KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Excellent, agreed.

Ah, hermann...you have quite enough in the pool with you already...

hermann wrote:

beans wrote:

krishnamurti: Thought itself must deny itself. Thought itself sees what it is doing - right? - and therefore thought itself realizes that it has to come of itself to an end. There is no other factor than itself. Therefore when thought realizes that whatever it does, any movement that it makes, is disorder (we are taking that as an example), then there is silence. The nature of the change from disorder is silence.

It seems to me that “must deny” is another unfortunate word choice that K has used repeatedly, much like “thought must...” and “thought itself sees what it is doing.” In reality thought itself does not deny and thought itself does not see.

A brief quote like that may distort k's meaning a little.  But haven't you read enough k-stuff to restore the context for yourself?  Or are you more interested in your own crowing than in what the man is saying?

from the traditional way of what denying means you are right here, but denying here is dying, completely, because it lead otherwise to a continuation but only with another name, the opposite. denying is to stay with what is till the ending.

NOt that silence is the goal, but seeing if its possible to get beyond the mind that usualy wont shut up, and feeds me memories, concenrs, etc,

Babs wrote:

NOt that silence is the goal, but seeing if its possible to get beyond the mind that usualy wont shut up, and feeds me memories, concenrs, etc,

I think a few have seen that a still mind is peaceful, and it happens from time to time, probably less and less...but understanding why it doesn't stay is the key.

beans wrote:

awareness wrote:

beans wrote:

awareness said: "...which is the complete denying of time, of thought itself..."

beans: Does ignoring/denying thought in favor of a certain state bring understanding? Or does it compartmentalize those ignored thoughts, which are unseen, so will continue to repeat?

krishnamurti: Thought itself must deny itself. Thought itself sees what it is doing - right? - and therefore thought itself realizes that it has to come of itself to an end. There is no other factor than itself. Therefore when thought realizes that whatever it does, any movement that it makes, is disorder (we are taking that as an example), then there is silence. The nature of the change from disorder is silence.

It seems to me that “must deny” is another unfortunate word choice that K has used repeatedly, much like “thought must...” and “thought itself sees what it is doing.” In reality thought itself does not deny and thought itself does not see.

To say that thought must deny itself is ambiguous – it could mean that one must ignore/compartmentalize thought without first letting it play through for the sake of whole understanding of what is happening at the moment and of oneself.

Any traditional meditator with a mantra can deny thought, but this does not change understanding, just momentarily blocks thought.

sorry, beans. i answered here somewhere else. denying is dying. it means to stay with what is till the end of the what.

Once more - back to the same old quote:

Can I look without the word at every problem: the problem of fear, the problem of pleasure? Because the word creates, breeds thought; and thought is memory, experience, pleasure, and therefore a distorting factor.  This is really quite astonishingly simple. Because it is simple, we mistrust it. We want everything to be very complicated, very cunning; and all cunning is covered with a perfume of words. If I can look at a flower nonverbally - and I can; anyone can do it, if one gives sufficient attention - can't I look with that same objective, nonverbal attention at the problems which I have? Can't I look out of silence, which is nonverbal, without the thinking machinery of pleasure and time being in operation? Can't I just look? I think that's the crux of the whole matter - not to approach from the periphery, which only complicates life tremendously, but to look at life, with all its complex problems of livelihood, sex, death, misery, sorrow, the agony of being tremendously alone - to look at all that without association, out of silence, which means without a center, without the word which creates the reaction of thought, which is memory and hence time. I think that is the real problem, the real issue: whether the mind can look at life where there is immediate action, not an idea and then action, and eliminate conflict altogether. - J. Krishnamurti, Collected Works, Vol. XV,143,Choiceless Awareness

Why isn't it working - in the way k suggests?

Part of it is of course that the charlatans are always quick to jump in.  They have no tolerance for a question that threatens their fortified selves.  But that's hardly the real issue.  The real issue is the charlatan inside.  The self with all its excuses and all its pleas for time.  I can't do it just now, I need time to compose myself.  I need to get ready.  But all my messy self is displayed in all my evasiveness.  That is the quality whose pulse I must check.  And if it takes a hundred years - so what?  But there is something else - I don't know how to get to it.  And there may be nothing to get to.  Looking at every problem without the word.

hermann, are you trying to close that door for others, for yourself, or both at once?

I just wondered if you were talking to yourself or talking to all of us through yourself.

Don't hassle it...

Perhaps willy is merely using the wrong word.  What you call 'closing the door' seems to me an 'opening of the door'.  If we manage to close the door on what we know (the past), aren't opening the door to the actuality of perception, the here and now.  But  in general we're too hung over from the past to meet the present.  In the past we hope to find security.  We're not ready to open our eyes.

If we stay with k's terminology, past and future are continuous - the future merely an extrapolation of the past - we can use the words 'time', or 'thought', or 'the known' pretty much interchangeably.  Of course we can also talk about the future as the unknown - but then we have to be careful not to muddle our vocabulary.  The unknown is simply that which is outside the realm of knowledge.  For Socrates, as for k, - I know that I know nothing - the real, the present, the 'now' exists outside of the known.  It can be experienced only by the person who manages to put the known aside.  By seeing that the known is dead.  Look, willy, I'm trying.  It's like a tightrope walk across the Niagara gorge.