Pointers for the perplexed.

Quotes, extracts and personal notes for anyone puzzled by the problems of life. Most of it comes out of exposure to CFL and related spaces and people.

“{{ quoteText }}” {{ quoteCite }}

In brief

Every teaching gathered here points at the same thing from a different angle. The felt sense of being a separate “self,” cut off from others and defending its own patch of experience, is the root of most of what goes wrong, personally and collectively, dividing us where there is no division.

We dream, feel, think and act out of past conditioning. And by relying on gurus, religion and experts to realize the self, we perpetuate our prison life.

It is not a flaw to fix, but something to actually see. Such an impersonal seeing might open new doors.

A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.Albert Einstein

Learnings that might be of significanceRead

I would like to make it very plain that these are learnings which have significance for me. I do not know whether they would hold true for you. I have no desire to present them as a guide for anyone else. Yet I have found that when another person has been willing to tell me something of his inner directions this has been of value to me, if only in sharpening my realization that my directions are different.Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

Pathless Ways

Observer is the Observed · Choiceless Awareness

Awaring

Only thing that is happening is “Just Awaring” of what is rising in the body-mind. All else happens out of past conditioning, automatically, with no controller of any kind.

Thinking or remembering may be mistaken for Awareness. When there is an awareness of what’s happening in oneself at the moment, then there is no thought. There is just the seeing of something as it is arising.

We’re not trying to clarify whether there’s somebody who does it, because that’s clear, isn’t it? There is no doer in this thing. There’s only awaring. And awaring has this seemingly magic function that what is truly awared changes, is no longer the same.Toni Packer, The Silent Question

In clearly seeing that I am about to get compulsively entangled in self-defense—for instance, protecting my self-image from getting hurt by someone’s disparaging talk, in clearly awaring defensiveness and the self-image that is being defended— can it all abate right then and there at the instant of seeing? Getting caught up in an emotional reaction may be averted by clearly seeing reactivity without any intention to do right or wrong. Just staying here, aware, is enough.Toni Packer, The Silent Question

What is awareness? It cannot possibly be defined. It is easier to point out what is absent in awareness. It is not self-conscious—it does not think about itself. It does not think! Only consciousness thinks. Awareness is not a product of thought or imagination. It does not have a self-center. In an unfathomable way, it sheds light on consciousness, on self-centered activity. Not judgmentally, not condemning or accepting what reveals itself. Just illuminating, making transparent what is unfolding this moment. Awareness has no inner division, no outer boundaries. No inner and no outer. It is true being, beholding everything out of the emptiness of no self. Emptiness is not a concept here. It reveals itself effortlessly when willing, wanting, resisting, grasping are in abeyance. Awareness reveals all these movements as conditioned reactions.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

Can there be a wakeful stopping and listening?Read

The question is not really what habits are harmful and which ones are not, but whether our moment-to-moment living can take place with awareness of what is going on. Can there be a wakeful stopping and listening as we are getting hurt or angry over someone’s critical comment, as we are hurting others with our own cynical remark, as fear arises and mobilizes the bodymind, as we are sucked into story lines that trigger anger and resentment? Can we wake up to our deeply conditioned inner restlessness that grips us when we are idle—awaring the lurking feeling that we ought to do something in order not to feel guilty and useless?

Do we feel curiosity about the ways of our habits, feel some urgency to watch them impartially, without the compulsion to move along with them? This stopping and wondering is the amazing power of presence. It has nothing to do with renunciation, with ideas of right and wrong.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

Where the word comes fromRead

To my knowledge, the word awaring was first used by the Danish mystic Sunyata in his book Sunyata: The Life and Sayings of a Rare-Born Mystic. Using the verb form of awareness came quite naturally to me from my familiarity with the German word gewahren, which means “becoming aware of, noticing, discovering, or seeing.” The beauty of the word gewahren lies in the fact that it contains the word wahr, which means “true.”Toni Packer, The Silent Question

The “me” that sneaks in the back doorRead

Watch yourself, and ask occasionally, “Is there a ‘me’ here?” Because we can quickly affirm that there’s no “me,” that we’ve left it behind, but we haven’t really. It needs sustained awaring, because it sneaks in through the back door: “me” who wants more, “me” who understands matters, “me” who knows better than the others, those poor blind people! To keep questioning oneself, not in order to blame oneself but in order to bring to light all of the subtle movements of “me” that keep us in the dark. The “me”-movement is the strongest darkener!Toni Packer, The Silent Question

Partial Awareness

Aware of what is going on, while the habit keeps running.

