UnbornTao

And what's really going on beyond the surface for you? What do you "do" with "it"? Performing a ritual isn't necessarily the same as listening. It goes beyond hearing the words coming from their mouth, and even understanding them - once again.

There does seem to be a connection between those, definitely. It's called an art, after all.

There is the possibility of two people creating the same experience as a result of interacting with each other in this way. It just isn't rational. This is what K is talking about in his quote.

It's an inquiry that you can take up.

Listening is actually aimed at having another's experience as it is for them. This means it is by definition not about you. If, after the ritual has been performed, there isn't a shift in how you experience reality, even if just a little, listening hasn't occurred. We might say that it requires a willingness to step out of one's world, to put it metaphorically. Not-knowing is the base of this act. What's funny is that the quote is precisely describing the very process taking place here: listening for answers, for validation, for information, to confirm what's already believed, to reject or accept, as a form of intellectual understanding, etc. This is different from the act being alluded to in the quote. The quote is from a talk in 1966. He'd been teaching for almost four decades by that point. I'm just saying - maybe he had something to say that we have a hard time coming to grips with. Not that listening is mysterious or inaccessible; it just doesn't seem to be common in this context. The only one who seems to have understood the assignment is @Davino, if his word is to be trusted. Notice everything that's come up for us as we stumble along the topic - our minds immediately bringing up "what we know" and inserting it into the conversation, and the difficulty of creating some space around the topic, even if only for a few days.

Yeah, but this is in the context of listening to another. The risk of interacting within your own bubble is that it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy with no real feedback.

"What is purpose?" is your question.

Sounds good. For some reason I get the feeling it might not be quite landing, though. I might elaborate in a new post, as I struggle with this. Thank you. I'm going to take a shower.

Think what you want, but do the exercise (if you want).

The point is learning rather than simply going through the motions. There's a difference between mechanical repetition and applying intelligence and creative correction as you practice - it's not simply about doing the same thing over and over again. That said, it depends on the particulars, too. With chess, it may require a different approach, I don't know. For example, if you're going to cook an omelette, approach it as if you're cooking an excellent omelette. And then: How does what you do contrast with your image of "an excellent omelette"? Something like that. Don't use your failure to live up to it to beat yourself up, though - that's not needed. Just learn to see what you are not seeing, and refine that process. Felt compelled to share that - for whatever reason.

Sure. The difference is that I've been contemplating this for awhile.

By necessity, listening precedes understanding. The first danger is automatically assuming you know what is being said - because you understand the language, it fits your view, and so on. The problem with putting your focus on 'understanding' is that it feeds into your assumption that listening is restricted to the conceptual. Since we take words to be symbols, we think this is merely a conceptual endeavor. But there is a deeper kind. Read Krishnamurti's quote and see how what he says applies to you. He's describing the process as it occurs for most people.

Maybe - to you.

That's a lot of time to practice, thanks.

Ahh, got it. Though I should have clarified that in this case it specifically referred to direct experience - my bad. But it also applies to what you're saying.

This better not be delayed this time.

What do you mean?

You believe that a practice can and will do it.

It was entertaining.

No, but taking some time with it helps to reveal everything that tends to get in the way.

@Someone here You're invited to do the exercise. Notice the baggage that tends to immediately come up. Krishnamurti alludes to this above.

It depends on why you're claiming it, and especially on what you're actually claiming. It seems to me that nobody deliberately claims falsehood, so that's some sort of feedback. Which is to say, we don't like being wrong, and when we recognize that we might be, we quickly adapt so that we're positioned on the "right" side of things again. But I digress. Vanity is about you, and the truth does not care about you. These are totally different motivations. What you think telling the truth is is different from actually knowing and telling the truth, so this is a gap to bridge for oneself.

To the Ground and beyond, then.

It's tricky to discern, especially when evaluating how something is expressed. Many people may confuse bluntness or straightforwardness with vanity, but these serve different purposes.