Awareness

Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of selfprotective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will. Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively.

Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and non-repetitive; nor does it create habit. Take, for instance, the habit of smoking and experiment with it in awareness. Be aware of smoking, do not condemn, rationalize or accept, simply be aware. If you are so aware there is the cessation of the habit; if you are so aware there will be no recurrence of it but if you are not aware the habit will persist.

This awareness is not the determination to cease or to indulge. Be aware; there is a fundamental difference between being and becoming. To become aware you make effort and effort implies resistance and time, and leads to conflict. If you are aware in the moment there is no effort, no continuance of the self-protective intelligence. You are aware or you are not; the desire to be aware is only the activity of the sleeper, the dreamer.

Awareness reveals the problem completely, fully, without denial or acceptance, justification or identification, and it is freedom which quickens understanding. Awareness is a unitary process of the observer and the observed.

- J. Krishnamurti The Collected Works Volume IV Ojai 4th Public Talk 1946

When one is aware of the total process of obsession or of any other problem, only then is there freedom from the problem. To be extensively aware, there must be no condemnation or justification of the problem; awareness must be choiceless. To be so aware demands wide patience and sensitivity; it requires eagerness and sustained attention so that the whole process of thinking can be observed and understood. - Commentaries on Living Series I Obsession

A Total Response

The new challenge to human beings who have lived for so long in such misery which is now increased by dreadful destructive instruments, the challenge is that you must change instantly. And if your response is not new, you will be in greater conflict, you will be contributing to greater sorrows for men. So you must respond to the new challenge in a new way. And that is only possible when you understand the whole structure and nature of thought.

If you respond intellectually, verbally, conceptually, then it is the operation and the approach of the old. So, is it possible - please listen to this, however absurd it may sound, please listen to it first - is it possible to respond without thought, respond with your whole being and not part of your being? Thought or the intellect is a fragment of your whole being, obviously, and when a partial, a fragmentary part answers to an immense challenge, it creates more conflict. So thought, the intellect, as it is a fragment of the total human being will not produce a radical change, it is not the means of approaching this challenge. It is only when the totality of the human mind - mind being the nervous responses, the emotions, the everything that is you - completely responds, without any fragmentation in that response, that there is a new action taking place.

If I respond to this challenge intellectually, verbally, it will only be a fragmentary response, it will not be a total, human response. And the total human response is only possible when I give my mind and heart to it completely. That is, the response to the new challenge to be adequate, to be complete, is one unique response, which is not intellectual, nor verbal, nor theoretical; and that response is (if I may use that word which has been so spoilt) love.

J.K. - Talks with American Students

13 ~ Wheel of Birth, Death & Rebirth

Number that cleans and purifies.

The number 13 brings the test, the suffering and the death. It symbolizes the death to the matter or to oneself and the birth to the spirit: the passage on a higher level of existence.
For the superstitious, this number brings the bad luck or the misfortune.
For the cabalist, the number 13 is the meaning of the Snake, the dragon, Satan and the murderer. But it is also for Christians the representative number of the Virgin Mary, she whose mission is to crush the head of Satan.
Number in relation with the cross and also to the family, since by reduction we obtain four: 1 + 3 = 4.

It is the element of too, that which makes pass from a cycle to another with what this change implies of anxieties by the arrival of a new unknown cycle.
Represents the eternal love illustrated by Jacob and his twelve son, Jesus-Christ and his twelve apostles.

If we consider 13 as a wheel to 12 rays, that is to say as 12 units around a center, it is beneficial. If we take it as prime number, it is maleficent. It is especially maleficent when we are at table and when one believes in his power. But, as observed judiciously Grimod: "The number 13 is to be feared only insofar as there would be to eat only for twelve."
If we represent 12 under the form of the Zodiac, 13=12+1 is the number of the eternal return. The 13th hour is also the first, just like the 25th or the 37th.

http://www.ridingthebeast.com/numbers/nu13.php

Meditation in Action

So first one has to start by respecting concepts and then build from there. Though actually in Buddhist teaching, concepts are generally regarded as a hindrance. But being a hindrance does not mean that it prevents anything. It is a hindrance and it is also a vehicle -- it is everything. Therefore one must pay special attention to concepts.

It is said, I think in the Lankavatara Sutra, that unskilled farmers throw away their rubbish and buy manure from other farmers, but those who are skilled go on collecting their own rubbish, in spite of the bad smell and the unclean work, and when it is ready to be used they spread it on their land, and out of this they grow their crops. That is the skilled way. In exactly the same way, the Buddha says, those who are unskilled will divide clean from unclean and will try to throw away samsara and search for nirvana, but those who skilled bodhisattvas will not throw away desire and the passions and so on, but will first gather them togetehr. That is to say, one should first recognize and acknowledge them, and study them and bring them to realization. So the skilled bodhisttva will acknowledge and accept all these negative things. And this time he really knows that he has all these terrible things in him, and although it is very difficult and unhygienic, as it were, to work on, that is the only way to start. And then he will scatter them on the field of bodhi. Having studied all these concepts and negative things, when the time is right he does not keep them anymore, but scatters and uses them as manure. So out of these unclean things comes the birth of the seed which is realization. This is how one has to give birth. And the very idea that concepts are bad, or such and such a thing is bad, divides the whole thing, with the result that you are not left with anything at all to deal with. And in that case you either have to be completely perfect, or else battle through all these things and try to knock them all out. But when you have this hostile attitude and try to suppress things, then each time you knock one thing out another springs up in its place, and when you attack that one, another one comes up from somewhere else. There is this continual trick of the ego, so that when you try to disentangle one part of the knot, you pull on the string and only make it tighter somewhere else, so you are continually trapped in it. Therefore the thing is not to battle any more, not to try and sort out the bad things and only achieve good, but respect them and acknowledge them. So theory concepts are very good, like wonderful manure. Through thousands and thousands of lives we have been collecting so much rubbish that now we have wonderful wealth of this manure. It has everything in it, so it would be just the right thing to use, and it would such a shame to throw it away. Because if you do throw it away, then all your life until today will have been wasted. Not only that, but lives and lives and lives will have been wasted, so one would have a feeling of failure. All that struggle and all that collecting would have been wasted, and you would have to start all over again from the beginning. Therefore, there would be a great feeling of disappointment, and it would be more a defeat than anything having been gained. So one has to respect the continual pattern. One may have broken away from the origin and all sorts of things may have happened. These may not be particularly good things. They are rather undesirable and negative. At this state there are good things and bad things, but this collection contains good things disguised as bad and bad things disguised as good.

One must respect the flowing pattern of all one's past lives and the early part of one's present life right up to today. And there is a wonderful pattern in it. There is already a very strong current where many streams meet in a valley. And this river is very good and contains this powerful current running through it, so instead of trying to block it one should join this current and use it. This does not mean collecting things over and over again. Whoever does that would be lacking in awareness and wisdom, he would not have understood the idea of collecting manure. He could collect it together acknowledge it and by acknowledging it he would have reached a certain point and understand that this manure is ready to be used.

There is a story in the teachings of tantra about two close friends who both wanted to search for the truth. They went to a master, and the master said, "Do not abandon anything, accept everything. and once having accepted, use it in the right way." And the first one thought, "Well, this is wonderful. I can on being just the way I am." So he set up hundreds of brothels and hundreds of butcher shops and hundreds of drinking places, which in India was regard as something that only a lower-caste person would do. He began to run all these big businesses, and he though this was what he was supposed to do. But the other friend thought this was not quite right and he began to examine himself; and by examining himself he to the conclusion that he had enough material already and did not have to collect any more. He did not have to do any particular practice of meditation, but by acknowledging the already existing heap, he achieved enlightenment, or at least a certain state of realization, an kind of satori. Then one day they met each other and talked together and compared their experiences. The first was not at all awakened: he was still struggling and collecting and doing all these things. In fact he had fallen into an even worse trap and had not even started examine himself. But each of them was quite sure that he was right, so they both decided to go and consult the teacher. And the teacher said "I am afraid your way is wrong" to the one who was running the businesses. And he was so disappointed that he drew his sword and murdered the teacher on the spot.

There are these two possible approaches, and there may perhaps be some confusion between the two. Nevertheless, if a person is skilled enough, not necessarily intelligent, but skilled enough and patient enough to sift through his rubbish and study it thoroughly, then he will be able to use it. So, coming back to the subject of concepts, a very important example, the idea behind this is to develop a positive outlook and to recognize your great wealth. And having recognized one's concepts and ideas one must, in a sense, cultivate them. One has a tendency to try and abandon them or throw them away. But one should cultivate them, not in the sense of reading more books and having more discussions and philosophical disputes - that would be the other way, the way of the friend who ran the businesses - but simply, since you already have enough wealth, just go through it. Just as a person who wants to buy something first has to check and see how much money he has. Or else it is like going back to your old diaries and studying them, and seeing your different stages of development, or going up to the attic and opening up all the old boxes to find the old dolls and toys that were given to you when you were three years old, and looking at them and examining them together with their associations. In this way you gain a complete understanding of what you are, and that is more important than continuously creating. The point of realization is not to try and understand only the awakened state and pretend not to understand the other side, because that becomes a way of cheating oneself. You see, you are your own best friend, your own closest friend, you are the best company for yourself. One knows one's own weaknesses and inconsistency, one knows how much wrong one has done, one knows it all in detail, so it doesn't help to try and pretend you don't know it, or to try not to think of that side and only of think of the good side; that wold mean that one was still sorting one's rubbish. And if you store it like that you would not have enough manure to raise a crop from this wonderful field of bodhi. So you should go through and study even right back to your childhood, and of course if you have the great ability to go back to your previous lives, you should do so and try to understand them.

