Do you think there is a teacher here who is going to provide answers. Let's put aside the role of a teacher. Don't deny anyone or anything. But we can put aside, just for the moment, things such as the idea of a God, obedience to parent's or the state, listening and conversing just in respect of discussion, and the blind attention we give a teacher, who provides answers. That is just mindless attention, jumping from one idea to another. Can we do that together? Do this to free up the mind and to seriously look into questions about the thinking we have about life. Is this interesting? Or do we worry about being led astray, being influenced by the speaker? We like to think there are certain people who have authority and that in an official setting being led astray is educational, helpful, necessary. We take much for granted.

We may have already studied a lot about philosophy, religion and psychology. We will already have quite a lot of ideas, theories and patterns of thinking. So some are fairly basic. We can agree to set aside some, maybe even a lot of these to move deeper into the dialogue. I don't want to simply discuss, argue, debate topics. We can examine some things by asking questions, but there is not meant to be reply. I want to go deeper into what is on my mind. So I talk about what I know, which is knowledge. This knowing that we talk about, if we look at it clearly, is the teacher. When you study yourself, that is self-knowledge, the teacher is you. You might say, I know all this, I want to learn about the world. So if you want to go beyond what is known, or what is doubted, can you learn, without this teacher, who is you? Can the wanting to know be the teacher? Is an open-ended, teacher-less environment, sufficient? Can I who is the student wanting to learn, be student-less? Take it further, can there be a knowledge-free, wanting-free, clever-free environment? No high ideals, no exalted purpose. Just so.

Watching is a movement.

There is the mind, with it's endless chatter. Seeing the mind, with it's thinking and thoughts of the past, there is an awareness of all this that is knowledge. Listening to the thoughts, I hear the words, memories, ideas that make up the flow of thoughts. This is knowing in a broad sense, but in a more particular sense there are the words themselves. Each of these invoke a meaning in themselves. So there are connections between the word, and the sense of thinking, listening, knowing, and being, which is a taken as a complete experience. Still this is only limited thought, limited experience, and limited being. Yet, just watching is a fascination. With this comes distraction, sadness, disappointment, depression and so on. I mean, not in a sweeping emotion, but just in the particular thought, which has it's particular message. I move from each with a remembrance of the message, meaning, or sense of that word. Like visiting a park and looking at the garden of plants, each bringing a different joy. This is not memory, but seeing. However each word does have a meaning, and in knowledge, in the thought dominated part of this, they are meaningful.

I am seeing, watching in awareness, which is without judgment, timeless, and wondrous, the watching is showing these words and revealing their power. Think about it. Words are flowing in the consciousness of the watcher, the see-er. This invokes the sense of time, the emotive, the conditional, within the watcher who is then bound to accept them as true. I don't mean there is true or untrue. I mean that the see-er loses the awakened awareness through the bound connection with thought, that is powerful and dominating, and is tending to accept this as reality. This is a little difficult to talk about. Take a moment in the awareness. The listener is hearing words. Is it that from the see-er's awareness, the limitedness, the unreality, the emptiness of the thoughts, is manifest, and that immediately such particulars are revealed, there is both the revealed and the illusory? The illusory has some attraction, a temptation. Why? Can you see what I mean?

A word arises, like, hungry. Am I then deceived to consider, to move into some hungryness, distracted from my awareness, being susceptible to this influence, which is just a word? More than that, am I led to a virtue, a morality, of more thought, of conversation, of discussion, and activity? That is, there is no defence. Words, ideas, argument, can not be swayed from their purpose. Another example. Have you ever played a computer strategy game? After the game you are still thinking about some of the steps and results in the game. More than that, you can not desist from playing the game in your mind, as if you were still really playing the game. While you are aware of the thoughts, watching them, you can not escape the sense of actually playing the game, which you know was in the past when you were sitting at the console. The game you are now playing in your mind is indistinguishable from the real experience.

The difficulty of knowledge.

Say there is someone who has no knowledge. They have a simple understanding of how to live, act in public, to talk with people, but they have no compendium of facts, figures, information, or ideas. They have what might be called a learning difficulty or poor memory. They can read, write, interact with people, get about, operate tools and equipment, drive a car, go shopping, pay bills, and so on, but there are no skills of retention. When they try to do simple tasks there is no difficulty but some tasks even though they have done them before, have to be looked up in an information manual, help guide, each time. In the ordinary world of commerce this is hopeless. In an intellectual world it is stupid, or at best simple minded. In other areas such as visual skills, while not showing talent, nor cleverness, ability comes readily, naturally.

Then, in relationship with people talking together they can carry on quite technical, insightful, and intelligent conversations, without any personal knowledge on a subject. Is it something profound or just a strategy for living? Students for a great percentage fail the education system. The educational authorities just apply more strategies, teachers, resources, and theory to the students without any understanding of difficulty. Of course some are able to digest the stuff of knowledge. Some are able to rote learn. But at the base of it there is a complete misunderstanding about humans, about ourselves, by ourselves, and in which knowledge is implicated. Apart from the technical application of knowledge, knowledge is a difficulty.

I don't offer false hope. Surely I, as everyone says at one time or another, is complex, complicated, and is embedded with conditioning which we hardly understand. What's more, as we are all likely to say, that the "I" we refer to is thought, is the mind, is involved in the process by which we know. That involvement, in society, in culture, in our history, in human development, does go a long way back. Are you free of this? Don't you think I have my own petty self. I am fortunate to be able to find, though not willfully, the voice that shares the truth. I don't do this to suggest to people there is anything more than a bare reality shared by all of us. If you are considering questions about seeing, of being in the moment, then you will see what is on your mind, through that conditioned mind. We need to examine the nature of thought, of the mind, and as you say, it is doing many things. How long do you want to go on doing this? Is it going to be a career? This is just the world. People are educated, smart and intelligent. They have lives, families, jobs, careers, and do just what what we are doing. All this self centred activity is likely to continue ad infinitum. In that I don't look hopefully to the study of the mind.