#questioner — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

▬ PARA,SITE. ∖ :end_civ: @[email protected] · 2024-11-21 · 12:42 UTC

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/ojai-2nd-public-talk-21st-may-1944/1944

#Questioner: Please elucidate the "surety in negation" idea. You spoke of negative and positive thought. Do you mean when we are positive we make statements that are valueless, because they are tight bound and smug; while when we are negative we are open to thought because we are bankrupt of traditions and able to inquire into the new? Or do you mean we must be positive in that there is no choice between the true and the false and that negation means becoming part of compromise?

#Krishnamurti: I said that #in #negation #there #is #surety. Let us expand this idea. When we become aware of ourselves we find that we are in a state of self-contradiction, of wanting and not wanting, of loving and hating and so on. Thoughts and actions born of this self-contradiction are considered to be positive, but is it positive when thought contradicts itself? Because of our religious training we are certain that we must not kill but we find ourselves supporting or finding reasons for killing when the State demands; one thought denies the other and so there is no thinking at all. In a state of self-contradiction thought ceases and there is only ignorance. So let us discover if we think at all or exist in a state of self-contradiction in which thinking ceases to be.

If we look into ourselves we realize that we live in a state of contradiction and how can such a state be positive? For that which contradicts itself ceases to be. Not knowing ourselves profoundly how can there be agreement or disagreement, assertion or denial? In this self-contradictory state how can there be surety? How can we in this state assume that we are right or wrong? We cannot assume anything, can we? But our morality, our positive action is based on this self-contradiction and so we are incessantly active, craving for peace and yet creating war, longing for happiness and yet causing sorrow, loving and yet hating. If our thinking is self-contradictory and therefore non-existent there is only one possible approach for understanding, which is the state of non-becoming, a state which may seem to be negation but in which there is the highest possibility.

Humility is born of negation and without humility there is no understanding. In negative comprehension we begin to perceive the possibility of surety of agreement and so of greater relationship and of highest thinking. When the mind is creatively empty - not when it is positively directing - there is reality. All great discoveries are born in this creative emptiness and there can only be creative emptiness when self-contradiction ceases. As long as craving exists there will be self-contradiction. Therefore instead of approaching life positively, as most of us do, giving rise to the many miseries, brutalities, conflicts of which we know so well, why not approach it negatively which is not really negation?

When I use the terms positive and negative I am not using them in opposition to each other. When we begin to understand what we call the positive, which is the outcome of ignorance, then we shall find that from this is there comes a surety in negation. In trying to understand the ever contradictory nature of the self, of the me and the mine, with its positive craving and denial, pursuit and death, there comes into being the still, creative emptiness. It is not the result of positive or negative action but a state of non-duality. When the mind-heart is still, creatively empty, then only is there reality.

#questioner #krishnamurti #in #negation #there #is

▬ PARA,SITE. ∖ :end_civ: @[email protected] · 2024-11-21 · 12:42 UTC

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/ojai-2nd-public-talk-21st-may-1944/1944

#Questioner: Please elucidate the "surety in negation" idea. You spoke of negative and positive thought. Do you mean when we are positive we make statements that are valueless, because they are tight bound and smug; while when we are negative we are open to thought because we are bankrupt of traditions and able to inquire into the new? Or do you mean we must be positive in that there is no choice between the true and the false and that negation means becoming part of compromise?

#Krishnamurti: I said that #in #negation #there #is #surety. Let us expand this idea. When we become aware of ourselves we find that we are in a state of self-contradiction, of wanting and not wanting, of loving and hating and so on. Thoughts and actions born of this self-contradiction are considered to be positive, but is it positive when thought contradicts itself? Because of our religious training we are certain that we must not kill but we find ourselves supporting or finding reasons for killing when the State demands; one thought denies the other and so there is no thinking at all. In a state of self-contradiction thought ceases and there is only ignorance. So let us discover if we think at all or exist in a state of self-contradiction in which thinking ceases to be.

