Saturday, September 19, 2009

Daily Quote, Saturday September 19, 2009.

Good morning everyone,

It's a bit too early to take a guess at the whether but I can see a red sunrise which looks marvelous. Pop outisde and look!

Here is today's quote:

Is there any other part of the mind?

You see, we have only operated so far within the area of thought as knowledge. Right? Is there any other part, any other area of the mind, which includes the brain, which is not touched by human struggle, pain, anxiety, fear, and all the violence, all the things that man has made through thought? The discovery of that area is meditation. That implies the discovery as to whether thought can come to an end, but yet for thought to operate when necessary, in the field of knowledge?

We need knowledge, otherwise we cannot function, we would not be able to speak nor be able to write, and so on. Knowledge is necessary to function, and its functioning becomes neurotic when status becomes all important, which is the entering of thought as the “me”, as status. So knowledge is necessary and yet meditation is to discover, or come upon, or to observe, an area in which there is no movement of thought. Can the two live together, harmoniously, daily?

Talks in Saanen 1974, p 69.

Here is my reflection.

I think this sentense is very helpful and important: "Knowledge is necessary to function, and its functioning becomes neurotic when status becomes all important, which is the entering of thought as the “me”, as status."

Here is the limit of thought; this is where the resposnibility of thought ends. After this further thinking is irresponsible because it separates one person from another. As soon as there is a thought about me instead of how to cook the carrots, for example, there is time and distance (the image of you that my conditioning and memory create). That doesn't matter with the carrots; I need to be somehwat mechanical and repetitive with the carrots, but when I am this way with you and everyone else, then we go on as before, never changing, never looking, never having affection.

I have no status in relation to the carrots but I have so much with you. If I can reduce you to the knowable like the carrots, then "I" feel more secure. What the "I", the "me", fears, is that you won't recognise me, see the "me" I have manufactured, that thought has manufactured, that knowledge as thought as memory, has put together, and so on.

Meditation is to observe this using of knowledge irresponsibly. In meditation, knowledge and understanding, which is the place that K is referring to, can live harmoniosly. This is because understanding is totality, seeing totally.

Best wishes

Robert