Chogyam Trungpa on "The Manure of Experience", Meditation in Action Ch.1

Heightened Awareness

Every time I entered into heightened awareness I could not cease marveling at the difference between my two sides. I always felt as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes, as if I had been partially blind before and now I could see. The freedom, the sheer joy that used to possess me on those occasions cannot be compared with anything else I have ever experienced. Yet at the same time, there was a frightening feeling of sadness and longing that went hand in hand with that freedom and joy. Don Juan had told me that there is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without kindness, he said, and knowledge without sobriety are useless.

When I asked him once what was the essential character of the seers of the new cycle, he said that they are the warriors of total freedom, that they are such masters of awareness, stalking, and intent that they are not caught by death, like the rest of mortal men, but choose the moment and the way of their departure from this world. At that moment they are consumed by a fire from within and vanish from the face of the earth, free, as if they had never existed.

Excerpts from The Fire from Within (pp.12-13)
by Carlos Casteneda

If You See The Buddha, Kill Him

For 300 years after Buddha's death there were no Buddha images. The people's practice was the image of the Buddha, there was no need to externalize it. But in time, as the practice was lost, people began to place the Buddha outside of their own minds, back in time and space. As the concept was externalized and images were made, great teachers started to reemphasize the other meaning of Buddha. There is a saying: "If you see the Buddha, kill him." Very shocking to people who offer incense and worship before an image. If you have a concept in the mindof a Buddha outside yourself, kill it, let it go. . . . Gotama Buddha repeatedly reminded people that the experience of truth comes from one's own mind.

http://okelle.livejournal.com/167571.html


It actually comes from an old koan attributed to Zen Master Linji, (the founder of the Rinzai sect). It’s a simple one... If you meet the Buddha, kill him.‚

Whatever your conception is of the Buddha, it’s WRONG! Now kill that image and keep practicing. This all has to do with the idea that reality is an impermanent illusion. If you believe that you have a correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, then you need to throw out (kill) that image and keep meditating.

(Buddha quote: Rahula, Walpola. "What The Buddha Taught." Grove Press, New York, 1959. Pg. 11.)

http://www.dailybuddhism.com/archives/670

Nature, Man and Woman

We know that the peaceful rationality, the relaxed culture, and the easy normality of civilized human life are a crust of habit repressing emotions too violent or poignant for most of us to stand - the first resting place which life has found in its arduous climb from the primordial, natural world of relentless struggle and terror.

The harsh divisions of spirit and nature, mind and body, subject and object, controller and controlled are seen more and more to be awkward conventions of language. These are misleading and clumsy terms for describing a world in which all events seem to be mutually interdependent - an immense complexity of subtly balanced relationships which, like an endless knot, has no loose end from which it can be untangled and put in supposed order.

We need hardly wonder, then, that cultures in which the individual feels isolated from nature are also cultures wherein men feel squeamish about the sexual relationship, often regarding it as degrading and evil - especially for those dedicated to the life of the spirit.

For the point is not, in our accustomed egocentric mode of thinking, that it would be good to return to our original integrity with nature. The point is that it is simply impossible to get away from it, however vividly we may imagine that we have done so.

For as long as I can remember, I have been puzzled by the fact that I can feel like a Christian only when I am indoors. As soon as I get into the open air, I feel entirely out of relations with everything that goes on in a church - including both the worship and the ideology.

The more a person knows of himself, the more he will hesitate to define his nature and to assert what he must necessarily feel, and the more he will be astounded at his capacity to feel in unsuspected and unpredictable ways. Still more will this be so if he learns to explore, or feel deeply into, his negative states of feeling - his loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression, or fear - without trying to escape from them.

In Christianity, however, the stress is upon belief rather than experience, and immense importance has always been attached to an acceptance of the correct formulation of a dogma, doctrine, or rite. Early in its history, Christianity rejected gnosis, or direct experience of God, in favor of pistis, or the trust of the will in certain revealed propositions about God.

Now it should be obvious that classification is, again, a human invention, and that the natural world is not given to us in a classified form, in cans with labels. When we ask what anything is in its natural state, the only answer can be to point to it directly, suggesting that the questioner observe it with a silent mind. Silent observation of this kind is exactly what is meant here by feeling (as distinct from particular feelings), the attitude and approach whereby nature must be explored if we are to recover our original sense of integrity with the natural world.

From the standpoint of Taoist philosophy natural forms are not made but grown, and there is a radical difference between the organic and the mechanical.

The form of Christianity differs from the form of nature because in the Church and in its spiritual atmosphere we are in a universe that has been made. Outside the Church we are in a universe that has grown.

... a political universe is one in which separate things, facts, and events are governed by the force of law. However much ideas of the laws of nature may have changed, there is no doubt that the idea of natural law first arose from the supposition that the world obeyed the commandments of a ruler conceived in the image of an earthly king.

The growth of bureaucracy and totalitarianism has, then, far less to do with sinister influences than with the mere mechanics of control in an impossibly complex system of interrelations.

Narrowed, serial consciousness, the memory-stored stream of impressions, is the means by which we have the sense of ego. It enables us to feel that behind thought there is a thinker and behind knowledge a knower - an individual who stands aside from the changing panorama of experience to order and control it as best he may. If the ego were to disappear, or rather to be seen as a useful fiction, there would no longer be the duality of subject and object, experiencer and experience. There would simply be a continuous, self-moving stream of experiencing, without the sense either of an active subject who controls it or of a passive subject who suffers it. The thinker would be seen to be no more than the series of thoughts, and the feeler no more than the feelings.

In theological circles "pantheism" has long been a definitively damning label, and those who like their religious and philosophical opinions to be robust and definite are also inclined to use the word "mysticism" with the same kind of opprobrium. They associate it with "mist", with vagueness, with clouding of issues and blurring of distinctions.

By grounding the rules of action in God, the West has not succeeded in fostering any unusual degree of morality. On the contrary, it has invited just those violent ideological revolutions against intolerable authority which are so characteristic of its history. The same would apply to a rigid scientific dogma as to what is natural and what is not. It is little wonder, then, that we seek detachment from the body, wanting to convince ourselves that the real "I" is not this quaking mass of tissue with all its repulsive possibilities for pain and corruption.

It is little wonder that we expect religions, philosophies, and other forms of wisdom to show us above all else a way of deliverance from suffering, from the plight of being a soft body in a world of hard reality. Sometimes therefore it seems that the answer is to match hardness with hardness, to identify ourselves with a spirit which has principles but no feelings, to despise and mortify the body, and to withdraw into the comfortably fleshless world of abstract thought or psychic fantasy. To match the hardness of facts we then identify our minds with such symbols of fixity, entity, and power as the ego, the will, and the immortal soul, believing ourselves to belong in our inmost being to a realm of spirit beyond both the hardness of fact and the weakness of flesh. This is, as it were, a shrinking of consciousness from its environment of pain, gathering itself back and back into a knot around its own center.

In a culture where sex is calculated, religion decorous, dancing polite, music refined or sentimental, and yielding to pain shameful, many people have never experienced full spontaneity. Little or nothing is known of its integrating, cathartic, and purifying consequences, let alone of the fact that it may not only be creatively controlled, but also become a constant way of life.

Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity - the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation - and as a rule the civilized adult is goaded into it only by abject despair, intolerable suffering, or imminent death.

Belief in an unchanging God, an immortal soul, or even in a deathless nirvana as something to be gained is all part of this artfulness, as is equally the sterile certainty and aggressive cocksureness of atheism and scientific materialism. There is no way to where we are, and whoever seeks one finds only a slick wall of granite without passage or foothold. Yogas, prayers, therapies, and spiritual exercises are at root only elaborate postponements of the recognition that there is nothing to be grasped and no way to grasp it.

Sanctity or sagehood as an exclusive vocation is, once again, symptomatic of an exclusive mode of consciousness in general and of the spiritual consciousness in particular. Its basic assumption is that God and nature are in competition and that man must choose between them.

Confucius felt that in the long run human passions and feelings were more trustworthy than human principles of right and wrong, that the natural man was more of a man than the conceptual man, the constructed person. Principles were excellent, and indeed necessary, so long as they were tempered with human-heartedness and the sense of proportion or humor that goes with it.

