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
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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
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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
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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
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
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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
Monday, May 17, 2010
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)
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)
Sunday, May 16, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
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
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
Friday, May 7, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A Light Unto Yourself
Question: We have been told that thought must be controlled to bring about that state of tranquility necessary to understand reality. Could you please tell us how to control thought? Krishnamurti: First, Sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts; and a man who follows authority, is destroying himself, and destroying also that which he has placed in a position of authority. The follower destroys the master, as the master destroys the follower. The guru destroys the pupil, as the pupil destroys the guru. Through authority you will never find anything. You must be free of authority to find reality. It is one of the most difficult things to be free of authority, both the outer and the inner. Inner authority is the consciousness of experience, consciousness of knowledge. And outward authority is the State, the party, the group, the community. A man who would find reality must shun all authority, external and inward. So, don't be told what to think.
That is the curse of reading: the word of another becomes all important. The questioner begins by saying: "We have been told." Who is there to tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers have failed, be cause you are what you are? So leave them alone. You have made them failures because you are not seeking truth, you want gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the search for truth. The search for Truth is important, not you or the master who is going to help you to find the truth. You see, modern education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to think, not how to think. They have put you within a frame, and that frame has destroyed you; because you seek out a guru, a teacher, a leader, political or other, only when you are confused. Otherwise you never follow anybody.
If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light unto yourself, you will never follow anyone. But because you are not, you follow, you follow out of your confusion; and what you follow must also be confused. Your elders, as well as yourself, are confused, politically and religiously. Therefore, first clear up your own confusion, become a light unto yourself, and then the problem will cease. The division between the master and the pupil is unspiritual.
Now, the questioner wants to know how to control thought. First of all, to control it, you must know what thought is and who is the controller. Are they two separate processes, or a joint phenomenon? You must first understand what thought is, must you not?, before you say, "I will control thought; and also you must know what the controller is. Is there a controller without thought? If you have no thoughts, is there a thinker? The thinker is the thought, the thought is not separate from the thinker, they form a single process. - Banaras 5th Public Talk 20th February 1949 The Collected Works Vol. VI
That is the curse of reading: the word of another becomes all important. The questioner begins by saying: "We have been told." Who is there to tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers have failed, be cause you are what you are? So leave them alone. You have made them failures because you are not seeking truth, you want gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the search for truth. The search for Truth is important, not you or the master who is going to help you to find the truth. You see, modern education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to think, not how to think. They have put you within a frame, and that frame has destroyed you; because you seek out a guru, a teacher, a leader, political or other, only when you are confused. Otherwise you never follow anybody.
If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light unto yourself, you will never follow anyone. But because you are not, you follow, you follow out of your confusion; and what you follow must also be confused. Your elders, as well as yourself, are confused, politically and religiously. Therefore, first clear up your own confusion, become a light unto yourself, and then the problem will cease. The division between the master and the pupil is unspiritual.
Now, the questioner wants to know how to control thought. First of all, to control it, you must know what thought is and who is the controller. Are they two separate processes, or a joint phenomenon? You must first understand what thought is, must you not?, before you say, "I will control thought; and also you must know what the controller is. Is there a controller without thought? If you have no thoughts, is there a thinker? The thinker is the thought, the thought is not separate from the thinker, they form a single process. - Banaras 5th Public Talk 20th February 1949 The Collected Works Vol. VI
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