Friday, April 29, 2005

there is only perception

Look, sirs: most of us are petty people, with very shallow minds;and the thinking of a narrow, shallow mind can only lead to further misery. A shallow mind cannot make itself deep; it will always be shallow, petty, envious. What it can do is to realize the fact that it is shallow, and not make an effort to alter it. The mind sees that
it is conditioned, and has no urge to change that conditioning, because it understands that any compulsion to change is the result of knowledge, which is partial; therefore it is in a state of perception. It is perceiving what is. But generally what happens?
Being envious, the mind exercises thought to get rid of envy, thereby creating the opposite as non-envy; but it is still within the field of thought. Now, if the mind perceives the state of envy without condemning or accepting it, and without introducing the desire to change, then it is in a state of perception; and that very perception brings about a new movement, a new element, a totally different quality of being.
You see, sirs, words, explanations and symbols are one thing, and being is something entirely different. Here we are not concerned with words, we are concerned with being - being what we actually are, not dreaming of ourselves as spiritual entities, the Atman and all that nonsense, which is still within the field of thought, and
therefore partial. What matters is being what you are - envious - and perceiving that totally; and you can perceive it totally only when there is no movement of thought at all. The mind is the movement of thought - and it is also the state in which there is complete perception, without the movement of thought. Only that state of perception can bring about a radical change in the ways of our thinking; and then thinking will not be mechanistic.

JK

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Ideology and Meaning

"As soon as you look at the world through an ideology
you are finished. No reality fits ideology. Life is
beyond that.

That is why people are always searching for a meaning
to life.

But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning
because meaning is a formula; meaning is something
that makes sense to the mind.

Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump
into something that destroys the sense you made.

Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.
Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery
and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind".

Anthony de Mello, SJ

revolving in circles...

Ordinary people have been revolving in circles since time immemorial,
being born and dying. Because of clinging fixedly to self-images,
false ideas, and misperceptions, the habits of illusion eventually
become second nature to them. Even if they suddenly awaken in this
life and realize that their essential nature is fundamentally empty
and silent, no different from the Buddhas, nevertheless past habits
are difficult to remove all at once.

- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Brain and Mind

"This brain, which is conditioned by knowledge, by experience, by
tradition, cannot have any communication with the mind which is totally
outside the activity of the brain. That mind can communicate with the
brain, but the brain cannot communicate with it because the brain can
imagine infinitely; the brain can imagine the nameless; the brain can do
anything. The mind is too immense because it doesn't belong to you;
it's not your mind."

JK

Friday, April 22, 2005

Mind and Brain

"We are saying, and the speaker may be wrong, and he has discussed
this matter with some of the so-called scientists, and even then the
speaker may be wrong, don't please accept what he says; doubt what he
says, question, enquire. He says, the brain is the whole limited
consciousness, with all its content, pleasant, unpleasant, ugly,
beautiful, struggle, all that is your content. And the mind is
something totally separate from the brain. The mind is outside the
brain - the speaker is saying, the scientists are not saying that.
The speaker says the brain is one thing, and mind is something
entirely different"

JK

Sunday, April 17, 2005

to die without arguement

Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death, if you don't die every day. It is only when you die, that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love-it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought.

So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die. But we have a limited death to the physical. We know very well logically, sanely, that the organism is going to come to an end. So we invent a life which we have lived of daily agony, daily insensitivity, the increase of problems, and its stupidity; that life we want to carry over, which we call the "soul"-which we say is the most sacred thing, a part of the divine; but it is still part of your thought and therefore it has nothing to do with divinity. It is your life!

JK

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Milarepa

In the beginning, nothing comes;
In the middle, nothing stays;
At the end, nothing goes.
Of the mind there is no arising and extinction!
Thus, one remains in the Equality of past, present, and future....

KEN

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

THE SONG OF LIFE by JK

THE SONG OF LIFE by: J. Krishnamurti



Love not the shapely branch,

Nor place its image alone in thy heart.

It dieth away.



Love the whole tree.

Then thou shalt love the shapely branch,

The tender and the withered leaf,

The shy bud and the full-blown flower,

The falling petal and the dancing height,

The splendid shadow of full love.



Ah, love Life in its fullness.

It knoweth no decay.

Sensivity and Suffering

"In the life of man all this appears with greatest distinctness,
illumined by the clearest knowledge. As the manifestation of the will
rises higher, the suffering becomes more apparent. In the plant there
is no sensibility and therefore no pain. In the lowest forms of
animal life, a small degree of suffering may be experienced. As the
level rises, sensitivity becomes wider and deeper. It appears in a
high degree with the complete nervous system of backboned animals.
Thus, as knowledge increases, as consciousness attains to greater
distinctness, pain also increases, and reaches its highest degree in
man. And the more intelligent and finely formed a man is, the more
pain he is open to." Schopenhauer

"Only the sensitive can face the actual, without escaping into all
kinds of conclusions, opinions, and evaluations. Only the sensitive
can be alone and this aloneness is destructive. This sensitivity is
stripped of all pleasure and so it has the austerity, not of desire
and will but of seeing and understanding." J.K.

The Three Legs of Krishnamurti's Teaching

"The unknown is not something to be experienced by the mind; silence
alone can be experienced, nothing but silence."

"You must be a light to yourself."

"Truth is a pathless land."

Thursday, April 07, 2005

feeling...

...down'ly'....a new person comes...and brings in (or out) a flood of thoughts from deep within my heart....thoughts which tell me that I am not what I was supposed to be....my heart tells me, repeats before me...my true talents...god-given gifts....all of them seem to be lying wasted due to other god-given 'qualities'...built up since childhood....reached a peak at this stage....will I come back? Will I be what I am supposed to be? Solitude,quietitude,silent observance..looking deep within....understanding my thoughts....and not affected by external influences....smiling at the 'foes', forgiveness, gratitude and silently bearing all that God has given and has in store for me further.......is what I can think of at this moment.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

inertia...

...of escape from work..continueing in the form of repeated checking of news items and emails and encouraged by self-deception, and convincing oneself about the relevance of doing these repetitive tasks.