Quotations

Confucius
The superior man goes through life without any one preconceived course of action or any taboo. He merely decides for the moment what is the right thing to do.

A. Waley
[yugen] To watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest with no thought of return, to stand on the shore and gaze after a boat that goes hid by far-off islands, to ponder on the journey of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.

Nature, Man and Woman.
Alan W. Watts
1958. Vintage, New York. ISBN 0-679-73233-0
Excerpts

Remain with the Feeling

Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that's what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love, or with the word `love'. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. Can you? Have you ever tried? Try to remain with a feeling, and see what happens. You will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not leave the feeling alone; it comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its do's and don'ts, its everlasting chatter. pick up a piece of shell. Can you look at it, wonder at its delicate beauty, without saying how pretty it is, or what animal made it? Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live with the feeling behind the word, without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time, a spring that knows no summer.

- Commentaries On Living Series III Chapter 37 Aloneness Beyond Loneliness

A life of fullness

Is there a way by which we can end conflict and sorrow without destroying creative intelligence and integral completeness? Can there ever be choiceless living, that is, can there ever be action without denial or aggressive want? Can there be action which is spontaneous and thus free of the conflict of opposites? Can there ever be a life of fullness without the withering process of discipline, denial, fear and frustration? Is such a state of deep comprehension ever possible? I wonder how many of you are vitally conscious of this conflict in the battlefield of the mind. A life of fullness, a life of choiceless action, a life free from the withering process of subjugation and substitution, is possible. How is this state to be realized? Systems and methods cannot produce this happy state of mind. This condition of choiceless life must come about naturally, spontaneously; it cannot be sought after. It is not to be understood or realized or conquered through a discipline, through a system. One can condition the mind through training, discipline, and compulsion, but such conditioning cannot nourish thought or awaken deep intelligence. Such a trained mind is as the soil that is barren.
Collected Works. Vol. III Ommen Camp, Holland, 1st August, 1936

A life of fullness | Daily Quotes Arquive - J. Krishnamurti Online

The First Step

This freedom is not an ideal, a thing to take place eventually. The first step in freedom is the last step in it. It is the first step that counts, not the last step. What you do now is far more essential than what you do at some future date. Life is what is happening this instant, not an imagined instant, not what thought has conceived. So it is the first step you take now that is important. If that step is in the right direction, then the whole of life is open to you. The right direction is not towards an ideal, a predetermined end. It is inseparable from that which is taking place now. This is not a philosophy, a series of theories. It is exactly what the word philosophy means - the love of truth, the love of life. It is not something that you go to the university to learn. We are learning about the art of living in our daily life. - J.K. Letters to the Schools Vol. 1

The Anxiety/Stress Management Myth

This one is the most damaging, fueled by the culture of feel good-ism. These conventions set up emotional physical pain as barriers to a life lived well. The message is "in order to live better, I must first think and feel better. And once I start thinking and feeling better, my life will improve for the better". This is a trap.

The bait for the trap is the emotional and psychological pain you experience with anxiety, panic, unwanted thoughts, or memories. In your mind, this pain isn't just pain. It's bad pain Your mind has judged it as unacceptable and has linked it with not being able to do what you care about. When anxiety and pain show up you go after it to make it go away or to weaken it. You also do this or that to prevent that bad pain from showing up in the future, and on it goes.

Time spent trying to manage and control anxiety is time and energy away from doing things that you care deeply about... So "anxiety management" and control actually double your pain: on top of the pain of more anxiety (the relief from it only very temporary), you also get the pain of loss or regret. You get the other pain when you fail to do something that really matters to you. Both forms of pain are a natural consequence of fighting a battle with your unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

Research studies have shown as much too: when you don't want anxious thoughts and feelings, you'll get more of them. And the more you don't want them, the more you're stuck with them.

Exercises in this book are designed to help you recognize the anxiety management and control myth for what it is -- a rigged, no-win game that has brought much unnecessary suffering to your life. You can avoid getting sucked into the anxiety trap by learning not to take the bait. You can learn to live better without first having to think and feel better. You can learn to bring comfort to the unpleasant experiences your mind and body are serving up and do what matters to you.

The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety ~ John P. Forsyth & Georg H. Eifert (Myths about Anxiety and its Disorders pp.62-64)

Negation, Affirmation, Implementation, Expression, Integration

Elementally I associate Negation with Water, Affirmation with Fire, Implementation with Earth, and Expression with Air. First (and last) there is the washing away of all previous experiences (psychologically, emotionally) originally created by affirmation (vision, will & intention), implementation (attention & devotion) and yesterday's resultant manifestations, experience and mental expressions (memory).

Water returns to its natural state, clean and clear, reflecting the inherent clarity and beauty of all that surrounds it. Water collects all earthly experience/substance as memory and must in so doing be willing/able to release and let it all go, to ceaselessly move forward just as a stream flows and cleanses itself in the process. Negation is a purification by Water.

Fire is that affirmation, the vision, the insight, hope and idealism that is behind all creative actions and individual ventures. It is spark of creation and vitality that follows deep meditation (thought negation), allowing for new birth and enthusiasm in the process. The affirmation process is renewed and revitalized via the negation process, which purifies and makes fresh creative perspective a continuous possibility... Affirmation is a positive purification by fire.

Earth is the external implementation of the practical, onto immediate physical reality and the total devotion (full attention) to implementing the ideal or vision, focusing one pointedly on the immediate matter at hand. It is the manifesting process that makes it all possible on Earth... practice makes perfect, efficient productivity the natural complement to an expansive creativity.

Air is the outward mental expression by which the vision and implementation of Fire & Earth can be communicated, articulated, seen and appreciated by others. The images that make up the experiences we share collectively and communicate lingual-ly. Appearance and aesthetics, friends and relationships, activities and experiences by which the inner Fire finds outer expression.

JDZ

To die each day

We discussed 'need' the other day. We do need certain physical comforts, food and shelter; but to make psychological demands on life means that you are begging, that you are afraid. It requires an intense energy to stand alone. To understand this is not a matter of thinking about it. There is understanding only when there is no choice, no judgment, but merely observation. To die each day means not to carry over from yesterday all your ambitions, grievances, your memories of fulfillment, your grudges, your hatred. Most of us wither away, but that is not dying. To die is to know what love is. Love has no continuity, no tomorrow. The picture of a person on the wall, the image, in your mind - that is not love, it is merely memory. As love is the unknown, so death is the unknown. And to enter the unknown, which is death and love, one must first die to the known. Then only is the mind fresh, young and innocent; and in that there is no death. - Paris 7th Public Talk 19th September 1961 , Collected Works Volume XII

Beyond Thought

Thought is born of experience and knowledge, and there is nothing sacred whatsoever about thought. Thinking is materialistic, it is a process of matter. And we have relied on thinking to solve all our problems in politics and religions and in our relationships. Our brains, our minds, are conditioned, educated to solve problems. Thinking has created problems and then our brains, our minds, are trained to solve them with more thinking. All problems are created, psychologically and inwardly, by thought.

Follow what is happening. Thought creates the problem, psychologically; the mind is trained to solve problems with further thinking, so thought in creating the problem then tries to solve it. So it is caught in a continuous process, a routine. Problems are becoming more and more complex, more and more insoluble, so we must find out if it is at all possible to approach life in a different way, not through thought because thought does not solve our problems; on the contrary thought has brought about greater complexity. We must find out - if it is possible or not whether there is a different dimension, a different approach, to life altogether.

And that is why it is important to understand the nature of our thinking. Our thinking is based on remembrance of things past - which is thinking about what happened a week ago, thinking about it modified in the present, and projected into the future. This is actually the movement of our life. So knowledge has become all-important for us but knowledge is never complete. Therefore knowledge always lives within the shadow of ignorance. That is a fact. It is not the speaker's invention or conclusion, but it is so.

- 1st Public Talk Amsterdam 19th September 1981

Freedom

Man has always sought something beyond the physical existence. He has always searched, asked, suffered, tortured himself, to find out if there is something which is not of time, which is not of thought, which is not belief or faith. To find that out one must be absolutely free, for if you are anchored to a particular form of belief, that very belief will prevent investigation into what is eternal - if there is such a thing as eternity which is beyond all time, beyond all measure.

So one must be free - if one is serious in the enquiry into what religion is - one must be free of all the things that thought has invented about that which is considered religious. That is, all the things that Hinduism, for example, has invented, with its superstitions, with its beliefs, with its images, and its ancient literature such as the Upanishads - one must he completely free of all that. If one is attached to all that then it is impossible, naturally, to discover that which is original. You understand the problem? If my mind, my brain is conditioned by Hindu superstitions, beliefs, dogmas and idolatry, with all the ancient tradition, then it is anchored to that and cannot move, it is not free.

