I sometimes use his words to explain myself. I prefer not to use my words to explain him.

"The fundamental cause of disintegration of society is copying, or the worship of authority." - JK

The observer is the observed. — Wallows

So, erm, I am currently observing a pair of hands on a keyboard. That means I am a pair of hands on a keyboard?

I mean, I'm not. So what he's said is just plainly false as anyone who thinks about it for a second or two can surely recognise.

Sorry to bring some cold hard reason to this kumbaya party, but "the observer is the observed" is not a gem of wisdom, it is a smelly little blob of ignorance.

An observer is a mind, a subject-of-experiences, for 'observing' is something minds and minds alone can do. By contrast, 'the observed' is simply that which is being observed.

In fact, observers, being minds, do not seem to be observable at all.

You just made an observation about your activity as an observer.

Yes. And?

I observe some fingers on a keyboard. Am I some fingers on a keyboard? No. I am an observer - a mind - I am not some fingers on a keyboard. What I observe, and what I am, are not necessarily the same.

You have pointed out that I just made an observation. Yes. I am not denying the existence of observations. Observations happen - I am observing, right now, some fingers on a keyboard. But the important point is that I, the observer - the one doing the observing - am not necessarily that which I observe.

And in fact, when we reflect further on the nature of the self, it will become apparent that selves, observers, are not, in fact, things that can be observed at all.

So, what Krishnamurti said 'sounds' wise and profound and insightful. But upon inspection, it is total and utter rubbish. Unless he's just looking in a mirror and, after confusing his body for himself, saying "the observer is the observed" (when what he really meant is "the observer is observing himself"). But I don't think that's what he meant, do you?

I think he meant that observers are observations, which is silly but apt to impress those who refuse to think.

It seems you can catch glimpses of yourself being yourself. The confidence that those are your fingers and not someone else's. You use the language of reflection. It sounds like you want to take advantage of a whole way of referring to our experience to deny an experience.

I am observing the computer monitor. Am I that computer monitor?

Answer: no.

Score: Bartricks 1. Krishnatmurti 0.

You equate the limits of self awareness with whether you are all that you perceive?
That's nuts.

Shouldn't you wait to uncork that particular vintage for someone who is actively promoting Krishnamurti's point of view rather than wasting it on someone who noticed in passing that your statements were problematic, considered on their own merits?

Not sure what you're talking about.

Someone quoted someone and said of the quote that it was a gem of wisdom.

Yet what it said was quite absurd. Manifestly false. The observer is not the observed.

Do we need to go through it again?

I am observing a computer monitor.

I am not a computer monitor.

I - the observer - am not the observed - the computer monitor.

Now, if you think that what I said was problematic, whereas what Krishnawhatever said was profound and insightful then I simply wish you the best of luck in whatever cults you join and hope you meet some good lawyers along the way.

Not sure what you're talking about. — Bartricks

Yes, I see that.

The talker is the talking. Will you follow me now?

Follow?

I sometimes use his words to explain myself. I prefer not to use my words to explain him. — unenlightened

Fishy, given his abandonment of his followers and others as World Teacher.

@Bartricks

Chill dude.

What is follow? Tell me, do we follow, or is follow we?

Is the dude chilly, or does the chilly dude?

I just took a walk around Krotona today.

Krotona walked around you.

Having taken up the practice of Buddhist meditation, inspired by Krishnamurti earlier in life, I find satori states are very hard to reach. But then, of course, if there's 'something to reach' and 'someone trying to reach it' then it's already impossible! So one has to give up trying, while continuing to try.

This is very much the attitude of Soto Zen, a school of Buddhism very similar in spirit to Krishnamurti (although Krishnamurti of course never acknowledged being part of a school or any kind of method.) But the Soto attitude of 'practicing with no gaining idea' is in keeping with the spirit of Krishnamurti. It also extends to various forms of cultural and aesthetic practice. I read some great columns from a current Soto zen teacher, I'll try and find them.

Thanks!

JK was usually referring to inner states when he said the observer is the observed. If you are greedy and tell yourself you shouldn't be greedy, that very judgment takes you away from what is. The observer of greed is the greed...if you are greedy you are greed.

JK was usually referring to inner states when he said the observer is the observed. If you are greedy and tell yourself you shouldn't be greedy, that very judgment takes you away from what is. The observer of greed is the greed. — Anthony

So, I do know that Buddhist thought contests the notion of having any type of 'self'. But, isn't it the observer that is being observed that is the locus of what one might call a 'self'?

