I wonder why do we separate thinking and living? Is it because K has pointed out the process of thought? I have a lot of thoughts distracting me, and I am conditioned, yes, but is that the same as thinking?

There is thinking, which is common to all. Then, there are particular thoughts, which in total, make you.

Peter Stephens wrote:

I wonder why do we separate thinking and living? Is it because K has pointed out the process of thought? I have a lot of thoughts distracting me, and I am conditioned, yes, but is that the same as thinking?

Isn't thinking integral to living, and, therefore, not itself a problem? Are distracting thoughts the problem, or just something that remains neutral to human behavior until conditioning directs a reaction?

Can you make clearer for me, the difference between "distracting thoughts", and "conditioning", please?

Or maybe thinking is not the problem but the consequences of thinking is. If one takes ones thinking as absolute truth and acts upon it...which is what we all do. Is memory made of thoughts? If it is than we act based on that memory good bad conflictive divisive etc?

Life is relationship

I'll work through this a bit so you can see where I am coming from.
Thought is the words, ideas, images, I experience in the brain. I think. The content of what I think is the conditioning. Internally following the words, ideas, the story, the message, I am not observant, not aware of the immediate present. This is distraction. The content is leading me along. When I say I think I mean I am using memory, and organising, managing, manipulating, the ideas, words, images. It is a comparative, reactionary process. Even though I can be inventive, creative, I am drawing on the content. This may extend my awareness, my knowledge, but it is contained within the known. My sense of living, what I call living, is limited by thought. That is my understanding.

I read discusions which consistently say thought is to end, and thinking is the problem. Because I am thinking I have a problem, and it is irresponsible to be thinking. Because of thinking I am not aware, not attentive. Something being beyond the known. What do you think?

The format doesn't make this clear here, but this is a response to that "pita", my friend Eve. ;o)
Thinking and or thought, used in their appropriate circumstance, don't generally produce undesirable consequences, do they? Learning, communicating factual information/knowledge, etc.. Isn't it when we apply knowledge/thought/information/logic, in circumstances where it cannot possibly function adequatly, that undesirable consequences occure(pain,fear), maybe? "Love", Relationship", "Spiritual", etc.. Yet we continue to do it, over and over.

Dear Peter,
We are not seperating thinking and living,We are examining, Is Thought Thinking? WE all know that thought is limited and conditioned and the havoc it is playing in daily life.can we approach it,investigate it by thinking together.Not by thought, but by seeing it attentivelyand passively.Test it out

Bert

Dear Randal,
Conditioning is content of conscieousness,that is knowledge,experiences,memory,ideologies,beliefs.
Thought is the mechanical hard ware of the brain it uses the soft ware ie. content of conscieousness.So if you observe and see this, you know the garbage in and garbage out.
Check it out.

Bert

<pre> Dear Peter ,What you have said and explained is right.the only thing is thought is limited and thinker is the thought.In pure observation there is choiceless awareness.....an insight.Thats the break through.
</pre>

Bert

Berthram Redwood wrote:
can we approach it,investigate it by thinking together.Not by thought, but by seeing it attentivelyand passively.Test it out

Sorry I can't understand the difference between thought and thinking.

This post was last updated by Peter Stephens Sun, 07 Jun 2009.

Berthram Redwood wrote:
the only thing is thought is limited and thinker is the thought.

Sorry, i can't see how this points to thinking different to thought.

This post was last updated by Peter Stephens Sun, 07 Jun 2009.

Eve Goodmon wrote:

Or maybe thinking is not the problem but the consequences of thinking is. If one takes ones thinking as absolute truth and acts upon it...which is what we all do. Is memory made of thoughts? If it is than we act based on that memory good bad conflictive divisive etc?

To act on memory is not thinking. Memory is not thinking. OK I get that. What do I use when i am thinking?

Actualy Peter I think K says that there are two types of thought. One which is mechanical and does not create problems and the other which is psychological that is if not seen, can and does create a reactive response based on memeory. So no thinking stops as a result of this realization that the consequences of psychological thinking creates a reactive action that is not based on fact....basically you react based on past experiences which tend to color your action with a residue of the past...that is the way we live. We constantly react to the present with the past....if one observes this type of a reaction while it is occuring, one realizes that thought can not come in rationaly. I understand what you are saying. Our brain is wired to the past via thinking and experience so we are only repeating not realy looking at things that are happening now. And based on these conclusions we act, or react. As long as we are trapped by this process we are never free....I think this is what K is saying...As for ones own experience, or observation, when one pays attention, one can see this going on....What K is saying I think is, that we need one clear insight into all this movement of the self and then it does not happen anymore. The construction of the self as a memory based illusion wipes all this out. ummmm as long as this does not occurs, this insight which is not something one can persue but is univited, one is only repeating what others say .....

Life is relationship

Peter Stephens wrote:
...thought is to end, and thinking is the problem. Because I am thinking I have a problem, and it is irresponsible to be thinking. Because of thinking I am not aware, not attentive. Something being beyond the known. What do you think?

Are we speaking of divided thinking or just any thinking? Does thinking end "because" I see irresponsibility or as the thinker is seen as a separate entity in a given moment, rather than in the reaction of seeing thought as a distraction?

Eve, I think you are saying there is mechanical thought. Thought is functioning as thought. It acts like a molecule, or an atom. That thinking is not about me, nor my input, nor my activation. Thinking is thought doing its job. I see. When people talk about stopping thought, ending thought, not talking, not thinking, it is self holding thought to be a problem. Following this a bit. Say I deny there is self. I say it is thought. What is the basis for talking together?

