Approaches to Self-inquiry, August 11, 2019

Approaches to Self-Inquiry
Sunday, August 11, 2019
At KECC

These sessions held on the second Sunday afternoon of each month are intended to expose interested people to spiritual teachings that are felt to be in alignment with those of J. Krishnamurti and which may present a somewhat different but helpful lens for approaching the art of self-inquiry. In this case we looked at two half-hour video presentations by an unusual teacher, Fred Davis. In the first video, Fred turned a commonly heard statement upside down. It is often said that “I understand non-duality intellectually but I just don’t experience it.” Fred suggests that the opposite is actually the truth: we experience non-duality (because it is the very nature of things) but we don’t understand it intellectually (because the thinking mind can only function in duality). He goes into this perspective from a number of different angles.
The five participants present explored this koan or puzzle which was perhaps not immediately easy to grasp but which seemed to yield some fruit in the examining of it. Is there in fact any division, if we look purely without the separating habit of our thinking? Where is the actual boundary between me and you, me and an object of perception? The second video supported the same kind of seeing that Fred had introduced in the first and participants also found it both challenging and interesting.