Similarly, one must be free totally from all the inventions of thought, the rituals, dogmas, beliefs, symbols, saviours and so on of Christianity. That may be rather more difficult, that is coming nearer home. But all religions, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, are the movement of thought continued through time, through literature, through symbols, through things made by the hand or by the mind - and all that is considered religious in the modern world. To the speaker that is not religious. To the speaker it is a form of illusion, comforting, satisfying, romantic, sentimental but not actual.

JK - The Network of Thought Chapter 9

Meditation

Meditation is not an escape from the world; it is not an isolating self-enclosing activity, but rather the comprehension of the world and its ways. The world has little to offer apart from food, clothes and shelter, and pleasure with its great sorrows. Meditation is wandering away from this world; one has to be a total outsider. Then the world has a meaning, and the beauty of the heavens and the earth is constant. Then love is not pleasure. From this all action begins that is not the outcome of tension, contradiction, the search for self-fulfillment or the conceit of power. The Only Revolution India Part 1 - J.K.

Ending the Me

What takes place when living now, today, this morning, when the brain actually ceases, ends its memories, its images, its conclusions? - which is the content of consciousness - you follow? Can my brain, my consciousness, which is the 'me', can that, with all its content, come to an end, living, not at the end of another ten years through disease, living now? Can that mind, can that consciousness empty its content, therefore empty the 'me' - do you understand all this? Is that ever possible?

I get up and go to my room, after I have talked here; the knowledge where that room is must exist otherwise it is not possible to live at all - right? So knowledge, which is based on experience and memory, from which all thought arises and therefore thought is never free and never new, that knowledge must exist, which is part of consciousness, isn't it? Are you meeting all this - right sir? Somebody come with me. Riding a bicycle, driving a car, speaking a different language, that knowledge must exist, that is also part of consciousness. But that knowledge is used by the 'me' as a separative movement, uses that knowledge for its own psychological comfort and power, position, prestige and all the rest of it. Right? So I am asking myself, whether that consciousness, with all its content as the psychological movement as the 'me' can end now, so that the mind is aware of what death means, and to see what happens.

J.Krishnamurti - Brockwood Park 3rd Public Talk 8th September 1973

1 Corinthians 13 - Love

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

New Testament - 1 Corinthians 13

Insight in Action

"Stay sharp. Get plenty of oxygen to your blood with deep breathing and exercise. Ideally, your mind and body will be in a perpetual state of readiness."

Virgo Horoscope for 8/8 - by Holiday Mathis (Daily Freeman)
-------------------------

Work slower and mindfully... but KEEP WORKING. The key is minimizing distraction and staying focused, at any speed. At times I can pick up the pace and this is a blessing of personal power and freewill, but not all the time... so the important thing is simply to keep moving.

----------------------------

Focus on the BIG things before the little things... tackle those big boxes first, not the one or two papers that are out of place. Then do a final cleanup at the end.

-----------------------------

My life is taking a positive turn in the direction of emphasizing the creative and joyful... what I WANT to do, because what I have to do is coming ever more under my control via the mature and developed capacity for responsibility.

JDZ

Presence to Purpose

Preliminary Purpose - Pure Intrinsic Awareness gives light to Inner Consciousness (psyche/mind), with all mental goings on, positive and negative, pleasant and painful, active and passive, functional and dysfunctional. In a state of clear undistorted observation one is detached and aware, without objective identification (objectification), letting go and letting God. With clarity, understanding and vision, this intrinsic awareness dissolves and re-creates all images of illusory earthly and psychic phenomena, as all external phenomena come and go, entering and departing the screen of awareness. The appearances are fleeting, the awareness itself Eternal. "I AM NOW"

Spirit (conscious being) = Soul-Psyche (human being) = Universe (formless/infinite being) or Consciousness, Sub-Consciousness and Super-Consciousness respectively.

The natural unfolding of Purpose into active manifestation, life experience & self expression is as follows:

I Primary Purpose

Spontaneous Expression - Letting Self go, Living in Non-duality or Pure Presence. Immediacy of action with focus on matter at hand. Living without self consciousness, nor without any doubt/hesitation. To act consciously in accordance with choice and freewill, in the moment, negating the heavy binding influence of all the rest. Choosing to focus attention here and now, immediately, without the fog of excess thinking. The will to be that allows all negatives and positives in life to coexist, while mindfully and willingly choosing the positive alignment and orientation. Being/Seeing = Thinking + Feeling = Doing + Having = Creative Manifestation (Becoming) = Higher Purpose

II Secondary Purpose:

Practical Implementation - Efficiency, effective, mindful and productive action... also toxic elimination in mind-body and environment. The daily workload with lists and agendas, ground rules and limits, and a backbone of natural order. Each moment when I take responsible action that involves discipline and duty, observances and restrictions (of good and bad behavior respectively), inner-outer commitments and service to human society. Learning systems, exercises and practices (like "Getting Things Done" by David Allen) which help one to manage responsibility and "have a mind like water".

Where the Primary Purpose indicates "what I WANT to do" the Secondary Purpose is "what I HAVE to do" to make it all possible, beginning with ordinary tasks like cooking meals, cleaning house, going to work, bringing home the bacon, and keeping an orderly efficient running system of operations that begins right at home. For example, even if one is going on vacation there are plans of implementation, travel, food and lodging and many other details that call for mindful attention.

III Tertiary Purpose:

3a) Service & Socialization - Helping or serving as many as possible, finding vocation that serves humanity, contributing to causes, volunteer work, spontaneous helpfulness, group and spiritual activities. Generosity, good will and conduct. Close relationships serving as reminder to mindful/aware of others, thinking of others and not living in a self-enclosed cocoon.

3b) Social Connections - Opportunities and new experiences via others, Friendships that supportive and positive. Includes counseling, medical attention and all things healing or therapeutic. Participating in group events of common interest, with others who share my ideals, dreams and aspirations.

IV Evolutionary Purpose:

4a) Deliberate Creation (Expansion/Imagination) - Quantum Creation and the power of positive thinking... creative visualization, working creatively upon the foundations of immediate expression, practical implementation, service and socialization. One who generates positive vibrations, having a chosen a conscious focus (as in primary purpose, more developed). This divine power of freewill brings out our fullest creative capacity in accordance with universal and natural laws of abundance/attraction.

Inner and outer wealth/abundance are inseparable, and financial growth serves a primary individual-spiritual purpose. Here at the pinnacle of life it's all about focusing courageously and positively on what you desire and ignoring or letting go of your fear... mainly any fear of becoming powerful and successful.

4b) Higher Learning (Education/Intuition) - Reading, Research, Schooling, Online Resources, Articles and Newsletters, Books on Spirituality, Self-Development, Improving Financial Resources, Managing Time, Writing, Buddhism, Yoga, Philosophy. Whether in solitude or with a class or group of people, we learn new subjects to sharpen our skills and/or knowledge within a given field of understanding, functioning or general living.

V Higher Purpose:

Spiritual Evolution (Empowerment/Illumination) - Realization of Power, Wisdom, Love, Clarity and Calmness. Mastery of Self, Realization of Unity... and all of the challenges, trials and tribulations that lead us further along the path of Dharma and Truth. Here is where the Primary Purpose is realized in its entirety, having gone through the practical, social and evolutionary processes (or realms) of being in the world.

"The Subduer said that all the unbearable suffering of the three lower realms is the fruition of wrongdoing. Therefore, never committing negative deeds, even at peril to one's life, is the Bodhisattvas' practice." ~ From The Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices by Ngulchu Thogme Zangpo

JDZ

Increasing Energy

When you reject something false, that is, looking to another to help you, and also when you have no longer the authority of your particular little experience - when you reject all that - what takes place? First of all, can you reject it? - which means you are no longer afraid. When you reject something false, which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy haven`t you? You have more capacity, you have more drive, you have greater intensity, vitality. Now does that actually take place? - if it doesn't, you have not thrown off the dead weight of authority. And when you have this energy - in which there is no fear at all, the fear of making a mistake, of not doing right or doing wrong - then is not that energy itself the mutation? One needs a great deal of energy, yet we dissipate energy through fear - through the fear of not achieving, not being successful outwardly, or the psychological fears, the fears that are caused by acceptance, by obedience. Fear dissipates energy and when we see that, - not theoretically or verbally, but actually see that as a danger, - then you have the energy. Then when there is that energy, - which has thrown off every form of fear - that energy itself produces the radical revolution. You don't have to do a thing about it. - Freedom From The Known Chapter 1

Living in Peace

Contradiction exists when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely. Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict. The understanding that comes only through observation of what is, is peace; which doesn't mean that you accept what is, on the contrary, one can't possibly accept this monstrous, corrupt society in which one lives, yet it is what is. But observe it, all its psychological structure, which is me, observe that me without any judgment, any evaluation - to see actually what is and as one observes the `what is', be changed completely. Therefore one can live at peace with one's wife or husband, with one's neighbour, with society, because one is oneself, daily, living a life of peace. - Collected Works Collected Works, Volume 4