The question comes up frequently: Is there such a thing as partial awareness? At times I use the term “partial awareness” to point to a nonjudgmental witnessing or experiencing of a strong habit that keeps running in spite of seemingly coming into awareness. Is this really open awareness, as we are using that word, or is it suffused with wanting, judging, feeling, and processing? Sometimes I think that a quick alternation may be taking place between awareness and the compulsive running of habitual thought and emotion. It feels like partial awareness—I’m aware of what’s going on, but the habit doesn’t stop. It’s as if something inside doesn’t want to stop, look, and listen completely.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

“Watch me! Do you see how attentive I am? Do you approve of me?” Like anything else, being attentive can become a self-centered activity that is cultivated because we think it is meritorious in the eyes of others.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

An innocuous example: observing a cravingRead

Let’s take an innocuous example of observing a craving: I feel a strong desire for eating chocolate. It’s an old habit to eat chocolate after a meal. The mind is actively visualizing the candy that has given great pleasure in the past, and the mouth is salivating at the thought of it. The desire increases with each image of actually putting a piece of chocolate into the mouth, chewing it, and tasting its delicious flavor. There is also some fleeting awareness in all of this. It can intensify if I’m really curious about what is going on. With sufficient interest and the energy that it generates, awareness can actually replace the compulsion of desire with simple presence. At such a moment there is an unexpected freedom. Compulsion to eat or not to eat chocolate is absent—the bodymind is open. Most of the time, however, we do not want to interrupt a pleasurable sequence with anything, and the desired thing is pursued and consumed with great gusto.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

Scrubbing carrots, and not noticing the person at the sinkRead

One may be minutely occupied with a job. Maybe one is working in the kitchen. One is cutting the carrots, scrubbing them under the water, paying attention. Feeling the water, the coldness of it and the texture of the carrot, seeing its shape and little dark ridges, slicing it and so forth. Being there, being attentive, as attentive as one can be, and all the while, not noticing that somebody else wants to get to the sink.

So there can be careful minute attention but on a very small, limited stage. And very often when that kind of awareness takes place, center stage is still the me, aware that it is aware, and quite pleased with itself. And when the self-image goes, with its commands that you must be attentive, you must be aware, the world opens up. There is the sky again and all the people next to one, not so different from oneself. Much more alike than different.Toni Packer, “Is Thinking Necessary,” 1987 retreat

Witnessing Awareness

A seemingly separate “witness” watching our moment-to-moment living. It has an important place, and it is not the awareness that short-circuits the bodymind.

But when awareness is effortlessly present without a trace of obstruction or doubt, a memory about death and dying does not trigger any painful physical reverberations. It is an amazing discovery! Awareness can short-circuit the deeply established, conditioned connections of the bodymind. The spark of memory does not inevitably ignite grief and pain, anger or hurt. It remains the light of awareness. It does not happen like that when there is just witnessing awareness, a seemingly separate “witness” observing what is going on in our moment-to-moment living. Witnessing awareness has an important place. It’s significant to witness how automatically we react, how we dream and yearn for the past to appear again in the future. How we want things to be different from the way they are and the suffering this entails. It’s crucial to learn about it all, so there is a foundation of thoroughly understanding our conditioned, reflexive mind and its self-deceptions. We try to seek for that clarity, we endeavor to find an anchor underneath everything. But that is only chasing after ideas. Clear seeing does not see itself—it just illuminates the constant motion of conditioning without moving itself. It hides as long as we are willfully searching for it. Let it manifest on its own! Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

Where is our true abiding? On the difference between moving with events and immovable presenceRead

Where is our true abiding? Is it the rock bottom of everything, an immovable presence? Or is it just in the fleeting flow of events, both external and internal—the thoughts, the feelings and emotions, the organism’s reverberations—and moving along with it all? Or is it simply awaring it all?

A crucial shift takes place when the “anchoring” is not in the flowing with what is taking place, not getting identified with it as me and mine but remaining with simple awareness. Letting what is happening come and go on its own, without moving with it. Do we see the difference between moving with ephemeral events like sensations and upsets, and an immovable presence?

It’s for each of us to come upon that utter stillness, that unshakable stability of awareness in which change happens, in which thoughts, pains, and joys are allowed to come and go freely, without interference. No urge to judge good and bad, no need to feel guilty, no compulsion to rationalize anything away. Presence is awareness that is unflappable, no matter what it reveals about us. And in finding this spot—it’s not really a spot, it’s timeless space—there is peace. Absence of conflict. Absence of resistance, of struggle and striving. The amazing grace of no wanting and fearing. Love.Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence, “Is Awareness Enough?”

