June 6
The eye does not see itself; no sense grasps the one who perceives within it. Turn inward: clear becomes the one who recognises the seer behind the seeing.
Katha Upanishad (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The eye does not see itself; no sense grasps the one who perceives within it. Turn inward: clear becomes the one who recognises the seer behind the seeing.
If, while listening to someone, you ask yourself how attentive you are being, you have already stopped listening. Now there are two things in front of you: the conversation, and yourself as someone who is listening, or isn't. While you check, the conversation goes on without you.
It is much the same with every look inward. Whatever you find there — a mood, an intention, a half-finished thought — already lies before you like an object. Whoever found it does not turn up among the finds. You can turn round towards them, but they turn with you.
That doesn't make self-knowledge futile. Perhaps it has two sides that can't be made to coincide. On one, you collect findings: that you are quick to take offence, or would rather ask than answer. On the other, you collect nothing. There, at most, you notice that all these findings appear to someone who is not exhausted by any of them.
In the middle of a conversation you rarely think of this. When you are wholly with the other person, you lack nothing. And yet no one has checked who is listening.