Understanding

Question: Is there, or is there not, a Divine Plan? What is the sense of our striving if there is not one? Krishnamurti: Why do we strive? And what are we striving after? What would happen if we did not strive? Would we stagnate and decay? What is this constant striving to be something? What does this strife, this effort, indicate? And, does understanding come through effort, through striving? One is constantly striving to become better, to change oneself, to fit oneself to a certain pattern, to become something - from the clerk to the manager, from the manager to the divine. And, does this striving bring understanding? I think the question of effort should really be understood. What is it that is making the effort, and what do we mean by "the will to be"? We make an effort, do we not?, in order to achieve a result, in order to become better, in order to be more virtuous, or less of Something else. There is this constant battle going on in us between positive and negative desires, one superseding the other, one desire controlling the other - only we call it the higher and the lower self. But, obviously, it is still desire. You can place it at any level, and give it a different name; it is still desire, a craving to be something. There is also the constant strife within oneself and with others, with society. Now, does this conflict of desires bring understanding? Does the conflict of opposites, the want and the non-want, bring clarification? And is there understanding in the struggle to approximate ourselves to an idea? So, the problem is not the strife, the struggle, or what would happen if we did not struggle, if we did not make an effort, if we did not strive to be something, psychologically as well as outwardly; the problem is, how does understanding come into being? Because, when once there is understanding, there is no strife. What you understand, of that you are free. How does understanding come into being? I do not know if you have ever noticed that the more you struggle to understand, the less you understand any problem. But, the moment you cease to struggle and let the problem tell you the whole story, give all its significance - then there is understanding; which means, obviously, that to understand, the mind must be quiet. The mind must be choicelessly, passively, aware; and in that state, there is understanding of the many problems of our life. The questioner wants to know if there is, or if there is not, a Divine Plan. I do not know what you mean by a "Divine Plan." But we do know, do we not?, that we are in sorrow, that we are in confusion, that confusion and sorrow are ever on the increase, socially, psychologically, individually and collectively. It is what we have made of this world. Whether there is a Divine Plan or not, is not important at all. But what is important is, to understand the confusion in which we live, outwardly as well as inwardly. And to understand that confusion, we must begin, obviously, with ourselves - because we are confusion; it is we who have produced this outward confusion in the world. And to clear up that confusion, we must begin with ourselves; because, what we are, the world is. - London 4th Public Talk 23rd October 1949

Choiceless Awareness

The internal dialogue is always commenting and judging and planning. It contains a lot of thoughts of self, a lot of self-consciousness. It blocks the light of our natural wisdom; it limits our seeing who we are; it makes a lot of noise and attracts our attention to a fraction of the reality in which we exist. But when the awareness is one-pointedly focused on the coming and going of the breath, all other aspects of the mind/body process come automatically, clearly into focus as they arise. Meditation puts us into direct contact - which means direct experience - with more of who we are.

For instance, if we watch the mind as though it were a film projected on a screen, as concentration deepens, it may go into a kind of slow motion allowing us to see more what is happening. This then deepens our awareness and further allows us to observe the film almost frame by frame, to discover how one thought leads imperceptively to the next. We see how thoughts we took to be"me" or "mine" are just an ongoing process. This perspective helps break our deep identification with seeming solid reality of the movie of the mind. As we become less engrossed in the melodrama, we see it's just flow, and can watch it all as it passes. We are not even drawn into the action by the passing of a judgmental comment or an agitated moment of impatience.

When we simply see-moment to moment-what's occurring, observing without judgment or preference, we don't get lost thinking, "I prefer this moment to that moment, I prefer this pleasant thought to that pain in my knee".As we begin developing this choiceless awareness, what starts coming within the field of awareness is quite remarkable: we start seeing the root from which thought arises. We see intention, out of which action comes. We observe the natural process of mind and discover how much of what we so treasured to be ourselves is essentially impersonal phenomena passing by.

We discover we don't really need to ask anyone any questions, we needn't look outside ourselves for the answer. As we penetrate the flow, the flow is the answer. The asking of the question is itself the answer. When we ask, "Who am I?" who we are is the processes asking the question.

By not being addicted to thinking, we discover that we usually notice only a bit of the extraordinary activity of consciousness; attachment to thinking has blocked the rest. Thinking mind is quite other than the choiceless, open awareness that allows everything to unfold as it must. Thinking is choosing thoughts, it's working, it's measuring, it's planning, it's creating a reality instead of directly experiencing what's actually happening each moment.

When we attent to ongoing mind we see that even "the watcher" becomes part of the flow. The who that's asking "Who's watching?" is another thought-flash we see go by; there's "no one" watching, there's just awareness. When the "I" becomes just something else observed in the flow we see we're not different from anything else in the universe. The true nature of being becomes apparent because there's nothing to remain separate, nothing to block our totality. We see that what moves on thought into another is the exact same energy that moves the stars across the sky. No difference. We are natural phenomenon as full of change as the ocean or the wind, a product of conditions.

We see that the nature of consciousness works a bit like the hand of God in the famous Sistine Chapel painting which reaching out to give life to a waiting being, a being about to receive the spark. Moment to moment we're receiving the spark. That spark is consciousness, the knowing faculty, the perception of which arises from the contact of awareness and its object; from sight and the tree seen, from hearing and the music heard, from touch and the earth felt, from taste and the water tasted, from smell and the flower smelled, from thought and ideas imagined. Moment to moment, consciousness arises anew in conjunction with each object of the senses, including the minds sense of imagination and memory. This the arising and passing away of all that we know of our life experience. For mindfulness to enter this process is to discover genesis moment to moment, the continual creation of the universe.

Interestingly enough, it is this act of creation which is the greatest cause of misunderstanding in our life. Or to be ore precise, it is our identification with this ongoing process as "I" which becomes the problem. It is the wrong view of this natural unfolding which forms the basis for most of our drowsy blindness and illusion. Consciousness results automatically from the contact of awareness and its object. This "knowing" is the result of a natural process which exists of itself without necessity of a "knower," or any added "I" which somehow supposes responsibility for this essentially non-personal process. This interposed "I" keeps us from participating in the direct experience of this flow, the direct experience of the universal nature of our being.

Aurobindo said, "to be fully is to be all that is." Experiences come and go. If we identify with them, claim them as me or "mine" by judging or clinging, if we stick to any part of the ongoing flow we don't see that what we call "me" is constantly being born and dying, it is a process of awareness and object coming into being and passing away hundreds of times each minute.

As awareness more deeply penetrates the flow, we experience that our natural condition, our natural state of being which some call the wisdom-mind or Buddha nature, is like the sun which always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought an longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of "I am".

Stephen Levine ~ A Gradual Awakening, (Awareness, pp.2-6)

The Religious Man

Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transformation in society; and the religious man is not he who practices starvation as an example to impress society. The religious man is not concerned with society at all, because society is based on acquisitiveness, envy, greed, ambition, fear. That is, mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. Whereas, the truly religious man is totally outside of society, because he is not ambitious, he has no envy, he is not following any ritual, dogma or belief; and it is only such a man who can fundamentally transform society, not the reformer. The man who sets out to be an example merely breeds conflict, strengthens fear, and brings about various forms of tyranny. It is very strange how we worship examples, idols. We don't want that which is pure, true in itself; we want interpreters, examples, masters, gurus, as a medium through which to attain something - which is all sheer nonsense, and is used to exploit people. If each one of us could think clearly from the very beginning, or re-educate ourselves to think clearly, then all these examples, masters, gurus, systems, would be absolutely unnecessary, which they are anyhow. - Madras 2nd Public Talk 15th January 1956

... psychologically, inwardly, are we aware of our responses? Are we aware when we are not telling the truth, when we are indulging in double talk, when we are saying one thing and doing something else, when we are quoting others? You follow, this whole phenomenon of being secondhand, which is to be traditional, which is to conform - conform to an example. That gentleman yesterday said, "There is a perfect example". And why do we need an example? Is that not conformity, in that is there not imitation, fear, and authority and following? All that is traditional. We have had thousands of examples - right? And we want to be that. And in that there is the acceptance, non-verbally, essentially, of authority. Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following. - Saanen 4th Public Dialogue 3rd August 1974

Courage To Be

Even more essential and vital to life than expansion/evolution, beauty, magic and abundantly broad scope of experience(s) is the quality of consciousness, an immediate presence given to the act of experiencing. The first act, of living this moment, is one of glorious living presence, direct, embodied and aware on many levels at once.

A Yogi tea proverb says "It is not life that matters so much as the courage we bring to it"... if life is eternal (as well as ephemeral) than truly it is not to be worried about to the point where I forget my own role, that of a liberated soul taking bodily form and learning to rise above limitations (first by accepting them).

"Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day!" means to live this day in the eternal now uninterruptedly... the intense focus of this present moment remains a constant in the light of ever greater Spiritual Awakening... or waking up to True Being.

