Thursday, December 30, 2010

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

Thursday, December 9, 2010

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

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

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