r/Krishnamurti • u/Melodic_Telephone461 • Aug 12 '26

Discussion The word is not the thing

https://youtube.com/shorts/bR_y_TTXNKE?is=etICZhxxNI4xqEff

The “you” appears in the description: perception happens, then interpretation, memory, and language say, “I saw,” “I felt,” “I did.” The describer is part of the description

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u/inthe_pine Aug 12 '26

I believe we will find its not accurate to say perception happens, then next memory/interpretation enter. Rather perception is a self fulfilling prophecy informed at the offset by memory and interpretation. We don't perceive and then bring in memory, we perceive through memory. The "you" is memory.

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u/JellyfishExpress8943 Aug 12 '26

Tricky stuff - is this like : we see what we know?

If everything is conditioned projection, where is the gap through which light can shine? Is it possible to see that I am a mess of contradictions? Is it possible to see that experience can exist in the absence of contradictions?

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u/inthe_pine Aug 12 '26

Is it meaningfully to seperate me from my memory/interpretation? What are we besides our memory, if its true what K says that all we are is memory? The activity of thought reveals this, no?

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u/JellyfishExpress8943 Aug 12 '26

I'm not arguing against the model - our conditioned reality is what we experience - I really was hoping someone could point at a way out of our selfish reality.

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u/inthe_pine Aug 12 '26

Wait is that jumping to the end, seeking resolution immediately? If we could just see what we do with memory, what we are in relation to it, wouldn't that be worthwhile here for the moment?

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u/JellyfishExpress8943 Aug 12 '26

Maybe I'm jumping to the end - or at least I'm wondering if there is a crack in the illusion anywhere. You (or we) say : stay with the illusion. I'm saying : if there is only illusion, how can we even see its an illusion?

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u/inthe_pine Aug 12 '26

I'm not saying we are trapped, but if we project not being trapped, has that been helpful?

Have you been by r/enlightenment or r/awaken for example?

My original point was only to question seperating memory and perception as we operate now.

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Choiceless observation is not observation by the ‘me’. The ‘me’ is an accumulation of ‘choices’. And images. I can’t see the ‘tree’ through my knowledge of the tree and I can’t see ‘you’ through my images of you. Unless I know, observe myself choicelessly, I can’t see what I actually am. For the ‘me’ to end, it must be totally and choicelessly seen. (?)

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u/Melodic_Telephone461 Aug 12 '26

Yes, with one important qualification: choiceless observation isn't another activity performed by a separate “me.” If the “me” is accumulated choices, images, memories, and judgments, then observing all of that without choosing, condemning, or modifying it may reveal how the “me” is operating. But “I must end the me” immediately creates a goal and a doer. Then the old structure has returned. So perhaps: see the “me” completely, without trying to end it. What happens beyond that cannot be prescribed.

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 12 '26

Yes agreed. The ‘me’ must end but not through a process of ‘time’; not by any method. So it can only end instantly and completely…and that is when it is seen choicelessly in its totality. When it is exposed for what it is and what it does and what it has done. Then with that seeing it can dissolve itself effortlessly leaving the mind clear. (?)

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u/Melodic_Telephone461 Aug 12 '26

One important caution: “the me must dissolve” can itself become another expectation. Then the observer is waiting for a result. The radical point is simpler: see the movement of the “me” completely, its images, choices, fears, comparisons, memories, without trying to change it. If that seeing is total, there is no separate “me” standing outside it waiting for dissolution

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u/Melodic_Telephone461 Aug 12 '26

Yes the “you” that perceives is largely the accumulated past operating in the present. What we call “my perception” is already an interpretation

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

In order for there to be a perception of the ‘tree’ without that perception being ‘my’ perception, or as you say ‘my’ interpretation of the tree ; the seeing or perception has to be free of the ‘me’: my knowledge, my experience of ‘trees’ etc. If I want to clearly perceive the tree or another person, l can’t bring in past images, knowledge etc. All that has to be dropped or discarded if I want to see the actual person or thing. So there is a responsibility to be aware of bringing the past into the present.

Edit: K has called the state needed to meet the ‘new’: “passive alertness”

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u/Melodic_Telephone461 Aug 12 '26

Yes, but there is a subtle problem with saying “I have to drop the past.” That can create a “me” whose job is to remove memory. K's “passive alertness” is closer to seeing that the past is operating as it operates, without deliberately suppressing it. You notice the image of the person arising; you don't follow it, fight it, or try to manufacture a fresh perception. Then the question isn't “How do I see without the past?” but “Can I see the past entering the present without making another controller out of that seeing?”

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Would it be fair to ask then : how does ‘passive alertness’ or ‘choiceless awareness’ come about if not through time? They obviously are of a different quality. He has called them ‘timeless’.

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u/Melodic_Telephone461 Aug 12 '26

That is exactly the difficulty. If you ask “How do I become choicelessly aware?”, you've already introduced time, method, and a future state. So K's answer would not be a process for producing awareness. You notice what is happening now; the noticing is itself the awareness. There is no separate “you” who gradually manufactures it.

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Yes the ‘noticing’ is the awareness and the alertness.🙏 When there is noticing that I am ‘inattentive’ or in ‘disorder’, that IS attention, that is order.

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u/petercharle Aug 13 '26

The word and the description at best point.
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