To never waste time in regret over the past or worry over the future, neither of past failures nor fears for the future. Whether one is hopeful or doubtful about the fate of the personal self, this present moment and the will to live fully within it are the common essential factors to being in a higher conscious vibration.

JDZ

Still Waters Run Deep

Question: I have listened to you for many years and I have become quite good at watching my thoughts and being aware of every thing I do, but I have never touched the deep waters or experienced the transformation of which you speak. Why? Krishnamurti: I think it is fairly clear why none of us do experience something beyond the mere watching. There may be rare moments of an emotional state in which we see, as it were, the clarity of the sky between clouds, but I do not mean anything of that kind. All such experiences are temporary and have very little significance. The questioner wants to know why, after these many years of watching, he hasn't found the deep waters. Why should he find them? Do you understand? You think that by watching your own thoughts you are going to get a reward: if you do this, you will get that. You are really not watching at all, because your mind is concerned with gaining a reward. You think that by watching, by being aware, you will be more loving, you will suffer less, be less irritable, get something beyond; so your watching is a process of buying. With this coin you are buying that, which means that your watching is a process of choice; therefore it isn't watching, it isn't attention. To watch is to observe without choice, to see yourself as you are without any movement of desire to change, which is an extremely arduous thing to do; but that doesn't mean that you are going to remain in your present state. You do not know what will happen if you see yourself as you are without wishing to bring about a change in that which you see. Do you understand?

I am going to take an example and work it out, and you will see. Let us say I am violent, as most people are. Our whole culture is violent; but I won't enter into the anatomy of violence now, because that is not the problem we are considering. I am violent, and I realize that I am violent. What happens? My immediate response is that I must do something about it, is it not? I say I must become non-violent. That is what every religious teacher has told us for centuries: that if one is violent one must become non-violent. So I practice, I do all the ideological things. But now I see how absurd that is, because the entity who observes violence and wishes to change it into non-violence, is still violent. So I am concerned, not with the expression of that entity, but with the entity himself. You are following all this, I hope. Now, what is that entity who says, `I must not be violent'? Is that entity different from the violence he has observed? Are they two different states? Do you understand, sirs, or is this too abstract? It is near the end of the talk and probably you are a bit tired. Surely, the violence and the entity who says, `I must change violence into non-violence', are both the same. To recognize that fact is to put an end to all conflict, is it not? There is no longer the conflict of trying to change, because I see that the very movement of the mind not to be violent is itself the outcome of violence. So, the questioner wants to know why it is that he cannot go beyond all these superficial wrangles of the mind. For the simple reason that, consciously or unconsciously, the mind is always seeking something, and that very search brings violence, competition, the sense of utter dissatisfaction. It is only when the mind is completely still that there is a possibility of touching the deep waters.

- Ojai 6th Public Talk 21st July 1955

The Function of Education

Don't you notice how little energy most of the people around you have, including your parents and teachers? They are slowly dying, even when their bodies are not yet old. Why? Because they have been beaten into submission by society. You see, without understanding its fundamental purpose which is to find extraordinary thing called the mind, which has the capacity to create atomic submarines and jet planes, which can write the most amazing poetry and prose, which can make the world so beautiful and also destroy the world - without understanding its fundamental purpose, which is to find truth or God, this energy becomes destructive; and then society says, "We must shape and control the energy of the individual."

So, it seems to me that the function of education is to bring about a release of energy in the pursuit of goodness, truth, or God, which in turn makes the individual a true human being and therefore the right kind of citizen. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing. Unless each one of you is so educated that, when you leave school and go out into the world, you are full of vitality and intelligence, full of abounding energy to find out what is true, you will merely be absorbed by society; you will be smothered, destroyed, miserably unhappy for the rest of your life. As a river creates the banks which hold it, so the energy which seeks truth creates its own discipline without any form of imposition; and as the river finds the sea, so that energy finds its own freedom.

- Think On These Things, Chapter 24

True Self

Be your Self without the mirror.. See your Self without the image.. Live in connection, without external comparison, let go of old memories and baggage and just FOCUS... Then say "I CAN BE WHATEVER I WILL TO BE"!!!

Discover for yourself what the true 'I' truly is and under no circumstances allow it to be overruled ever! Here is where I do not merely accept circumstances as they existentially are... I choose to steer and direct my path forward... I've come too far and endured too much to quit now!! Even if I do nothing else with this short time on Earth, I WILL alter the present circumstances in life to become as I choose them to be...

There is always more to do, more life to live, so idle temporary distractions and temptations are only the product of inattention, of losing the central focus. In remaining present, true to purpose, all things outside of centrality and momentum are seen as the illusory unnecessary diversions that they are, unless enjoyed only for that fleeting moment and not carried over.

Contentment is that very patient human faculty which makes the moment bearable (forbearance), so that we may have the strength to continue on with our goals and aspirations. This in reference to the external situation as it manifests in the present reality. There is this existential reality born of past actions, where acceptance and contentment is most necessary, and yet without projecting too far into the future I think it true to say that the present is full of possibility and personal power.

My very existence on this Earth is to support fully THE INDIVIDUAL... not society, not what you want me to support, but the power of the people to rise up as individuals and claim the birthright of Selfhood... the closest most real truth there is to Godhood, where group dominated partisan interests and consensus opinion are entirely irrelevant.

While understanding the role of group activity and consensus opinion, especially in a democratic system, I also understand that groups of every kind are made up of individuals. Without the individual there exists neither groups nor a collective. Some are here to fulfill that worldly authority and be part of the status quo... Without knocking this I come to the understanding that my passion and interest is to serve liberate and empower the individual... the only link to a universal connection and the possibility of co-creating and co-existing in a more enlightened humane society.

Ego annihilation is a big lie... and the most destructive. The ego (at worst) is only a dysfunctional and deluded expression of the True Self. Tending to this garden of personal identity, the ego is seen to be inseparable from the core individuality of The Self and Universe and need only not overextend its role in relation to the whole. So long as the ego is watched vigilantly in it's tendencies to become arrogant, vain and power mad, it remains as the capacity of the individual doer to be functional and centered in the outside world... The authentic individuality is way beyond this ego sense alone, yet the latter serves a most positive evolutionary function for the good of the former.

Life is one big wonderful workout, a movement from darkness to light, where what doesn't kill me makes me stronger and sometimes the only way out is through...

JDZ

Solitude

In the life we generally lead there is very little solitude. Even when we are alone our lives are crowded by so many influences, so much knowledge, so many memories of so many experiences, so much anxiety, misery and conflict that our mind become duller and duller, more and more insensitive, functioning in a monotonous routine. Are we ever alone? Or are we carrying with us all the burdens of yesterday?

There is a rather nice story of two monks walking from one village to another and they come upon a young girl sitting on the bank of a river, crying. And one of the monks goes up to her and says, `Sister, what are you crying about?' She says, `You see that house over there across the river? I came over this morning early and had no trouble wading across but now the river has swollen and I can't get back. There is no boat.' `Oh,' says the monk, `that is no problem at all', and he picks her up and carries her across the river and leaves her on the other side. And the two monks go on together. After a couple of hours, the other monk says, `Brother, we have taken a vow never to touch a woman. What you have done is a terrible sin. Didn't you have pleasure, a great sensation, in touching a woman?' and the other monk replies, `I left her behind two hours ago. You are still carrying her, aren't you?' That is what we do.

We carry our burdens all the time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind. it is only when we give complete attention to a problem and solve it immediately - never carrying it over to the next day, the next minute that there is solitude. Then, even, if we live in a crowded house or are in a bus, we have solitude. And that solitude indicates a fresh mind, an innocent mind.

- Freedom from the Known Chapter 14

Just Being

"In relationships, ranging from casual friendships to marriage, either we would like to control the excitement or we would like to become a part of it. To nurture another person or group/organization, or to be nurtured ourselves (this part loosely quoted)..... However, there is another kind of love and compassion, a third way. Just be what you are. You don't reduce yourself to the level of an infant nor do you demand that another person leap in tor your lap. You simply be what you are in the world, in life.

If you can be what you are, external situations will become as they are, automatically. Then you can communicate directly and accurately, not indulging in any kind of nonsense, any kind of emotional or philosophical or psychological interpretation. This third way is a balanced way of openness and communication which automatically allows tremendous space for creative development, space in which to dance and exchange.

Compassion means that we don not play the game of hypocracy or self-deception. For instance, if we want something from someone and we say, "I love you," often we are hoping the we will be able to lure them into our territory, over to our side. This kind of proselytyzing love is extremely limited....

The fundamental characteristic of true compassion is pure and fearless openness without territorial limitations. There is no need to be loving and kind to one's neighbors, no need to speak pleasantly to people and put on a pretty smile. This little game does not apply. In fact it is embarrassing. Real openness exists on a much larger scale, a revolutionarily large and open scale, a universal scale. Compassion means for you to be as adult as you are, while still maintaining a childlike quality.

