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**This brings up, for me, the difference between what Krishnamurti calls meditation and the manner in which meditation is more commonly thought of. This is also related to Ric's question: "how does one actually observe thought?"
J.K.: "Meditation is one of the greatest acts of life--perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody.
That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, which is the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy--if you are aware of all that in yourself.
So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to singing birds or looking at the face of your wife or child."
What J.K. has to say here is debatable, largely dependent on how one defines meditation, such as formal practice, informal practice or simply thoughtfulness.
In the first case, there are indeed techniques, thousands of them, and authorities to teach them. What cannot be transmitted are the experiences gained through meditation, at best only conclusions about experience and indications where that experience may be found.
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**The suggestion is to be fully attentive to what is, choicelessly.
I read what J.K. says here to be the informal practice of mindfulness, which ultimately involves choosing something to be mindful of.
Now, i say ultimately since one can begin the process in a state of choiceless awareness, whereupon something enters one's field of awareness which one can then choose to be mindful of it, that is, focus one's attention on it, keep it there, then choose to let it go.
Choiceless awareness, rather than being a state of attentiveness, is a state of emptiness unhindered by the intentions of thought or feeling, and which could perhaps be thought of as a pre-attentive state, a readiness to attend to anything that occurs.
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It doesn't mean go into a trance.
Perhaps, but i also don't see why not, whatever is meant by a trance. I take any form of focus to be a trance state due to its exclusionary nature. That pretty much includes everything but choiceless awareness, which i am not certain about.
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It seems to me that when humans are obsessed with their ideas and beliefs, it ends up being essentially a trance-state. The point is to observe choicelessly what's actually going on, if, the intent is clarity. It's an attentiveness to what one is doing, one's relationships, and observing the corresponding thinking to observe whether it's coherent or not? It's like a continual, choiceless, map revising (where reality dictates a revision is needed). But this openness can't occur without the choicelessness. The choicelessness IS the open mind. Our relationship to everything that's occuring doesn't stop when there's an awareness that all we know is limited abstrations (generally speaking).
Or all we know is assumed ti be all there is.
Yes, open-mindedness followed by attention to what is found followed by more open-mindedness. Really, a cycle of awareness followed by attention.
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ric - When I suggest "observing what thought is doing", that's not saying that thought won't be an aspect of that observing process.
That is very confusing. Unless you have some way of breaking up thought into parts, as in NLP which deals in reprogramming s-r patterns. However, this deals with memories, and 'observing what thought is doing suggests otherwise, unless, as Doug suggested, observing thought is just observing very recent memory. In which case observing becomes rethinking, a holding on, which can then be let go, most importantly, making conscious an automatic unconscious thought pattern. Doing that interferes with or short-circuits the pattern. At this point, i just don't know.
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The only short-circuiting that occurs, to my understanding, is the 'choiceless' nature of the observing.
I refer to the automated, stimulus-response way most of our thinking occurs. In order to be free of choice, these fixed automated patterns must be short-circuited, which would leave the stimuli without responses. This is one of the primary things that occurs in single-point attention meditation. Constantly returning to one's focal point breaks the stimulus-response chains that drive our endless mind chatter.
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The pre-judging is short-circuited, because one sees how it hinders clear observation. If one pre-judges that something is good or bad, right or wrong, then one isn't really looking.
I would add that judging after the fact also hinders clear observation, both forms of judging being automated s-r patterns, clearing the deck for action (and perhaps hopelessly, the action of more thinking) rather than more observation.
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Observing in this choiceless manner is facilitated, where the limitations of thought is only an intellectual understanding, by the conscious intent to try and "be tentative" about what one currently knows.
I suspect this takes more than a little bit of training to achieve for most adults.
As i understand it, choosing to be choiceless isn't a possibility.
As far as i have determined to date, choiceless awareness just happens.
Here are some ways i have experienced it.
-Being new to a situation where we have no s-r response patterns as in early childhood.
-After a moment of personal catharsis, which for some reason lifts emotional defenses which cloud the senses and corral thinking.
-Seemingly random moments.
-Moments or periods that arise unpredictably as a result of the practice of single-point attention, found in most meditation practices.
In this regard, rather than taking tentativeness as choicelessness per se, i am inclined to view deliberate tentativeness as a means of short-circuiting s-r patterns leaving more room for choice. This parallels the "don't know" mind of one Zen Master i've read. -Q: What is this? A: I don't know!- Works in a similar way to a Zen koan.
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My suggestion to anyone interested in this possibility is to temporarilly suspend all the theories and find out directly for oneself whether one is capable of observing choicelessly? Or to simply inquire into what hinders clarity?
I think a precondition for an inquiry is the knowledge that clarity has been hindered. Not likely in my view, unless we can find a way for that lack of clarity to be made obvious to the uninquiring mind.
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I think Mark Twain got it right when he suggested the problem with human thought is often what we think we know which just ain't so.
Sometimes the best way to understand something is to stop theorizing about it and simply look for oneself.
Unfortunately, what is so isn't all that clear, and can be viewed in a limitless limited variety of ways.
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Re: even though I don't agree with him
If you were to pick one main issue of disagreement, what would it be?
What actuality is in actuality, actually. Map not territory being the theme.
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Baloney: A uniformly textured, mildly flavored immitation meat product for consumption comprised mainly of fat, meat by-products, salt and flavor enhancers which is high in calories and low in nutrition.
I can't multi-task, used to be able to, before it was identified as such. Now, one distraction [and there are many, even in simple lives] and I loose my place. I like repetition for just that reason, autopilot mode can be a safety net.
