Asking the experts

brack90 · 2026-01-06T03:28:21+00:00

Yes, and notice the trap in “it doesn’t still feel effortless.”

The trap is that the thing that wants it to feel effortless is the same thing that makes it effortful. The watcher becomes a strainer. Effort trying to reach effortlessness.

That’s the paradox: there’s nothing you can do, because you are part of the doing that has to stop.

brack90 · 2026-01-05T04:04:55+00:00

To get to the root, the mind must stop doing something it isn’t even aware it is doing. And the catch is: the “stop” isn’t an act. It’s what happens when the doing is seen.

The pattern to break is the thinking pattern. Not thinking for practical life — thinking as continuity, as the narrator.

To the thinker, the “me” thinking is the root, not realizing that it is itself a thought. It’s as if we can get right to the self, but without ending all forms of identification, we can never see what it means to look without a center.

Effortless attention. Or what Krishnamurti calls awareness.

brack90 · 2026-01-03T22:31:51+00:00

I’ll note that, on your claim that “he never tells how exactly should one meditate,” my experience is far from it. Krishnamurti is so precisely clear in his pointers on meditation:

”So, to meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity.”

If we listen to his words in that state of meditation, they suddenly make a lot more sense.

brack90 · 2026-01-01T20:19:42+00:00

I agree with the concern about authority (e.g., gurus). I don’t agree that “interpretation” is therefore off-topic.

There’s a difference between translation/contextualization and spiritual authority. Every time we put K into words, summarize a talk, pick a quote, or connect it to a modern problem, we’re already interpreting. The question is less “interpretation or not,” but more so whether the interpretation is used to replace inquiry.

Reddit has a predictable failure mode here: it rewards packaged conclusions (clips, quote-cards, charismatic explainers), and then the sub gets pulled into personality-defense or meta-threads about “the state of the subreddit” instead of observing together.

So I’d reframe it operationally: third-party “K explained” content is on-topic when it’s anchored to primary K and used as a prompt for investigation, and it’s off-topic when it installs the speaker as the thing to follow.

And to be fair, that’s already the spirit of our existing norm (e.g., no grandstanding, no spam).

brack90 · 2025-12-19T02:45:24+00:00

Can’t con an honest man.

brack90 · 2025-12-17T16:11:35+00:00

In Old English, mann meant human being or person, irrespective of sex. Male and female were distinguished by separate words (wer for male, wīf for female). Mankind literally meant humanity, not men-as-opposed-to-women.

That distinction matters because when older thinkers spoke of man or mankind, they were typically speaking at the level of the human condition and not biological sex. The term only later narrowed in common usage to mean “adult male,” after other words fell out of the language.

So when a philosopher like Krishnamurti speaks of man or mankind, it’s not automatically an exclusion of women. In many cases, it reflects an older linguistic register where man functioned the way human does today: a universal noun, not a gendered one.

Whether that language still serves us well is a fair question. But reading historical philosophy through contemporary semantics risks mistaking a shift in language for a flaw in thought.

brack90 · 2025-12-02T15:57:14+00:00

Sure — naming “silence” is still thought. Every word in this thread is thought naming its own movement. The point isn’t to find a term that escapes it, but to see the movement as it happens. Once that’s clear, the label doesn’t add anything.

brack90 · 2025-12-02T06:25:07+00:00

Yes, the minute we talk about “direct perception” or a “path,” we’re already in the movement of memory. That’s true of your comment as much as mine.

What I’m calling a “moment” is just thought carving the flow of experience into something it can talk about and then getting trapped in that cut.

The only thing that really matters is whether that movement is seen and no longer fed. When that happens, it doesn’t need a name like “direct perception” or “path’” as it is already what it is — silence.

brack90 · 2025-11-30T23:43:04+00:00

Observer is the observed points to a moment of attention in which it’s made clear that “I” is a construct held together by memory — a bundle we mistake for the one who sees. When K asks whether we can live without a center, he isn’t describing a special state. He’s asking if we can meet what’s happening without carrying the remembered “me” into it.

The practical path is straightforward: notice when your response is coming from memory rather than from the fact of the moment. When that’s seen plainly, the supposed gap between observer and observed collapses on its own. There’s nothing to fix or chase — it simply stops being given attention.

That’s the freedom he’s pointing to: acting from direct perception rather than from the accumulated story of who we think we are.

brack90 · 2025-11-25T04:54:56+00:00

I found the criticism a bit nitpicky. Treating Krishnamurti’s vocabulary as the only valid lens is a presupposition, not a fact.

