“Look at the tree in front of you. Are you actually looking at the tree or is thought looking at it? Hear the crow cawing. Are you listening to it, or are you identifying the sound with the bird? Can you look at somebody without the image that you have about that someone?”
~ J. Krishnamurti
Alan Watts and a subset of other philosophers, such as J. Krishnamurti, traded in the typical workings of the human brain for a reality without thoughts, mental images, symbols, and other brain sponsored filters and coloring. Their core ideal was to not confuse the map with the territory – a common slogan for this movement back in the not so distant past.
Being a Krishnamurti fan back in my college days, I would often sit cross-legged in front of a big old tree, attempting to perceive it without any previous mental or emotional associations with the word “tree” or its image. However, as Krishnamurti would have likely pointed out, my effort to perceive with an empty mind would be filled with expectations – thoughts and images – of what a tree without memories of trees would look and feel like, and so any effort was doomed to failure, and it was. My noble effort was just as ridiculous as trying to hear and know the sound of one hand clapping, another one of those koans or puzzles offered by the thoughtless thinkers of the past – the gifted or practiced ones who “supposedly” achieved empty mindedness.
As much as Krishnamurti implored me to view the present without the conditioning of my past, he provided no mechanism to achieve this, leaving it impossible. And so I continued to view the trees through all of my past associations with trees, despite my intention to stare at them with thoughtless abandon.
To be fair, without being condescending to the anti-thought movement, I cannot refute the possibility of there being a reality outside of my ideas of that reality. Personally though, I have absolutely no hope of experiencing such a mindless reality, as I’m a dedicated user of my brain, with all of its marvelous thought, language, symbol, image, and memory generating features. I’m happy with remembering my past, imagining the future, and pondering the present, no matter how much disappointment and unhappiness this may bring me.
Yet, at the same time, I sense another reality out there – somewhere – beyond the filtering and censoring of my brain’s neural circuitry, just like there is a physical, palpable world outside of social media, if I just got off my butt and explored it. But, I look towards that outer reality through the lens of my imaginary inner world, and I see no possibility of escaping this inner experience, as long as I’m human. My only clue to there being another reality outside of my inner reality, is when events, situations, and people don’t conform to what I’ve imagined to be the truth. However, I have no means to explore this any further, other than conjuring up more thoughts and images to associate with these contradictory experiences.
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 