Inquiry Sunday Sunday, March 22, 2015.              Five people gathered for the Sunday event held in the meditation room.   The morning session started with a video of Rupert Spira entitled The Transparency of Things:  Contemplating the Nature of Experience.   In this interview he guides us through various explorations of our actual experience to show that our assumptions of separateness are not founded in reality.  As the sense of being a separate entity is the basis of our psychological suffering, Rupert’s way of questioning and looking at our experience can be a radical “solution” to our human problems.  He spoke about the tendency to accept our contracted state as a natural one and to then see any relaxing as a kind of effort.  In fact no effort is required:  we only need to see that we are holding on.  The discussion that followed was very relevant to the participants and seemed to create a space for some direct insight.  Facing discomfort was an issue discussed in some depth.  An attitude of “not knowing”, as opposed to thinking we already know, allowed an openness in which fresh insight could take place in the context of a group inquiry and dialogue could be a “meditation”.

    Dialogue Group Meeting Sunday, March 15, 2015        Five people met at the Swanwick Centre for an afternoon of unstructured dialoguing.  Lynn was not able to facilitate due to a cold, so by default I, David, became the leaderless leader.  On the drive to the Centre I had been thinking about my purpose in attending these meetings and how I can best achieve that purpose.  It seemed immediately clear that the essence of it all for me is to “practice” being fully present and attentive to whatever is arising in my life and likewise in the meetings.  This can have many residual benefits and offshoots or aspects to it.  The question seemed to perhaps be an interesting one for the group as a whole, especially as there was a new member who might gain a good sense of what we are about as individuals and as a group.  Group members shared their own reasons for participation and their valuing of the group.  Appreciation was expressed for the quality of listening usually present, the emphasis given to questioning rather than to knowledge, and the opportunity to observe oneself in interaction with others.  The conversation moved into the subject of choice and “doership”, a fertile ground for inquiry and exploration.  Do we choose what to do or is there more a movement that happens from a larger field of intelligence – or perhaps conditioning?  The discussion turned to the problem of suffering and the urge to experience unity or oneness.  One participant mentioned that often the “what?” question is asked but it seems rarely the “why?”  Is there a plan or meaning to life and the universe?  Why are we here?  Why is life here?   I’m sorry to report that no conclusive answer was found.  It was mentioned that Krishnamurti said that if we see that the observer and the observed are one and the division collapses, then we will never need to ask what is the meaning of life.  Krishnamurti’s teachings were also referred to in relation to other points of discussion. The last part of the meeting was taken up largely considering the impact of beliefs on the stage of politics and international relations.  Hopefully an interesting and useful afternoon for all.

  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, March 7, 2015     Five people gathered on another sunny day to continue with the study of the Krishnamurti book The First and Last Freedom. Again we were able to sit outside and enjoy the lovely setting, with the ocean and mountain views, the trees, and the sounds of birds singing. We started on Chapter 2 of the text, entitled “What Are We Seeking?” K addresses the issue of seeking happiness and whether or not it can actually be sought. Perhaps we are seeking some form of gratification or pleasure, some sense of permanence and security in an insecure world, but that is not the same as happiness. He makes the distinction between pleasure and joy and points out that we must understand ourselves, the “seeker” before we can have any real clarity about these matters. The reading of the first paragraphs of the chapter quickly stimulated participants to question and inquire into the subjects being spoken of and the rest of the session alternated between discussion and reading further short passages. There was a definite sense of the importance of what was being said and of understanding it for ourselves, as K says we must.

  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, February 21, 2015.        Three participants met on a lovely sunny day at the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada in Metchosin. It was warm enough to sit outside and enjoy the spectacular view from the front of the main house, looking out over the Juan de Fuca Straight. The intention was to begin study of Chapter 2 in the book The First and Last Freedom. We began with a short silent period during which we sat with the question “Who was it that drove to the Centre and who is it that will engage in dialogue?” The idea was to see what images we may hold of ourselves as an entity and what happens when we are consciously aware of these images. This meditation spontaneously led into a discussion which lasted for the two hours set aside for the meeting, and when we did look briefly at the chapter material it was seen that we had been talking about very much the same subjects as K presents in the text. The conversation touched upon the creation of the self by thought, how the sense of a “doer” arises, how seeing what thought is doing can impact our experience, and various other interconnected issues. We will look again at Chapter 2 in the next session and presumably explore the text itself in more detail.

  Today I came across this quote by Krishnamurti that I would like to share with you:     “It is the mind, it is thought, that creates time. Thought is time, and whatever thought projects must be of time; therefore, thought cannot possibly go beyond itself. To discover what is beyond time, thought must come to an end -and that is a most difficult thing because the ending of thought does not come about through discipline, through control, through denial or suppression. Thought ends only when we understand the whole process of thinking and, to understand thinking, there must be self-knowledge. Thought is the self, thought is the word which identifies itself as the ‘me’, and at whatever level, high or low, the self is placed, it is still within the field of thought. And the self is very complex; it is not at any one level but is made up of many thoughts, many entities, each in contradiction with the other. There must be a constant awareness of them all, an awareness in which there is no choice, no condemnation or comparison, that is, there must be the capacity to see things as they are without distorting or translating them. The moment we judge or translate what is seen, we distort it according to our background. To be is to be related, and it is only in the midst of relationship that we can spontaneously discover ourselves as we are. It is this very discovery of ourselves as we are, without any sense of condemnation or justification, that brings about a fundamental transformation in what we are -and that is the beginning of wisdom. J.Krishnamurti, Collected Works, Vol. VI,220, Choiceless Awareness