises as a reshuffling of memories.
Non-goal-oriented perception, attention, awareness.The issue (it seems to me) is can the person understand that the mind is doing this, thereby keeping the necessary functioning without extending it beyond where it is useful in our living.
Good. Let's come back to this a bit later, okay?
Sure thing Pablo...I will be going down to celebrate my fathers 82nd birthday in a few hours but will check back on it when I return tonight to see if you have added anything.
Online
#19 2012-08-10 13:12:09
Re: Meeting the new
There seems to be a built-in goal of understanding what is going on; perhaps it's a only survival thingy cloaked in curiosity, but it is there.
And speaking of Curiosity, what a trip, that landing...
Offline
#21 2012-08-10 13:37:13
Re: Meeting the new
I mean spiritually, but only in the spirit of the speaking...
I think the term, if taken qualitatively, is the existential; the image being the living image...
Close enough...
Offline
#22 2012-08-10 13:46:31
Re: Meeting the new
wilbro99 wrote:
I mean spiritually, but only in the spirit of the speaking...
I think the term, if taken qualitatively, is the existential; the image being the living image...
Close enough...
the term understanding or curiosity? Just trying to understand, just curious is all...
Online
#23 2012-08-10 14:00:01
Re: Meeting the new
Both! Curiouser and curiouser!
Offline
#24 2012-08-10 14:12:21
- snguyen
- Member
- Registered: 2009-04-15
- Posts: 3329
Re: Meeting the new
Pablo Sitauskis wrote:
So the question isn't "Can the mind fully drop the past and meet now as new 100%?" rather "Can the mind meet now as new AT ALL?"
For this kind of perception or investigation, we have to keep in mind that we do not shoot for the absolute or perfection, but to see it as it reveals and move on.
In attention and if you have been doing it for years, that state of mind does not have the past in it as chattering memories nor does it have the search of thought. The mind and actually also the brain because the feeling, the senses, the energy are both physical and abstract, are attending to itself, quiet, balanced and yet alive. And this means that the mechanism of words, images is really disabled and used only for communication to others. But for the mentioned mind/brain when it attends to something with its disabled word/image mechanism, it does not see or perceive as normally. Without the words, the mind cannot move to "see". Thought is consuming energy; without thought energy is released. So the new can be seen as just energy and this energy has its manifestation, not like energy of gasoline.
For this to happen, the mind must somehow *take in* a moment without drawing upon its storehouse of memory reflexes. Would you agree?
True. And that is attention and going deeper and deeper into it. Not the effort to make mind silent but attending to everything till the discovery goes on by itself.
Offline
#25 2012-08-10 14:24:44
- snguyen
- Member
- Registered: 2009-04-15
- Posts: 3329
Re: Meeting the new
Now, what happens when the mind is not attending? It comes back to the old world and has to deal with the old world, but the quality of the new mind is still there it can also attend to what it is doing. So, back and forth, back and forth, the mind is moving and exploring between its high state of pure attention and the testing out in reality.
The new can be as the mind is a new thing, not just that it sees the old tree as something completely new. The mind is a new thing everyday, and it does not get that sense of boredom, stuck in something old, repetitive.
Offline