Attention involves seeing and hearing

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Attention involves seeing and hearing. We hear not only with our ears but also we are sensitive to the tones, the voice, to the implication of words, to hear without interference, to capture instantly the depth of a sound. Sound plays an extraordinary part in our lives: the sound of thunder, a flute playing in the distance, the unheard sound of the universe; the sound of silence, the sound of one’s own heart beating; the sound of a bird and the noise of a man walking on the pavement; the waterfall. The universe is filled with sound. This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.

Letters to the Schools vol II, p 30

Here is my reflection.

I guess some of you might be humbing the Simon and Garfunkel soung right now! :-) If you can also remember the words, or at least some of them, they are actually pretty interesting in the context of what K is saying.

How often has the tone that someone was speaking in said far more to you than their actual words? This is what K would probably call "total listening". Listening with all of you, just just with the ears but the heart too.

Best wishes

Robert

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Just be aware; that is all you have to do, without condemning, without forcing, without trying to change what you are aware of. Then you will see that it is like a tide that is coming in. You cannot prevent the tide from coming in; build a wall, or do what you will, it will come with tremendous energy. In the same way, if you are aware choicelessly, the whole field of consciousness begins to unfold. And as it unfolds, you have to follow; and the following becomes extraordinarily difficult—following in the sense to follow the movement of every thought, of every feeling, of every secret desire. It becomes difficult the moment you resist, the moment you say, “That is ugly”, “This is good”, “That is bad”, “This I will keep”, “That I will not keep.”

The Collected Works vol XV, p 85.

Here is my reflection.

As long as there is the "me" there, who chooses, who has an image, and has desire around that image, there will be resistance. The resistance does stop the following, the observing without judgement, the movement of intelligence. It is the ego defending itself. It is the ego that says I will not listen to this, I will not take part, I am not interested, I have my plan and my desire. To be other than this, which is to be alive, the mind must be extraordinarily alert, sensitive, innocent, and passionate. As soon as you make a choice, you are basically dead. This is not the same as indecision. It's much bigger than that. It is watching the place of chosing in the mind. It is living without resolving duality, without the way of the ego and certainty.

To be aware without condemnation

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Do not think about doing it, but actually do it now. That is, be aware of the trees, the palm tree, the sky; hear the crows cawing; see the light on the leaf, the colour of the sari, the face; then move inwardly. You can observe, you can be aware choicelessly of outward things. It is very easy. But to move inwardly and to be aware without condemnation, without justification, without comparison is more difficult. Just be aware of what is taking place inside you—your beliefs, your fears, your dogmas, your hopes, your frustrations, your ambitions, and all the rest of the things. Then the unfolding of the conscious and the unconscious begins. You have not to do a thing.

The Collected Works vol XV, p 85.

Here is my reflection.

This process that K is describing corresponds to the one in yoga where the mind moves from Dharana or concentration to Dhyana or meditation. There is a movement from objectifying the object with names and labels to experiencing a continuous flow of attention between you and it, unmeditated, one not filtered by our conditioning. Concentration on an object will create heat or tapas as we experience deeper levels of concentration. As this moves into a free flow of attention, it releases prana, which is also termed intelligence in classical yoga, to move downwards and cleanse the nadis or energy channlels. When these are blocked they prevent clear perception of what it is. They are usually clogged with all our conditioning and pre-conceptions. These are called samskaras, layers of concepts and ideas that build up over years, like sandbanks build up with the action of waves over years. The cleansing allows you to just look at the object because now you are not there looking.

K is indirectly critical of this because it begins outside yourself, because it has a method and a progression and involves time. This movement from concentration to meditation is part of an 8-limbed path, and although it appears that one might reach the end, samadhi or true compassion, from any one limb or practice, there is the idea that we are moving from here to there, and that practicing one limb sets the foundation for the next.

Best wishes

Robert

Watching though there is nothing to learn

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

I am learning about myself—not according to some psychologist or specialist—I am watching and I see something in myself; but I do not condemn it, I do not judge it, I do not push it aside—I just watch it. I watch that I am proud—let us take that as an example. I do not say, “I must put it aside, how ugly to be proud.”—but I just watch it.

