Consciousness, Awareness, Attention
Part Four: Being the Way
“What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not a withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.”
Jiddu, Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
Right Thinking
“There is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge.” What is Krishnamurti saying here? How do we access self-knowledge without thinking? And, what’s the difference between right thinking and “just” thinking?
The first thing to clear up is what I mean by “just” thinking and why didn’t I say “wrong” thinking, as opposed to “right thinking”? I’ll answer that last question first.
To say it’s wrong thinking as opposed to right thinking leads us down the wrong path, it will only take us into a dualistic cul-de-sac as we begin to think about thinking, which boils down to making judgments about our thoughts and thinking. This leads us directly away from what JK is pointing towards.
Krishnamurti is sometimes used by people to justify their anti-intellectual beliefs. What they fail to understand is that JK made a distinction between technical knowledge and psychological knowledge.
What was important to JK was relationships, not just any particular form of relationship, but all relationships, outer and inner. What he points out is that dualistic thinking has its place. The correctness of thinking “this and that” about things and skills is generally verifiable. Mistakes in such thinking can and will be made but thought can be adjusted as more facts are gathered. There is not inherently a long-term or permanent error created.
The error humankind has fallen into is applying this form of thinking to our inner, and therefore our outer, relationships. This is problematic for several reasons, some of which have already been hinted at, but all of which fall into one or both of two categories: Failure to consider context and mistaking function for form.
For example, let’s reflect on what frequently happens when we identify with our beliefs. I’m not looking to stir up any controversy, so I’ll use a song to illustrate my point, Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California”. Taken literally or metaphorically it’s all the same.
The song is about a young man who decides on the spur of the moment to seek fame and fortune and jumps on a bus with little forethought. He’s heard from many people that “it never rains in Southern California”, every day is a good day with no misfortune. However, he soon finds himself without a job and penniless, on the street, and in the pouring rain. He discovered he was very wrong and longed to go home. A problem for him for sure, but it ultimately made for a good life lesson (and a hit song to boot).
But what if he had never made the trip and came to firmly believe that “It never rains in Southern California”? What if he identified with this belief and thought of himself as “someone who knows, it never rains in Southern California”? To complicate things even further he becomes one of many who believe it to be true that not a drop of rain falls in Southern California. What happens then when some “no nothing” comes to town and starts telling tales of rainstorms in Southern California? I smell a fight brewing.
It’s fairly easy to spot his first problem, lack of context. He had not considered that the fair-weather story may have come from someone who had never been to Southern California nor known anyone else who had been there. He did not take into account that his information came from someone with a limited perspective. The second part of his problem came from mistaking the function of intellect (gathering, categorizing, and organizing information) for himself, the thinker of thoughts and holder of beliefs that determine his character and place in the world.
I will leave it for you to extrapolate further how this scenario affects so many lives and relationships. It’s time now for us to return to the remaining questions: How do we access self-knowledge without the aid of our thoughts and what is this right thinking that leads to the right action? These questions will need to be answered in order.
How do we access self-knowledge? The simple answer is through observation.
But not the type of observation we commonly engage in, surrounded, and informed by thought. Such observation is the product of our habitual reliance on concentration. I am not talking about sustained concentration on one object. Rather the kind of everyday concentration where we tend to narrowly focus on one or a small number of objects/thoughts at a time, sometimes jumping from one to the other like a monkey in a tree. If you listened to the audio “Open Door” earlier or ever tried to meditate you know what I mean.
In a sense, concentration can be considered a form of attention. However, because it has become the dominant way we have been conditioned to view things, it is helpful to distinguish between them, at least for now. Let me explain why.
When asked to observe or study ourselves, part of the instruction is usually to observe without judgment, nothing is either good or bad, it just is. Once again, if you did the exercise Open Door or otherwise experienced how Awareness is the space in which all phenomena arise and pass away. The space of Awareness allows whatever is presented to be and whatever departs to return with no comment. It is when Attention is experientially connected with its home base (so to speak) that we can easily observe in a manner that brings a wordless understanding that comes from a more inclusive perspective.
Just to bring home what I noted previously; Awareness and Attention are not now, nor have they ever been, separated. It is this capacity that serves as the foundation for pattern recognition. Without it, there would be no perception possible, only aperspectival sensations utilized on the basic instinctual level.
You can get a feel experientially for what occurs when attention is allowed to return home with a simple exercise:
Just take a moment to relax and let your gaze soften. Slowly allow peripheral vision to widen to include. Without turning attention away listen for all of the sounds you can hear gross and subtle. If prompted, allow the sense of touch and feeling to be included too. Now gently let eyes close and abide in spacious Awareness.
You may notice that in allowing more of your experience you relax your face and eyes, your neck and head, your arms, legs, and torso too. A smile might even make an appearance.
The sense of touch and feelings may be the most difficult to sustain. The body has become the warehouse of unresolved and unwanted feelings. If so, just return to listening and soft vision and abide in the silence and spaciousness of the Awareness that holds all sensation and appearance.
Whenever possible, if you are so inclined, you can allow attention to experientially return home. You can do this anywhere and anytime you wish. You don’t have to go through the whole process. Just allow the eyes and face to soften and the ears to open up. You can come to know the sensation of just being, even if only momentarily. Occasionally you may naturally, without thinking about it, take refuge there when your body/mind wants to regenerate.
Knowingly or not, there is always this subtle observation of your body/mind going on. And sometimes, perhaps when feeling uncomfortable but it could be also at times that you enjoy, there will be simply attentive awareness observing, it may be an observation of that critical voice in your head, or the recall of memory, or the emergence of strong feelings. At that moment concentration has not taken hold and there is only the attentive state. There is simply observation from the perspective of just being. Whether sustained for a long or short time does not matter. There will be understanding, even if it is not yet apparent in thought, and something will be released. With understanding comes freedom.
Don’t fall into the trap of pursuing some goal and start comparing the present to the past or yourself to others. But should that occur, and you see it, rejoice; to see inattentiveness requires Attentive Awareness.
To Be Willing, Honest, and Open is to Be the Way that Life intends.