This post was last updated by Peter Stephens Sun, 07 Jun 2009.

Richard Kover wrote:

Are we speaking of divided thinking or just any thinking? Does thinking end "because" I see irresponsibility or as the thinker is seen as a separate entity in a given moment, rather than in the reaction of seeing thought as a distraction?

Do I want thinking to end? What is the reaction? Why is there no inclusion, no embrace?

Randal Shacklett wrote:

Can you make clearer for me, the difference between "distracting thoughts", and "conditioning", please?

If we consider conditioning of the psyche - not including certain protective reflexes required for physical safety, and necessary mechanical skills - as something that binds us to "re-action" in behavior, we see that it imprisons the brains of sentient beings, since it directs behavior based on the past. Conditioning might be seen as thought in the sense of "activity in the brain". Thought, and what we label as 'distracting thoughts', spring from conditioning, but are these thoughts a problem when looked at without further reactive behavior? In the absence of conflict engendered by the separated thinker who says "this thought is distracting, while this other thought is not" aren't thoughts the basis of self-knowledge?

What happens as all thought and all conditioning is simply looked at without judgment, without categorizing, but as a manifestation of "me"?

Peter Stephens wrote:

Richard Kover wrote:

Are we speaking of divided thinking or just any thinking? Does thinking end "because" I see irresponsibility or as the thinker is seen as a separate entity in a given moment, rather than in the reaction of seeing thought as a distraction?

Do I want thinking to end? What is the reaction? Why is there no inclusion, no embrace?

Isn't the wanting of thinking to end a reaction of conditioning?

The reaction referred to above is the judgment that some thoughts are distracting while others are not.

So, is it a matter of wanting thinking to end, or a matter of seeing that the thinker interferes with relationship?

Not sure what you are asking in the last sentence about inclusion and embrace?

There is a place for thought - and it is in the purely technical - purely logical.

When technical thought, which can only measure, spills over into the psychological it is completely out of its natural place, and that perpetuates all human problems.

But to talk of eliminating 'thought' without understanding its place and its out-of-placeness just leads to more dead-ends.

Patricia Hemingway wrote:
But to talk of eliminating 'thought' without understanding its place and its out-of-placeness just leads to more dead-ends.

Yes! And, isn't another aspect of this question of thought that thought is the stuff of self-knowledge? And, isn't self knowledge said to be the opener of portals allowing unobstructed perception?

Hello Richard -

Thought can too often be treated as a K version of "The Devil" - the thing to be combated and defeated, which of course is in our conditioning to see things that way.

Much theorizing goes on about what can we 'use' to eliminate thought, and it all becomes very complicated, and psychological thought finds a perfect 'out' in all that confusion, and continues triumphant. Whereas it is quite simple to just be aware of the tricks that thought is playing to perpetuate itself in the psychological.

When I say something, I don't have an understanding of differences in thought. When speaking, writing, I see myself saying what I am saying. That can include all what i have learnt about the mechanical, technical thought, different to psychological thought. I think and I speak/write, as one person, responding to something, someone. I don't see thinking as different to thought. Where is the mind of the one person to change to thinking?

Patricia Hemingway wrote:

Thought can too often be treated as a K version of "The Devil"...

Much theorizing goes on about what can we 'use' to eliminate thought, and it all becomes very complicated, and psychological thought finds a perfect 'out' in all that confusion, and continues triumphant. Whereas it is quite simple to just be aware of the tricks that thought is playing to perpetuate itself in the psychological.

"Aware of the tricks"... Thought is the trick and the trickster... Thought reacting to thought, perpetuating itself... Sometimes disguised as [everyone can insert their own possibilities and post them].

Wish you had said more about a connection to self-knowledge, if you see one.

Richard Kover wrote:
Wish you had said more about a connection to self-knowledge, if you see one.

But Richard - what else are the tricks if not self knowledge?

Peter Stephens wrote:
When I say something, I don't have an understanding of differences in thought.

Hello Peter -

Why not?

Sorry, i can't see how this points to thinking different to thought.

This post was last updated by Peter Stephens on Sun, 07 Jun 2009, 12:2
Yes you are right,i also felt i was repeating ' K' .The word is not the thing.So here this thinking is without content of conscieous.It involves listening,intelligence,love and compassion.More of coming on it, than language.

Bert

Patricia Hemingway wrote:

Richard Kover wrote:
Wish you had said more about a connection to self-knowledge, if you see one.

But Richard - what else are the tricks if not self knowledge?

Well, OK then!

Not two types of thought Eve, just thought used where it is useful and thought used in areas where it creates conflict.

Peter

"I don't see thinking as different to thought. Where is the mind of the one person to change to thinking?"

Would "thought" be the memory itself, and "thinking" be the act of recalling the memory? If this is the case, thinking, not thought, interferes with observation when the brain/mind is occupied with thinking. Thought is just passively sitting in the memory bank.

I don't see thought as ever being able to "do" anything. Thought--any thought, every thought--is a construction of the brain. As a construction, thought is passive, mechanical and has no life. Thought can't "create" anything--only a living organism can create. Thought can do only what the brain, the organism, tells it to do--probably via another thought.

max

This post was last updated by max greene Tue, 09 Jun 2009.