In the Buddhist teachings the symbol for compassion is one moon shining in the sky while its image is reflected in one hundred bowls of water. The moon does not demand, "If you open to me, I will do you a favor and shine on you" The moon just shines. The point is not to want to benefit anyone or make them happy. There is no audience involved, no "me" and Them". It is a matter of an open gift, complete generosity without the relative notions of giving and receiving. That is the basic openness of compassion: opening without demand.

Simply be what you are, be the master of the situation. If you will just "be", then life flows around and through you. This will lead you into working and communicating with someone, which of course demands tremendous warmth and openness. If you can afford to be what you are, then you do not need the "insurance policy" of trying to be a good person, a pious person, a compassionate person."

Chogyam Trungpa - "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" (pp. 212-214, Prajna & Compassion)

The Whole Self

Questioner: I want to understand myself, I want to put an end to my stupid struggles and make a definite effort to live fully and truly. Krishnamurti: What do you mean when you use the term 'myself'? As you are many and ever changing is there an enduring moment when you can say that this is the ever me? It is the multiple entity, the bundle of memories that must be understood and not seemingly the one entity that calls itself the me.

We are everchanging contradictory thoughts-feelings: love and hate, peace and passion, intelligence and ignorance. Now which is the me in all of this? Shall I choose what is most pleasing and discard the rest? Who is it that must understand these contradictory and conflicting selves? Is there a permanent self, a spiritual entity apart from these? Is not that self also the continuing result of the conflict of many entities? Is there a self that is above and beyond all contradictory selves? The truth of it can be experienced only when the contradictory selves are understood and transcended. All the conflicting entities which make up the me have also brought into being the other me, the observer, the analyser. To understand myself I must understand the many parts of myself including the I who has become the watcher, the I who understands. The thinker must not only understand his many contradictory thoughts but he must understand himself as the creator of these many entities.

The I, the thinker, the observer watches his opposing and conflicting thoughts-feelings as though he were not part of them, as though he were above and beyond them, controlling, guiding, shaping. But is not the I, the thinker, also these conflicts? Has he not created them? Whatever the level, is the thinker separate from his thoughts? The thinker is the creator of opposing urges, assuming different roles at different times according to his pleasure and pain. To comprehend himself the thinker must come upon himself through his many aspects. A tree is not just the flower and the fruit but is the total process. Similarly to understand myself I must without identification and choice be aware of the total process that is the me. - The Collected Works Ojai California 3rd Public Talk 1945

On Awareness of Conditioning:
Now, can the mind be aware of its own conditioning and not try to battle against it? When the mind is aware that it is conditioned and does not battle against it, only then is the mind free to give its complete attention to this conditioning. The difficulty is to be aware of conditioning without the distraction of trying to do something about it. But if the mind is constantly aware of the known, that is, of the prejudices, the assumptions, the beliefs, the desires, the illusory thinking of our daily life, if it is aware of all this without trying to be free, then that very awareness brings its own freedom. Then perhaps it is possible for the mind to be really still, not just still at a certain level of consciousness and frightfully agitated below. There can be total stillness of the mind only when the mind understands the whole problem of conditioning, how it is conditioned, which means watching, off and on, every movement of thought, being aware of the assumptions, the beliefs, the fears. Then perhaps there is a total stillness of the mind in which something beyond the mind can come into being. - Sydney 5th Public Talk 23rd November, 1955 The Collected Works

The Third Way

First there is the way of justification and blind acceptance which goes along with everything without even acknowledging that anything ever goes wrong.. Then there is the approach of saying "this is bad, I will deny it and choose the good". To either justify or to condemn a thought, feeling, person or situation is to resist it, and what I say 'no' to I also say 'yes' to.

In life we are taught by perceived authorities, beginning with parents and teachers, to reject the evil and choose the good; this accompanied by a blind acceptance and allegiance to those whose moral superiority and judgment is falsely perceived to be truth. Or in the opposite situation, being the rebel who rejects all outside influences and opinions and forever justifies his/her own.

At the highest point of self-awareness and understanding it is discovered that even when knowing I am right in my own insight and doing well for myself there is still the condemnation of and resistance to all that I believe stands in opposition to this truth of self-discovery. In allowing this opposition to be without caving into or fighting it, is the only way to be.

The Third Way, as this writer is referring to in the interest of discovery, is a point of fusion where the undesirable factors of life are neither justified nor denied. If for example I wish to release a toxic behavior pattern, addiction or compulsion from my life the discontinuation of it cannot be a negative denial but rather a positive negation. Instead of saying negatively that I will no longer do this that and the other thing so that I may do the right thing from now on, as noble as such an intention may be it cannot work.

I neither give up nor renounce anything but instead acknowledge that this thing I don't like does exist, and from here I make a positive and conscious choice not to fuel this toxic fire with any further attention to it. Embracing the problem the solution is revealed, and the solution is simply the negation of the problem.

JDZ

The Act of Listening

Q: Why is it so difficult to empty one's mind? Krishnamurti : Now just listen to that question. Why is it so difficult to empty the mind? Listen to this. The speaker stated: meditation is the emptying of the mind of the activity of the self. You heard it. You have drawn a conclusion from it, saying, "How am I to do it?" - and in the very doing of it, it has become very difficult. So you ask the question, "Why is it so difficult to empty the mind?" That is, you haven't listened to the statement at all. You have drawn a conclusion from that statement saying, "I'd like to do that, but by Jove, how difficult it is" - you have understood? If you listen to it and not draw an abstraction from it, that is, "I must empty the mind", then "How am I to do it and how difficult it is", then you have an immense problem, you can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it, because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self. But if you listen to it, listen to the statement, knowing you can't do a thing about it, just listen to it - look sirs, I listen to that aeroplane, listen to it. Listen to it without any resistance; listen to it saying, "I am trying to understand what he is talking about, how can I listen to that aeroplane, I want to listen to him" - you follow? Whereas if you just listen to that aeroplane without any resistance, then what takes place? You are just listening. There is no difficulty. But whereas if you listen to the statement that meditation is that, then you go into all kinds of tantrums, see all the difficulties, say, how can you do this living in this beastly world and so on and so on. Whereas if you listened totally and completely then that very act of listening has produced in the mind a movement which is not the activity of the self. And that movement operates in daily life without any difficulty. - Saanen 7th Public Talk 29th July 1973 Collected Works

Delusions of Grandeur

As we were saying, there is no psychological evolution. The psyche can never become or grow into something which it is not. Conceit and arrogance cannot grow into better and more conceit, nor can selfishness, which is the common lot of all human beings, become more and more selfish, more and more of its own nature. It is rather frightening to realize that the very word `hope' contains the whole world of the future. This movement from `what is' to `what should be' is an illusion, is really, if one can use the word, a lie.

We accept what man has repeated throughout the ages as a matter of fact, but when we begin to question, doubt, we can see very clearly, if we want to see it and not hide behind some image or some fanciful verbal structure, the nature and the structure of the psyche, the ego, the `me'. The `me' can never become a better me. It will attempt to, it thinks it can, but the `me' remains in subtle forms. The self hides in many garments, in many structures; it varies from time to time, but there is always this self, this separative, self-centered activity which imagines that one day it will make itself something which it is not.

- Krishnamurti to Himself Ojai California Thursday 17th March, 1983

Meditation

MEDITATION is a very important action in life; perhaps it is the action that has the greatest and deepest significance. It is a perfume that cannot easily be caught; it is not to be bought through striving and practice. A system can yield only the fruit it offers, and the system, the method, is based on envy and greed. Not to be able to meditate is not to be able to see the sunlight, the dark shadows, the sparkling waters and the tender leaf. But how few see these things!

Meditation has nothing to offer; you may not come begging with folded hands. It doesn't save you from any pain. It makes things abundantly clear and simple; but to perceive this simplicity the mind must free itself, without any cause or motive, from all the things it has gathered through cause and motive. This is the whole issue in meditation. Meditation is the purgation of the known.

To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation. The meditator can act only in the field of the known; he must cease to act for the unknown to be. The unknowable doesn't invite you, and you cannot invite it. It comes and goes as the wind, and you cannot capture it and store it away for your benefit, for your use. It has no utilitarian value, but without it life is measurelessly empty.

- Commentaries On Living Series II Chapter 52 Evaluation
---------------------------------------------------------------

What is meditation? Why should one meditate? To find that out, stop meditating. To find out what is real meditation, not yours or mine, your type and my type, or X's type, but what is meditation, to find out you can't hold on to some kind of meditation that you have and then enquire. That is like a donkey tied to a post. So you have to be free to enquire. First one can see very clearly that it is only a very, very quiet mind that can observe accurately. A quiet mind can observe accurately only, not a disturbed mind. So a quiet mind is absolutely necessary just to observe. But if you say, `Ah, how am I to have such a quiet mind?' Then you are asking for a system, for a method, you are going to somebody whom you think has a quiet mind, and then asking him, `Please tell me what to do.' And then you are caught in that trap because he will tell you and you will practice - if you are silly enough. But you see the importance of having an absolutely quiet mind. A mind that has no problem.