Meditation

Not a technique, not an achievement.

Krishnamurti to students

You know people talk a great deal about meditation, don’t they? … You know nothing about it. I am glad. Because you know nothing about it, you can learn about it. It is like not knowing French or Latin or Italian. Because you do not know, you can learn, you can learn as though for the first time. Those people who already know what meditation is, they have to unlearn and then learn. You see the difference?

To learn about meditation, you have to see how your mind is working. You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall. You see all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall, and as you watch, you see all the movements. In the same way, watch your thinking. Do not correct it. Do not suppress it. Do not say, “All this is too difficult.” Just watch; now, this morning.

First of all sit absolutely still. Sit comfortably, cross your legs, sit absolutely still, close your eyes, and see if you can keep your eyes from moving. Then, as you sit very quietly, find out what your thought is doing. Watch it as you watched the lizard. Watch thought, the way it runs, one thought after another. So you begin to learn, to observe.

Are you watching your thoughts - how one thought pursues another thought, thought saying, “This is a good thought, this is a bad thought”? When you go to bed at night, and when you walk, watch your thought. Just watch thought, do not correct it, and then you will learn the beginning of meditation.

Once you begin to learn there is no end to learning.J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti on Education

Meditation is a powerful antidote to our purposeful, growth oriented, war-mongering, speed-driven, ever-productive consumer civilization, which is rapidly devouring the earth. We retreat in meditation work not from reality, but from our habitual escapes from reality. Meditation is a social and political act. Listening and not-doing are actions far more powerful than most of us have yet begun to realize. But meditation is much more (and much less) than all of this. Meditation is not knowing what meditation is.Joan Tollifson, Bare-bones Meditation

Awareness, insight, enlightenment, wholeness—whatever words one may pick to label what cannot be taught in words—is not the effect of a cause. Activity does not destroy it and sitting does not create it.Toni Packer, Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing · The Work of This Moment

Method

Many popular methods and practices may help physical and mental well-being. But if there is careful observation, the sense-of-self continues to linger around: a sense of pride arising, or a sense of comfort in depending on something as a reliable source for enlightenment.

The clearest teachers I’ve met are the most ordinary. They have humility, not grandiosity. They don’t claim to possess something that the rest of us do not possess. They empower those who come to them to be their own best teachers rather than encouraging dependency. The best teachers throw you back on yourself. Enlightenment is not a finish-line that you cross or a state you reside in “forever after.”Joan Tollifson, Nothing to Grasp

Or maybe be open to trying something new: simply attending without a known method or purpose. Attending to what is taking place from moment to moment isn’t a technique—it is what is and that is all!Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

Enlightenment isn’t something we march toward, and one day, somehow, we grab it. Enlightenment is the ending in yourself of that hope for something other than life being as it is.Charlotte Joko Beck

Effort

Effort in a deeper sense does not exist when there is no delusion of the self. But as long as there is an illusion of the sense-of-self, effort may be necessary to stir the mind with questions. Only out of complete silence of the mind is there a possibility of Insight.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.J. Krishnamurti

Asking questions and then being quiet in the looking.Toni Packer

One can, then, perhaps see the Self idea as fulfilling a role akin to a rocket which boosts a payload into space, against the force of gravity. It provides the force to drive the mind out of the ‘gravity field’ of attachment to the personality-factors. Having done so, it then ‘falls away and is burnt up,’ as itself a baseless concept.Peter Harvey, quoted in Why Buddhism is True

Organization

I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality. Truth is a pathless land. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.J. Krishnamurti, Dissolution Speech

Trap

Even among those who have gone deeper into self-enquiry, one of the subtlest things we get stuck on is to feel “I know this, I have learnt it, I am now more aware of everything.” Even though we may come out of the prison briefly, we soon get entangled again.

As long as there is a feeling that one is progressing, or that one is relieved to have found a teacher or a group. Unless those are also seen, the (imaginary) “me” remains alive, and one remains enslaved.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.Zen koan, attributed to Linji Yixuan

There is no way out. Anything you do to get out of the trap of thought, which you yourself have created, is only strengthening and fortifying it. Giving up something in the hope of getting something else is not really giving up. In fact there is nothing to give up. There is nothing you can do. The illusion is that you can do something to be free from illusion.UG Krishnamurti

So instead of trying really hard to shift the focus of attention and then keep it shifted, all of which is a losing battle, I recommend a more relaxed and playful approach—exploration rather than practice, with no goal in mind. So relax and enjoy the show, and if you can’t relax, be tense!Joan Tollifson, Direct Experiencing

Dialogue

A conversation between equals, with no goal and nothing excluded.

