October 2, 2013: This essay has been superseded by: What is KHTK?
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This is a set of essays that have come to be known by the acronym KHTK (from the phrase “Knowing How To Know”). This is the first of the KHTK essays.
KHTK operates on the same principles as those of Vipassana meditation. The principles of Vipassana meditation were first introduced in the discourses of Buddha 2600 years ago. The entire focus of Vipassana is on Looking. Looking is the use of sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) to observe and experience what is there.
Vipassana helps people to take control of their lives and channel them towards their own good and the good of others. KHTK re-introduces these principles of Looking in a form that is more suitable for modern audience.
Here is a success story from the use of these principles.
Doing Time Doing Vipassana
This knowledge is free. It is for the use of all.
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KHTK principles
One wants answers to alleviate one’s suffering. There is simply too much going on. One is confused about day to day situations. Anxiety and fear set in. One is constantly searching one’s mind for answers without much success. This is the very condition that Buddha addressed 2600 years ago.
When there is an immediate response in the mind to looking, there is satisfaction and one moves on. But, when there is no response, anxiety may take over, and one may find it difficult to move on. The immediate reaction is to start searching the mind for an explanation. This degenerates into a never-ending “figure-figure.”
A better thing to do is to stop this “figure-figure,” and just keep some attention in the area of interest while going about one’s daily routine. As one waits patiently without searching, digging, expecting, figuring, etc., the mental fog, ultimately lifts and brings to view long suppressed material followed by realizations. Sometimes things may take days to sort themselves out before the realization appears.
The relief comes from looking patiently and not from searching the mind anxiously and trying to be in control. Actually, hectic digging into the mind for explanations has occasionally driven people toward madness.
It is looking, and not “figure-figure,” that leads one to answers.
It is completely safe to look at any area of the mind for as long as necessary, provided one does not start digging into the mind for explanations.
Here are some observations about the process of looking at mind naturally without trying to control it.
(1) When a person looks at an area of the mind, the mind starts to un-stack, or unwind, itself. As the top layer comes fully into awareness it dissolves, giving way to the next layer. And so it continues.
(2) These layers are connected by significance in a certain order. A person is much less likely to be overwhelmed if these layers are brought into awareness and dissolved in the order they are presented by the mind.
(3) This natural process of un-stacking, or unwinding, is interrupted when one anxiously starts to ask questions and search for explanations.
(4) One exposes oneself to overwhelm only when one interferes with the natural order in which the mind wants to un-stack, or unwind, itself.
A person who is routinely digging into his mind searching for explanations is definitely exposing himself, or herself, to harm. One will do oneself a big favor by learning to look and letting the mind unwind itself.
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Some definitions
Looking is the use of sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) to observe and experience what is there.
Observation is the activity of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses.
Experience is observation of some thing or some event gained through close involvement in, or personal exposure to, that thing or event.
Please note that the mind is defined here as a sense organ and not as a computing machine.
When one focuses on looking and lets the data come in, the realizations are instantaneous.
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From What Buddha Taught:
“A word about what is meant by the term ‘Mind’ (manas) in Buddhist philosophy may be useful here. It should clearly be understood that mind is not spirit as opposed to matter. It should always be remembered that Buddhism does not recognize a spirit opposed to matter, as is accepted by most other systems of philosophies and religions. Mind is only a faculty or organ (indriya) like the eye or the ear. It can be controlled and developed like any other faculty, and the Buddha speaks quite often of the value of controlling and disciplining these six faculties. The difference between the eye and the mind as faculties is that the former senses the world of colours and visible forms, while the latter senses the world of ideas and thoughts and mental objects. We experience different fields of the world with different senses. We cannot hear colours, but we can see them. Nor can we see sounds, but we can hear them. Thus with our five physical sense-organs – eye, ear, nose, tongue, body-we experience only the world of visible forms, sound, odours, tastes and tangible objects. But these represent only a part of the world, not the whole. What of ideas and thoughts? They are also a part of the world. But they cannot be sensed, they cannot be conceived by the faculty of the eye, ear, nose, tongue or body. Yet they can be conceived by another faculty, which is mind. Now ideas and thoughts are not independent of the world experienced by these five physical sense faculties. In fact they depend on, and are conditioned by, physical experiences. Hence a person born blind cannot have ideas of colour, except through the analogy of sounds or some other things experienced through his other faculties. Ideas and thoughts which form a part of the world are thus produced and conditioned by physical experiences and are conceived by the mind. Hence mind (manas) is considered a sense faculty or organ (indriya), like the eye or the ear.”
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