If we look into ourselves we realize that we live in a state of contradiction and how can such a state be positive? For that which contradicts itself ceases to be. Not knowing ourselves profoundly how can there be agreement or disagreement, assertion or denial? In this self-contradictory state how can there be surety? How can we in this state assume that we are right or wrong? We cannot assume anything, can we? But our morality, our positive action is based on this self-contradiction and so we are incessantly active, craving for peace and yet creating war, longing for happiness and yet causing sorrow, loving and yet hating. If our thinking is self-contradictory and therefore non-existent there is only one possible approach for understanding, which is the state of non-becoming, a state which may seem to be negation but in which there is the highest possibility.

Humility is born of negation and without humility there is no understanding. In negative comprehension we begin to perceive the possibility of surety of agreement and so of greater relationship and of highest thinking. When the mind is creatively empty - not when it is positively directing - there is reality. All great discoveries are born in this creative emptiness and there can only be creative emptiness when self-contradiction ceases. As long as craving exists there will be self-contradiction. Therefore instead of approaching life positively, as most of us do, giving rise to the many miseries, brutalities, conflicts of which we know so well, why not approach it negatively which is not really negation?

When I use the terms positive and negative I am not using them in opposition to each other. When we begin to understand what we call the positive, which is the outcome of ignorance, then we shall find that from this is there comes a surety in negation. In trying to understand the ever contradictory nature of the self, of the me and the mine, with its positive craving and denial, pursuit and death, there comes into being the still, creative emptiness. It is not the result of positive or negative action but a state of non-duality. When the mind-heart is still, creatively empty, then only is there reality.

#questioner #krishnamurti #in #negation #there #is

▬ PARA,SITE. ∖ :end_civ: @[email protected] · 2023-11-23 · 06:58 UTC

@nihilist @krishnamurti

■

The state of #negation

https://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/eight-conversations/1968-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-eight-conversations-2nd-conversation

#Questioner: You say the teaching of true religion! This immediately creates the camp of the professionals and specialists versus the rest of the world. Do you mean, then, that religion is separate from life?

#Krishnamurti: Religion is not separate from life; on the contrary it is life itself. It is this division between religion and life which has bred all the misery you are talking about. So we come back to the basic question of whether it is possible in daily life to live in a state which, for the moment, let us call enlightenment?

#Questioner: I still don't know what you mean by enlightenment?

#Krishnamurti: A state of negation. Negation is the most positive action, not positive assertion. This is a very important thing to understand. Most of us so easily accept positive dogma, a positive creed, because we want to be secure, to belong, to be attached, to depend. The positive attitude divides and brings about duality. The conflict then begins between this attitude and others. But the negation of all values, of all morality, of all beliefs, having no frontiers, cannot be in opposition to anything. A positive statement in its very definition separates, and separation is resistance. To this we are accustomed, this is our conditioning. To deny all this is not immoral; on the contrary to deny all division and resistance is the highest morality. To negate everything that man has invented, to negate all his values, ethics and gods, is to be in a state of mind in which there is no duality, therefore no resistance or conflict between opposites. In this state there are no opposites, and this state is not the opposite of something else.

#Questioner: Then how do you know what is good and what is bad? Or is there no good and bad? What is to prevent me from crime or even murder? If I have no standards what is to prevent me from God knows what aberrations?

#Krishnamurti: To deny all this is to deny oneself, and oneself is the conditioned entity who continually pursues a conditioned good. To most of us negation appears as a vacuum because we know activity only in the prison of our conditioning, fear and misery. From that we look at negation and imagine it to be some terrible state of oblivion or emptiness. To the man who has negated all the assertions of society, religion, culture and morality, the man who is still in the prison of social conformity is a man of sorrow. Negation is the state of enlightenment which functions in all the activities of a man who is free of the past. It is the past, with its tradition and its authority, that has to be negated. Negation is freedom, and it is the free man who lives, loves, and knows what it means to die.

#negation #krishnamurti #questioner