It is not concerned with deliberately trying to alter or change behavior nor to get the participants to move toward a predetermined goal. Nevertheless, changes do occur because observed thought behaves differently from unobserved thought.David Bohm et al., Dialogue: A Proposal

There will be frustration, friction and disappointment in dialogue, but if we can manage to stay with all that we will discover a new depth of friendship. Dialogue is a conversation between equals. Hierarchy and manipulation have no place in dialogue, and neither have conviction and persuasion. The spirit of dialogue is one of free play, a collective dance of the mind that becomes a continuing adventure.Javier Gomez Rodriguez, Reflecting Consciousness

What a dialogue group actually doesRead

In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing, dance or play together with little difficulty, but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariably to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. In our view this condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought.

In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.

Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning, not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers.David Bohm et al., Dialogue: A Proposal

Retreat

(root) pull back · an act of moving back or withdrawing · a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax.

I think it is essential sometimes to go into retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like machines whether you believe or don’t believe. You would let fresh air into your minds. Wouldn’t you? That means you must be insecure, must you not?J. Krishnamurti

“Have a complete break with the past and see what happens”Read

If you can do so, you would be open to the mysteries of nature and to things that are whispering about us, which you would not otherwise reach; you would reach the god that is waiting to come, the truth that cannot be invited but comes itself. But we are not open to love, and other finer processes that are taking place within us, because we are all too enclosed by our own desires. Surely, it is good to retreat from all that. Stop being a member of some society. Stop being a Brahmin, a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim. Stop your worship, rituals, take a complete retreat from all those and see what happens.

In a retreat, do not plunge into something else, do not take some book and be absorbed in new knowledge and new acquisitions. Have a complete break with the past and see what happens. Sirs, do it, and you will see delight. You will see vast expanses. When your heart is open, then reality can come. Then the whisperings of your own prejudices, your own noises are not heard. That is why it is good to take a retreat, to go away and to stop the routine, not only the routine of outward existence but the routine which the mind establishes for its own safety and convenience. Try it sirs, those who have the opportunity.J. Krishnamurti

Living

Not a corner of the room for ten minutes.

Meditation should not become a monkish isolation from the throb of life. So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.J. Krishnamurti

One can only know oneself in one’s relationship to others. In one’s relationship to others one may discover that one is very jealous, dependent, attached and really quite callous. So relationship acts as a mirror in which one knows oneself.J. Krishnamurti

Not just to watch or read what is happening out there but simultaneously be transparent to what goes on within oneself, in this closest and most intimate of all laboratories that is available to us: our own thoughts and feelings and emotions and conflicts, upheavals, turmoil.Toni Packer

Quotes

From outside the tradition, mostly

{{ q.text }}{{ q.cite }}

Bits

Short lines, no order

Total Negation

A caution worth reading last. It includes this page.

Despite having many extracts and pointers on the limitations of authority, submission, dependency, a formula or path for progress, or the sense of having figured it out, one can’t help that this website itself may trigger the same effects on the writer or the reader.

It is in total negation of everything that a complete transformation may come about. That includes this site with the extracts and pointers, any space or group or individual or text, the image that one can negate or has negated everything, the seeking, or the awareness that one is aware. There is no way to describe that or attain that willfully.

If you cannot stand alone you are not free. I mean stand alone inwardly, psychologically. That aloneness comes into being when you totally negate, actually, not verbally but do it actually with your life, all the things that man has put together in his fear, in his pleasure, in his search for something that is beyond this daily routine of life.J. Krishnamurti, Total Negation of the Self

Links

Short, occasional lines Notes on Substack →

Longer writing, by email Posts on Substack →

A running bookmark list Pointers →

Connect

Helping each other create a space to seeRead

Can we help each other by looking at what’s there, discovering the resistance, the judgment of each other and ourselves? Can we help each other create a space in which everything can be seen, felt, heard and experienced as it is, as it is coming up? Is that what is lacking in our collective efforts to change and better ourselves and the world? We are forever coming up with new ideas and programs, but what’s lacking is the space, the quietness and care of attending to our problems, allowing them to reveal themselves and to be seen spaciously? They reveal themselves as not just my problem or your problem, but a common problem.Toni Packer, The Light of Discovery