Talk To Teachers. Chapter 7: On Teaching And Learning
Teacher: We realize that we cannot see a fact unless the mind is empty of thought. But even if it is empty for a while, thought seems to arise again. How do we end thought? Can we discuss this?
Krishnamurti: I wonder if all of us understand the importance of the role of thinking? Is thought important, and at what level is it important? What is thinking? What makes us think? Where is thought important and where is it not important, and how do you answer that question? And what is the machinery that is set going when a question is asked?
Is thinking merely the habitual response to a habitual pattern? You live here in this school in a certain groove, with certain patterns of thoughts, habits, feelings. You live, you function in those habits, patterns and systems, and the functioning of the brain, thought is very limited. And when you go out of the valley you live in a little wider field. You have certain grooves of action and you follow them. It is all a mechanical process really, but in that pattern of mechanical activity there are certain variations. You modify, change, but always in that pattern, wherever you are, whatever position you may have - minister, governor or doctor, or professor - it is always a groove with varying changes and modifications.
You function in patterns. I am not saying it is right or wrong, I am just examining it. You have beliefs but they are in the background and you go on with your daily activities, with your envy, greed, jealousy. Whenever your beliefs are questioned you get irritated but you go on. Children are being educated to think, to form grooves of habits and to function in those habits for the rest of their lives. They are going to get jobs, they are going to be engineers, doctors, and for the rest of their lives, the pattern will be set. Any deviation from that is what is disturbing. That disturbance is lessened through marriage, responsibility, children; and so gradually the mould is set. And all thinking is between what is convenient, what is not convenient, what is beneficial, what is worthwhile - it is always within that field.
Powerful beginning.
ReplyDeleteWould it be possible to test the truth of it?
Do you mean: "to see whether thinking is habitual and mechanical"?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this, I'm asking myself: What exactly does K. mean by "mechanical"? I suppose he means that thinking is repetitive, predetermined, fixed and lacks a certain living quality. But what is that living quality? Are emotions less mechanical than thinking? If an animal like a dog or a cat is an example of non-mechanical functioning, then what exactly makes it non-mechanical? Descartes, for example, thought that animals were very similar to machines, and this view is to some extent reflected in our culture to this day (especially in the West).
Basically, I wonder if the mechanical nature of thinking can become clearer by comparing it to something else we know that is non-mechanical in the relevant sense. Or is this a wrong approach?
K. mentions things like envy, greed, jealousy, and belief, which can perhaps be taken as examples of the mechanical nature of the activity of thought. These things keep recurring again and again all through our life, like a computer program.
"And all thinking is between what is convenient, what is not convenient, what is beneficial, what is worthwhile - it is always within that field."
This is a very strong, sweeping kind of statement, which makes it interesting. What about serious enquiry? What place has thinking in enquiry?
My feeling is that he is asking if we could have a look which is global, all-encompassing, that can see the whole consciousness, as it is...
ReplyDeleteWhat place has thinking in enquiry?. If thinking would have a place in enquiry, then the enquiry would be conditioned, limited, self-serving. Thinking is just a manifestation of that consciousness. My feeling is that thinking has no place in enquiry, but that some other kind of awareness does.
After considering this question again, I have to agree that you are right: real enquiry is not a matter of thinking.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your contribution in terms of enquiry.
ReplyDeleteI feel it is not that I am right. I feel this is what K has been saying all along....
Thank you for the opportunity.
ReplyDelete"I feel this is what K has been saying all along..."
Yes. And yet, he did speak of "right thinking" in the 1940s and even early 1950s. And much later he spoke of "thinking together".