- Bombay 4th Public Talk 31st January 1979 Collected Works, Volume 5

Self-Esteem

We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall. If there is no pedestal on which you have put yourself, how can there be any fall?

Why have you put yourself on a pedestal called self-esteem, human dignity, the ideal, and so on? If you can understand this, then there will be no shame of the past; it will have completely gone. You will be what you are without the pedestal. If the pedestal is not there, the height that makes you look down or look up, then you are what you have always avoided. It is this avoidance of what is, of what you are, that brings about confusion and antagonism, shame and resentment.

You do not have to tell me or another what you are, but be aware of what you are, whatever it is, pleasant or unpleasant: live with it without justifying or resisting it. Live with it without naming it; for the very term is a condemnation or an identification. Live with it without fear, for fear prevents communion, and without communion you cannot live with it. To be in communion is to love. Without love, you cannot wipe out the past; with love, there is no past. - Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 57, Self-Esteem

----------------------------------------------------------
Once we have committed ourselves to a particular society, to its leaders and their friends, we begin to develop those loyalties and responsibilities which prevent us from being wholly honest with ourselves. There are of course other forms of escape, through various superficial activities. To understand oneself profoundly, one needs balance. That is, one cannot abandon the world, hoping to understand oneself, or be so entangled in the world that there is no occasion to comprehend oneself. There must be balance, neither renunciation nor acquiescence. This demands alertness and deep awareness. We must learn to observe our actions, thoughts, ideals, beliefs, silently and without judgment, without interpreting them, so as to be able to discern their true significance. We must first be cognizant of our own ideals, pursuits, wants, without accepting or condemning them as being right or wrong. At present we cannot discern what is true and what is false, what is lasting and what is transient, because the mind is so crippled with its own self-created wants, ideals and escapes that it is incapable of true perception. - Collected Works, Volume III Ojai 6th Talk in the Oak Grove 10th May, 1936

What is the Beginning of Thought?

A new fact cannot be seen by thought. It can be understood later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new fact is not reality to thought. Thought can never solve any psychological problem. However clever, however cunning, however erudite, whatever the structure thought creates through science, through an electronic brain, through compulsion or necessity, thought is never new and therefore it can never answer any tremendous question. The old brain cannot solve the enormous problem of living.

Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and therefore it cannot be depended upon. But if you understand the whole structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat - if you are aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothing to be deceived. The mind is then not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.

Have you ever noticed that when you are in a state of complete attention the observer, the thinker, the centre, the 'me', comes to an end? In that state of attention thought begins to wither away.

If one wants to see a thing very clearly, ones' mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures- all that must be put aside to look. And it is only in silence that you can observe the beginning of thought-not when you are searching, asking questions, waiting for a reply. So it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being, having put that question, "What is the beginning of thought?", that you will begin to see, out of that silence, how thought takes shape.

If there is an awareness of how thought begins then there is no need to control thought. We spend a great deal of time and waste a great deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control our thoughts- "this is a bad thought, I must suppress it". There is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. But if there is an awareness of the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought.

Now when you hear a statement like "Thought is always old" or "Time is sorrow", thought begins to translate it and interpret it. But the translation and interpretation are based on yesterday's knowledge and experience, so you will invariably translate according to your conditioning. But if you look at those statements and do not interpret them all but just give your complete attention (not concentration) you will find there is neither the observer nor the observed, neither the thinker nor the thought. Don't say, "which began first?" That is a clever argument which leads nowhere. You can observe in yourself that as long as there is no thought - which doesn't mean a state of amnesia, of blankness - as long as there is no thought derived from memory, experience or knowledge, which are all of the past, there is no thinker at all. This is not a s philosophical or mystical affair. We are dealing with actual facts, and you will see, if you have gone this far in the journey , that you will respond to a challenge, not with the old brain, but totally anew.

J.Krishnamurti ~ Freedom from the Known (pp. 102-104, Ch.13)

No Hope, No Fear: Sacred Wisdom

The final stage is realizing that the Buddha is everywhere

What this means, first of all, is that falling in love with a Buddha is an unending love affair. Beyond that, it is an unrequited love affair. It is not unrequited because a Buddha ever actually rejects us in any way, but simply because a Buddha's ultimate function in relating to us is to keep reminding us that we must do the work of becoming a Buddha ourselves. There will be no final confirmation of our enlightenment from our teacher. There will be no one to congratulate us at the spiritual finish line. In fact, there will be no finish line!

So a Buddha as mirror is there to remind us, again and again, that to become fully awakened we must fully embrace our utter aloneness, just as he or she has done. And paradoxically, the more alone we become, the more deeply connected become with others. This, we could say, is the enlightened significance and purpose of the unrequited love affair with a Buddha.

In fact if this does not happen, then we may very well have completely missed the point of our relationship with our teacher! Because this unrequited aspect is nothing other than the real truth of what it means to love and be loved unconditionally. We can never make the awakened state, or the Buddha, our property or territory. We are left alone, ultimately, to taste our own hearts.

At that point a Buddha hands us completely over to the world, so to speak. In other words, the whole world becomes our teacher as a mirror. This principle of the world becoming our teacher goes on long after our relationship with our personal teacher may have ended-- whether through death or other other kinds of permanent separation.

Now every life experience becomes our teacher -- reminding us to wake up, to be kind, to drop our illusory sense of self-importance, to help others, and to enjoy our lives and all our relationships without anxiety and attachment. And it seems to me that this is the endless blessing of such a love, and that its power can never be diminished.

Excerpt from the Article
By Frank Berliner

Global Unity in a Divided World

It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other, not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense but the actual fact. But man has divided the earth, hoping thereby that in the particular he is going to find happiness, security, a sense of abiding comfort. Until a radical change takes place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and establish a global relationship - psychologically first, inwardly before organizing the outer - we shall go on with wars.

If you harm others, if you kill others, whether in anger or by organized murder which is called war, you, who are the rest of humanity, not a separate human being fighting the rest of mankind, are destroying yourself. This is the real issue, the basic issue, which you must understand and resolve. Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war, you are responsible for all wars whether nuclear or traditional.

You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word had no meaning. Over the hills in the far distance was the wide, shining, sparkling sea.

We have broken up the earth as yours and mine - your nation, my nation, your flag and his flag, this particular religion and the religion of the distant man. The world, the earth, is divided, broken up. And for it we fight and wrangle, and the politicians exult in their power to maintain this division, never looking at the world as a whole. They haven't got the global mind. They never feel nor ever perceive the immense possibility of having no nationality, no division, they can never perceive the ugliness of their power, their position and their sense of importance. They are like you or another, only they occupy the seat of power with their petty little desires and ambitions, and so maintain apparently, as long as man has been on this earth, the tribal attitude towards life. They don't have a mind that is not committed to any issue, to any ideals, ideologies - a mind that steps beyond the division of race, culture, that the religions man has invented.

Governments must exist as long as man is not a light to himself, as long as he does not live his daily life with order, care, diligently working, watching, learning. He would rather be told what to do. He has been told what to do by the ancients, by the priests, by the gurus, and he accepts their orders, their peculiar destructive disciplines as though they were gods on this earth, as though they knew all the implications of this extraordinarily complex life.

- Krishnamurti to Himself

Reflections

These sources of bondage must end so that personal freedom and deep inner peace are allowed to be: the compulsive search for pleasure and a need for outside authority. The inner authority is a byproduct of all previous outer authorities, parents, teachers, bosses, etc. With this in mind though I possess the faculties of ego and intellect, which serve me well in the purely functional practical sense, these have no authority outside of this context (otherwise becoming the "superego").

Although I relish the pleasurable contented feelings of the present moment, I do not pursue it by giving certain objects and fleeting emotions special importance. Neither thought nor emotion, nor the ego personality formed from these (and previous experience) embody the essence of who I really truly am. Divine Grace descends upon the heart and soul of the human consciousness alone, only when the mind is quiet and still.

What you seek you shall not find, what you want you cannot have, what you have you cannot forever hold, and what you believe is just another escape from being. Life promises nothing and only delivers its rewards when one has stopped asking for them, bit by bit. The moment a desire or need ceases to be so important as to override the living beautiful presence of what is, here I believe divine benevolence has a place to flow in, because there is no more blocking it with thoughts of lack or want.

Images... as we see life it is only imagination and mental projection, fleeting and insubstantial. It is real people, things and values that last, when having the discriminating intelligence to know attractive appearances are often there just to distract and lead one astray from what really matters.

If however one is not fooled by the illusionary images, then the immediate sense of delight, and its effect upon us, can be a most positive and pleasant return back to what matters most... real people, things, values, etc. The visual image one has of the tree is not the actual tree in itself.... what it is IS infinitely more than how it is outwardly perceived, labeled and interpreted.

Detachment is learning to live comfortably with and enjoy the illusion of this world made of images, and desires formed around these, while clinging to none of it.

JDZ