Oh, I see. I took "the observer is the observed" to mean the observer is the observed, a thesis that would have the upshot that a moment ago I was a tub of hummus and that now I am a computer monitor.
But what he actually meant - because wo betide we come to the conclusion that our guru is a total idiot who utters nonsense and contradictions to other total idiots who are then able to read-into what he has said anything they fancy - is that if you are greedy you are greed.

Right, okay, let's put that idea under Reason's microscope and see what we see, even though no-one in their right mind would ever use the words "the observer is the observed" to express it.

Hmm, if I am greedy - and I am - am I greed? No. I am greedy, but I - the one who has the quality of being greedy - am not greed itself. After all, if I stop being greedy I am still me, yet the greed has gone.

Score

Bartricks 2. Krishnamurti 0

This is the review I had in mind. (That said, whenever I engage with Zen, I become acutely aware of my fundamentally Anglo nature :yikes: .)

I do know that Buddhist thought contests the notion of having any type of 'self'. — Wallows

The Buddha never said there was no self, nor that there is a self: rather that everything arises in dependence on factors, which is the theory of conditioned origination. So rather than saying 'there is no self', the term was used adjectivally - everything (i.e. every conditioned experience) is 'without self', anatta'. When asked point blank whether there is or is not a self, the Buddha declined to answer.

In practical terms, I think selflessness is realised in states of absorption in what you're doing. That can occur in secular activities like music or athleticism and has been referred to as 'being in the flow'. I think the same principles are applied by Buddhists to day-to-day activities so that the sense of 'I am doing this' or 'this is mine' naturally tends to fall away.

Ah, you took up meditation eh? Isn't that what those of us with greater self-awareness and less self-importance call "sitting around doing nothing"?

I too find parallels between Krishnamurti's thought and Buddhist thought. It is thoroughly incoherent and won't withstand a moment's scrutiny. Both deny the obvious by appeal to the obviously false at the same time as promising tranquillity to those who will just suspend their reason and go along with it all. Consequently, such systems of thought - if we can even justify calling them that - appeal to the same basic constituencies: the dumb, the unhappy, and the intellectually lazy.

The self exists. Deal with it. Anyone who has powers of reason can discern that they themselves exist, for if anything is being observed, or thought, or desired, or felt, then there is a mind - a self - who is doing the observing, bearing the thought, undergoing the desire, or having the feeling. Hence why virtually everyone believes in themselves. And they can discern that they - this self - is not one and the same as the thoughts, desires and such like that it is bearing. For it is clear to reason that if we go from thinking one thing to another, we do not thereby cease to be.

Philosophy isn't therapy. Buddhism is. Krishnamurti-ism is. That is, they are worldviews whose appeal resides not in their credibility, but in the fact they promise tranquillity to those who can bring themselves to believe in such nonsense.

No wonder Buddhists are so keen to encourage us to try and think nothing.

This is the review I had in mind. (That said, whenever I engage with Zen, I become acutely aware of my fundamentally Anglo nature :yikes: .) — Wayfarer

I get your point. I find the Anglosaxon way of consumerist life fundamentally at odds with the calm serenity of seeking advice from elders, immersing in healthy habits (apart from the bodybuilding that goes about in my Californian state, I do wonder what a Zen monk would make out of this bodybuilding craze, heh), etc. etc. etc.

If it turns out that you have not captured the essence of what you have so much contempt for, what does the effort amount to?

You have given yourself no way to examine the matter. It is an intellectual dead end.

Oh and thanks for the link, @Wayfarer.

Oh, I think I've captured it pretty bloody well, if I do say so myself.

Politeness - and I am polite to a t - led to circumstances arising in which I had to endure watching a Krishnamurti video. I know nonsense when I hear it, and I had to hear 2 bloody hours of him talking gibberish and asking 'but why?' over and over again to an eminent physicist (clearly one can be good at physics and utterly shite at philosophy) and some keen but stupid psychologist.

So I know the sort of nonsense Krishnamurti says - like I say 2 bloody hours of it - and I know the kind of people he appeals to, and I was incensed that others considered him a 'philosopher'. He is not a philosopher and he makes no arguments.

It's all nonsense. If your marriage is falling apart, if you're desperately unhappy, or if you've recently had a lobotomy, then I can see its appeal. But otherwise, no.