As I am watching, I am learning. Watching means learning what pride involves, how it has come into being. I cannot watch it for more than five or six minutes—if one can, that is a great deal—the next moment I become inattentive. Having been attentive and knowing what inattention is, I struggle to make inattention attentive. Do not do that, but watch inattention, become aware that you are inattentive—that is all.

Stop there. Do not say, “I must spend all my time being attentive”, but just watch when you are inattentive. To go any further into this would be really quite complex . There is a quality of mind that is awake and watching all the time, watching though there is nothing to learn. That means a mind that is extraordinarily quiet, extraordinarily silent. What has a silent, clear mind to learn?

The Impossible Question, pp 25-26

Here is my reflection.

This practice of watching the inattention is negative inquiry, seeing the false as false so that the true can be revealed. If you start to go further and focus on trying to cultivate the positive - attention - then you start creating problems. Then you'll need an image of what attention is, a method to bring it into beeing, a teacher to teach you the method, and from there you start to accumulate further conditioning. All you really need is intelligence, for which only a simplicity is needed, the inward simplicity of being alone. Intelligence is that quality of the mind that is awake and watching all the time. With intelligence we learn about ourselves from ourselves, and for ourselves. It's not a selfish action, it is self-observation, studying onself, becoming free without becoming dependent and becoming lost in a new pattern of conditioning that is only a step away from the one we just had.

One ceases to learn the moment one argues with life

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

The act of listening is the act of learning.One has to learn so much about life, for life is a movement in relationship. And that relationship is action. We have to learn—not accumulate knowledge from this movement that we call life and then live according to that knowledge, which is conformity. To conform is to adjust, to fit into a mould, to adjust oneself to the various impressions, demands, pressures of a particular society.

Life is meant to be lived, to be understood. One has to learn about life, and one ceases to learn the moment one argues with life, comes to life with the past, with one’s conditioning as knowledge. So there is a difference between acquiring knowledge and the act of learning. You must have knowledge; otherwise you will not know where you live, you will forget your name, and so on.

So at one level knowledge is imperative, but when that knowledge is used to understand life—which is a movement, which is a thing that is living, moving, dynamic, every moment changing—when you cannot move with life, then you are living in the past and trying to comprehend the extraordinary thing called life. And to understand life, you have to learn every minute about it and never come to it having learned.

The Collected Works vol XV, pp 13-14

Here is my reflection.

When we learn from the past, from past experiences, from past relationships, there is then a conformity to those relationships in everyone thing that comes afterwards. Learning is dynamic, moving, ongoing. Can you treat everyone as new, with fresh eyes, can you enter this movement called life by just looking, being impartial in what you see. Most of all, can you free yourself from this conformity by seeing it working within you?

The very act of listening is a great miracle

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion. So, the speaker suggests, respectfully, that you so listen and not interpret what he says.

When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion.

We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.

That Benediction is Where You Are, pp 22-23.

Here is my reflection.

Memory constantly distorts the world we have in front of us. It puts a coating over it that makes it look glossy and appealing, but this is only because it is of your own making. All we recognise here is our desire. It takes away the passion to find out. Memory is there as the reassuring background that we constantly drop into. It allows us to live in a state of presumption and superiority. Not knowing changes everything. It creates a senstivity and an appreciation for what is said. Take time today to see when you have a conclusion about something or someone. Might that be based upon a fragment, your desire frustrated by them? Have you understood the totality of them?

Best wishes

Robert

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

There is an art of listening. The word “art” implies putting everything in its right place. If you understand the meaning of that word, the real art is not painting pictures, but the art of putting your life in its proper place, which is to live harmoniously. When you have put everything in yourself in its right place, you are free. Putting everything in its right place is part of intelligence. You will say we are giving a new meaning to that word “intelligence”. One must. Intelligence implies reading between the lines, between the words, between two silences, between speech, listening with your mind all the time alert to listen. You hear not only with the ear, but also without the ear.

On Love and Loneliness, pp 87-88

Here is my reflection.

Here K is talking about an opening to listening, which is an art. To put everything in yourself in order such that you can listen. This is to observe everything within you that doesn't listen, that reduces listening to the "science" of what has already been heard. To live harmoniously is to make life an art. There is an art to inteligence and it is listening. The listening is the miracle; one who listens has experienced a radical inward transformation.

Best wishes

Robert