[ a useful mind, dept. ]
The mind’s comparing and contrasting is a useful function for surviving re food, clothing and shelter. It’s the believing that mind is actually who one is, that starts the personalization of experience and its problems and sufferings. Lovingly watching the bling of the mind gives a space for directly knowing that what is watching is subtle, purely nonpersonal awareness. Lovingly watch, see and enjoy the mind’s projections, and be well. 🙂
~ Speaking of awareness, here’s a short ‘weekend read’ that goes well with tea and reflection… 🙂
“We approach a problem, which is always new, with the old pattern. The challenge is always the new but our response is always the old. Our difficulty is to meet the challenge adequately, that is, fully. The problem is always a problem of relationship: there is no other problem. And to meet the problem of relationship, with its constantly varying demands—to meet it rightly, to meet it adequately—one has to be aware, passively. And this passivity is not a question of determination, will, or discipline.
To be aware that we are not passive is the beginning; to be aware that we want a particular answer to a particular problem, surely that is the beginning: to know ourselves in relationship to the problem and how we deal with the problem. Then, as we begin to know ourselves in relationship to the problem—how we respond, what are our various prejudices, demands, and pursuits—in meeting that problem this awareness will reveal the process of our own thinking, of our own inward nature and in that there is a release.
So, life is a matter of relationship, and to understand that relationship, which is not static, there must be an awareness that is pliable, an awareness that is alertly passive, not aggressively active. And, as I said, this passive awareness does not come through any form of discipline or through any practice. It is to be just aware, from moment to moment, of our thinking and feeling— not only when we are awake, for we will see as we go into it deeper, that we begin to dream, that we begin to throw up all kinds of symbols which we translate as dreams. So, we open the door into the hidden, which becomes the known.
But, to find the unknown we must go beyond the door; surely, that is our difficulty. Reality is not a thing that is knowable by the mind, because the mind is the result of the known, of the past; therefore, the mind must understand itself and its functioning, its truth. Only then is it possible for the unknown to be.”
J. Krishnamurti
