Barebones Awaring

Awaring

To my knowledge, the word awaring was first used by the Danish mystic Sunyata. Using the verb form of awareness came naturally from the German word gewahren — "becoming aware of, noticing, discovering" — which contains wahr, meaning "true." 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"

Partial Awareness

What is awareness? It cannot possibly be defined. It is not self-conscious — it does not think about itself. It does not think! Only consciousness thinks. It has no inner division, no outer boundaries. It is true being, beholding everything out of the emptiness of no self.— Toni Packer, "The Wonder of Presence"

I recognized this silence. And what I recognized as silence is the comparative mind, because it is comparing this silence with the previous silence.— UG Krishnamurti

Witnessing Awareness

But when awareness is effortlessly present without a trace of obstruction or doubt, a memory 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.— Toni Packer, "The Wonder of Presence"

Meditation

Meditation is a powerful antidote to our purposeful, growth oriented, war-mongering, speed-driven, ever-productive consumer civilization. Meditation is a social and political act. But meditation is much more (and much less) than all of this. Meditation is not knowing what meditation is.— Joan Tollifson, "Bare-bones Meditation"

You know nothing about meditation. I am glad. Because you know nothing about it, you can learn about it, as though for the first time. Sit absolutely still, close your eyes, and watch your thinking — the way it runs, one thought after another. Do not correct it, do not suppress it. Just watch.— J. Krishnamurti, "Krishnamurti on Education"

Method

Enlightenment recognizes that there is no enlightenment without delusion. The only forever is now. The clearest teachers I've met are the most ordinary — they have humility, not grandiosity. Enlightenment is not a finish-line that you cross or a state you reside in "forever after."— Joan Tollifson, "Nothing to Grasp"

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"

Effort

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

Organization

Truth is a pathless land. It cannot be organized, you cannot approach it from any path whatsoever; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.— J. Krishnamurti, "Dissolution Speech — Truth is a Pathless Land"

Trap

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. There is nothing you can do. The illusion is that you can do something to be free from illusion.— UG Krishnamurti

Dialogue

Dialogue is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It is not concerned with deliberately trying to alter or change behavior, nor to get participants to move toward a predetermined goal. Changes do occur, though, because observed thought behaves differently from unobserved thought.— David Bohm et al., "Dialogue: A Proposal"

Retreat

I think it is essential sometimes to go into retreat — to stop everything, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely and look at them anew. That means you must be insecure, must you not? Have a complete break with the past and see what happens.— J. Krishnamurti

Living

Meditation should not become a monkish isolation from the throb of life. It can take place when you are sitting in a bus, walking in the woods, or looking at the face of your child. Meditation is not something different from daily life; it is the very essence of daily living.— J. Krishnamurti

Though in the deepest sense the self doesn't exist, human language isn't very good at describing reality at the deepest level. So as a practical matter, we have to talk about there being an I and a you. The self doesn't exist in an "ultimate" sense, but it exists in a "conventional" sense.— Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True"

Thank you, anxiety, for helping me stay alert to the multiple emotional, physical, and spiritual threats in the world. You can relax, as I am breathing through the worry.— Pico Iyer, quoted in "The Little Book of Zen Healing" by Paula Arai

Observed thought behaves differently from unobserved thought.— David Bohm

Rest in the ____ where thoughts and perceptions appear.— Fellow Inquirer

When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them but should diligently inquire: "To whom do they occur?" As each thought arises, one should inquire with alertness, "To whom has this thought arisen?"— Ramana Maharshi, "Who am I?"

It is this knowledge, the description of the state by those people, that has created this state for you. You are kidding yourself.— UG Krishnamurti

Mind's life is memory.— Ursula Le Guin

A thought comes when 'it' wants to, and not when 'I' want it to; so it is falsifying the fact to say that the subject 'I' is necessary to the verb 'think'.— Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"

Passively alert. Alert passivity.— attributed to J. Krishnamurti

Thought is, in essence, the active response of memory in every phase of life — the intellectual, emotional, sensuous, muscular and physical responses of memory. These are all aspects of one indissoluble process.— David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order"

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.— Marcel Proust

Root

The root of the problems of the world is that we don't see that we are all ONE, not just humanity, but the entire universe and beyond. We don't seem to be able to hold the paradox that though we are all ONE, we do feel separate.

Our perceived sense of "self" is probably the most dangerous virus in the world, dividing us where there is no division. We dream, feel, think and act based on our past conditioning. By relying on gurus, religion and experts to realize the self, we perpetuate our prison life.

Understanding

Before attempting to deal with a problem, it may be helpful to understand what is happening at first, including just carefully observing without anyone's help. Thought can't grasp this, hence this can't be understood like anything else.

Awaring

After one attempts everything in search of the self, it seems like the only thing that's left 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.

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.

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.

The trap of all traps

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.

Bits

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"

Awareness has shown us the nature of the trap, and therefore there is the negation of all traps; so the mind is now empty. This awareness is not aware that it is aware.— J. Krishnamurti, "The Urgency of Change"