Self Study Meeting, September 6, 2020

Self Study Meeting

Sunday, September 6

Zoom online.

The focus of this meeting was the January 1 – 15 entries in The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti. The subject matter of those readings was Looking, Listening, and Learning, which made their exploration a fitting follow-up to Mukesh Gupta’s presentation of the previous day. How we observe ourselves and our lives is a central component of Krishnamurti’s teachings, so it felt very worthwhile to look as deeply as possible at what he says about it in these chapters. Six of us were present for the session, which was perhaps in competition with a beautiful sunny day in the world outside.

David began with a reading of the January 1 entry, which served as a guided meditation on listening to everything at once. K suggests that such listening initiates a change in ourselves which comes without effort or volition and invites a depth of beauty and insight. Listening to the movement of one’s inner life was included in the meditation as a key aspect of this kind of awareness. Participants were then invited to share what had struck them in reading the selections from the text, and this led to a sensitive exploration of some of the issues touched on by Krishnamurti. In a couple of cases participants had found the material confusing and some time was spent in looking into the apparent contradictions, which then seemed to be resolved.

Those present seemed to have a few differing orientations towards some issues, such as the significance of “belief” in their lives. This stimulated some inquiry into the meaning and importance (or the lack of it) of belief in one’s “spiritual” life and perhaps brought an element of conflicting views into the discussion. This is a not-uncommon component of group dialogue and can be of value in learning about our habits and tendencies of thought. Some participants expressed appreciation of the meeting afterwards.