The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group Meeting, October 17, 2021
The Urgency of Change Dialogue Meeting
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Zoom Online
Nine members of this dialogue group showed up for the Sunday morning meeting online. Four group members had informed us they would not be able to attend for various reasons and one was a mystery. The plan for the session was to do a final review of the chapter on “Fear” in The Urgency of Change because of its central importance in Krishnamurti’s teachings and in the discussions we’d had over the year while exploring the text and looking into our own selves. We were also interested in revisiting the idea of “action” as Krishnamurti speaks of it, as well as looking at some subtleties of the non-dual teachings that are popular these days and that seemed relevant to our inquiries.
After a short period of silence to begin the session, we began reading the text together and asking questions about some of the passages. As usual there was little hesitation in bringing forth issues to contemplate and discuss. We looked at our experiences of fear and how it operates in us. Is it similar to how the “Questioner” in the text describes it in one place, like a “black, bottomless, ghastly pit”, or is it quite different than that? Some agreed that the mind or thought can indeed project that kind of an experience when looking into the unknown. A number of different aspects of fear and dependency were brought forward for examination and the conversation took a direction towards love as the answer to the issue of fear. Krishnamurti says in the chapter that when there is love there is no fear, which raised questions of how we experience and understand love. Can love be described in positive terms, or is it more helpful to follow what seems to be K’s approach, which we could call “negation”. When we see clearly that in us which is not love and “discard” it, then what remains is love, though we may not be able to adequately describe it. Still, we may enjoy doing our best to say something about it and perhaps capturing some of the fragrance of it. It was pointed out by a few participants that as soon as thought begins to conceptualize something like love we are in danger of becoming caught in rigid assertions about reality which are disconnected from anything really true. A few people shared some deep perceptions about the nature of conditioned thought and it’s hold on our consciousness.
As we moved ahead with our dialogue we touched upon the subject of action and its relation in K’s outlook to pure seeing. There were insightful sharings from a number of the group. “The seeing is the action” was an idea that seemed to have the ring of truth within the given context. The question was asked whether it is possible to talk about anything without bringing in the principle of duality. This invited in the subject of “the observer” and “the observed”, which K seems to consider very important to understand. We came upon a resolution of the paradox between unity and duality which seemed to resonate for at least some – and perhaps most – of us.
It then seemed clear that we had, without consciously attempting to do so, opened all the questions we’d planned to examine before the meeting. We had received some meaningful insights into them and had dissolved the dilemma of seeing thought as an impediment that must be gotten rid of. This understanding seemed to bring us a sense of freedom, which was a good place to call the meeting to a close.
