Wry: Yes it is a matter of discernment in that each human being’s experience is contextual and also to some degree on the bias (at least on the bias according to someone else:-) I think a good teaching needs to account for this, which K did not really do; rather than attempting to shape a given situation at the bias (shape being an interesting concept:-), he attempted (or pretended?) to directly do away with the bias, whereas in actuality it is necessary for each person to work out for himself in his daily activity the non-functional flaws in his own discriminatory processing of data. This is not as easy as K made it sound; he many times used the word effortless, yet at other times, though less frequently, spoke about the process being difficult or hard or work). So… is there a way to address this conundrum that we want our lives to flow, yet sometimes our lives flow in the wrong direction? It is about orientation, isn’t it?
Can someone else help us learn or does each person completely on his own just do it? As we know, any teacher presents information to a student within a certain framework, and also, the bias is to support the way one is processing data so as not to experience suffering, which does make sense on a rudimentary level, and most everyone who has considered this situation, would agree that only self-serving past a certain point is not socially functional.
Re David Bohm, he was not the only one who discerned that K’s teaching lacked fine-tuning. Imo the reason many people do not want to look into this is simply because it does not fit into their own story. So what is the ‘true’ story about David Bohm and how do we fit it into our own story which is interconnecting with this story, or do we omit him? You know, if you know how to really spin a good story you can fit almost anything into it. The question is, what makes a story be good? Again, this would depend upon the perceived function of the story. -Wry
What bothers me about David Bohm’s story is that K crushed him with the weight of his supposedly non-existent authority. David Bohm had interesting and insightful things to say about “truth” (the conversations in Truth and Actuality come to mind); in fact things that were more insightful than K’s own replies. These insights relate directly to certain interpretations of the Two Truths in Buddhism, but K really (and interestingly) didn’t go there. These encounters shed light onto the question of how David Bohm plays into the larger “story” of where K’s explanations fall short, and why it is possible to discern this.
A quote I came upon recently from one of Guy Newland’s books: “To underestimate the importance of terminological distinctions is to ignore the vast power of language to demonstrate a correct or incorrect consciousness in those who hear it.” To me this is analogous to Bohm’s comment about “fine tuning.” Yet it’s also true that different people understand the two truths differently, even if they are listening to the same teacher. With this in mind, it may be possible to see that in some respects, Bohm’s understanding could have been greater than K’s.
Deconstructing Krishnamurti 