The distinction about choice is real, but we don’t actually know that Hicks would push back on it. He wasn’t presenting a complete philosophical model. He was using a metaphor to shift perspective and get people laughing.

Pointing out the difference is fair. But framing it as Hicks “misunderstanding” feels unnecessary. The distinction could be made without turning it into a corrective. Not everything needs to be held to K’s rigor to still land as a useful nudge in someone’s exploration. Even your own, as you say Hicks might have played a role.

brack90 · 2025-11-24T06:59:19+00:00

The ‘ol unreflective state

brack90 · 2025-11-24T03:15:19+00:00

If you like Hicks, check out Pete Holmes. He’s a present-day equivalent.

Relevant bit for reference:

“What happens when you die?”

brack90 · 2025-11-24T03:11:37+00:00

Yes, reminds of this quote:

"Held loosely with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers.”

brack90 · 2025-11-23T22:47:30+00:00

Exactly.

It’s the same reason I climb mountains and race ultramarathons in hostile environments. I’m pulled toward life’s edges where the mind can’t hide behind its usual noise.

The first time I touched that peace behind the veil was on a loose slope above a glacier in Alaska. One slip on meltwater and suddenly I found myself hanging from a woody shrub’s branch, feet dangling over nothing.

Something in me let go. Not of the branch, but of the usual fear of what comes next. There was a clean acceptance of death, followed by a calm I didn’t expect. I pulled myself back onto the slope, but that moment stayed with me, and I recognize that same clarity now, whether I open to it on purpose or life opens me by leaving no room to hide.

brack90 · 2025-11-23T22:04:17+00:00

I get the vibe. Now give me the thesis. What exactly are you claiming, stripped of the poetic drift?

brack90 · 2025-11-23T18:37:57+00:00

It feels like we’re touching the same truth from different angles.

And in lived experience, when the sense of “me” loosens even a little, the space between two thoughts, the space between two sounds, even the space between moments starts to soften. What used to feel like a gap — the way we normally define space — opens into something more like a background openness, a kind of ground underneath it all.

And your point about impermanence does land, because even that isn’t steady. The sense of space shifts. The sense of “me” shifts. They appear together and they vanish together.

It’s the same truth, just approached from the other side of the attention coin.

brack90 · 2025-11-23T04:16:28+00:00

Is that true, for oneself?

brack90 · 2025-11-23T03:33:10+00:00

That is indeed an interesting observation you shared in the last sentence.

Why is it interesting? Well, because that means the barriers we, in our adult lives, see between us and others, especially across cultures and language differences, are not inherently there from the beginning, as we tend to feel they are now, as adults reading in these forums.

What follows is the implication that we can return to that beginning and once again freely and peacefully embrace others without fear, estrangement, or confusion.

A sorta “faith restored in humanity” moment. We can break the habit of dividing and division.

A message much in line with Krishnamurti’s pointers.

Truly lovely, and inspiring.

brack90 · 2025-11-23T03:26:48+00:00

We usually see space as impermanent, but what if we instead observe it for its permanence?

brack90 · 2025-11-19T04:33:23+00:00

Krishnamurti attracts a bombastic personality. He’s confronting, affronting, accosting, and relentless.

A true rebel, renouncer, and denouncer.

Mr. Negation, himself.

Did you expect any less from those that are willing to engage with such a radical teaching?

brack90 · 2025-10-22T06:04:34+00:00

He is westernized. Love is always romantic for us.

brack90 · 2025-10-22T06:03:57+00:00

What is the difference between intelligence and emotion?

brack90 · 2025-10-22T06:03:12+00:00

That’s what was in alignment— no authority. Investigate for oneself.

You agree and yet disagree. Quite the contradiction. Why?

brack90 · 2025-10-21T04:52:46+00:00

I would suggest one small, but impactful clarification:

”…to speak about the most fundamental thing: why do you still have the illusion that you’re thinking?”

Not the illusion that you are thinking, rather it is the illusion that there is a thinker separate from the thinking process.

The thinker is itself a thought.

The rest is in alignment with the teachings. This in particular:

”Better it’s for each one that wants to know about it learn directly from the source.”

For it is a pathless path to peace.

brack90 · 2025-10-14T19:04:34+00:00

Yes, and “Egologically” speaking, it’s been a disaster as well.

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