Archive for category: Event Summaries

Krishnamurti’s Notebook

With Javier Gomez Rodriguez

September 24 – 26, 2021

Zoom online

 

Javier joined us online from the Netherlands for a three-part retreat exploring J. Krishnamurti’s writings as published in the form of Krishnamurti’s Notebook. The meetings were attended by twenty-two or twenty-three people in each case. Each of the three sessions was 1 ½ hours in length and consisted of a talk by Javier followed by some time for questions, comments, and inquiry. The book reveals details of K’s experience that he didn’t often discuss in his public talks and dialogues and is thus more personal and intimate than usual. Javier began with an introduction to the work that was first published in 1976 and describes some of the painful “process” K endured for many years along with more ecstatic experiences of ”benediction” and joy seemingly arising on a regular basis in K’s consciousness.

The issue of K’s engagement with “meditation” and the forms it took, along with some of the unusual phenomena experienced, were discussed in the context of his teachings which normally gave less detail about such matters. The question of awakening kundalini energy was touched on as an explanation of his “process” but then the focus shifted to K’s insistence that we need to face the facts of our lives, the suffering and the desires, without escaping from them. This releases a huge amount of energy which he felt was necessary in order to enter the realms of “truth” beyond the thinking mind and its projections and to contact the dimension he called “the other.” Consciousness must be emptied of its content. We must ask ourselves if we are addressing the fact of division and conflict in our lives. According to K, his meeting the reality of “death” freed him from the reality of thought. He spoke thereafter of the flowering and dying of thought and its expressions such as fear and loneliness.

Javier discussed some of the similarities between K’s experience and the traditional path of Christian mysticism, the importance of humility as a virtue in both approaches, and the central element of “seeing” for Krishnamurti. Seeing requires sensitivity, which is the essence of affection and compassion. Javier broke down the conditions that K seemed to feel were essential for “regeneration” to take place in human consciousness and for “creative energy” to be a reality in our lives.

– Simplicity of being

– Passion or total energy

– A sensitivity to beauty beyond thought and feeling

– Love and its immensity

– Awareness of the dimension where time is not predominant

– A capacity to wander freely beyond time and space – or openness to the “other”

The three sessions were a combination of talks by Javier along with opportunities to ask questions and to explore issues arising in the consideration of K’s spontaneous sharing of his insights and sensitive perceptions. Javier ended with a few readings of lovely passages from the text, which was followed by some appreciative feedback from participants about the quality of the retreat. It was hoped that Javier would offer further explorations and dialogues in the near future.

A New Mind and Heart: The Ultimate Relationship

With Cynthia Overweg online

Saturday, September 18, 2021

 

Cynthia joined us from Ojai once again on a Saturday morning to continue the series entitled “A New Mind and Heart,” an exploration of J. Krishnamurti’s teachings. There were seventeen of us in attendance, all included. Cynthia began with the statement that the ultimate relationship is a unity in silence. “The mind and the heart are one,” Krishnamurti says, and “to live in this world sanely there must be a radical change of mind and heart.”

“What is relationship?” Cynthia asked. Krishnamurti taught that “relationship is a process of self-revelation in which one discovers the hidden causes of sorrow. This self-revelation is only possible in relationship… to live is to be related, and it is only in the mirror of relationship that I understand myself.” K kept turning the attention back to ourselves.

Cynthia interspersed the talking with periods of silence and full presence while listening to meditative music such as Tibetan bowls. She quoted Krishnamurti extensively along with her own understanding of the teachings. Points she made included his saying that the world is you and you are the world. Our problems are global problems and conflicts exist in all our relationships. Self-understanding requires earnestness and persistence. There is no guide – only you and your relationships. We are responsible for our experience, an assertion that often brings up some questions in people’s minds. In what sense is the statement true?

Cynthia guided the group in looking at and discussing together a number of issues. If relationship is tethered to the past, to memory, its movement is limited and brings suffering. The fog of conditioning distorts our perceptions. We explored the mind’s creation of images, with the division and conflict involved. The seeing of the “me” as it arises in thought, without praise or blame, makes a discovery out of every encounter and is the door to love and the “Immeasurable”.

Krishnamurti gives great importance to our relationship with the natural world and we were invited to be aware of this in ourselves and perhaps thus diminish the widespread human destruction of nature. The silent mind has a different quality of energy which can wipe away the past, and this matters in our world. Cynthia ended with her favourite quote from K: “When I understand myself I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.” The presentation was much enjoyed and appreciated by the participants.

Self Inquiry and Nonduality
With Hillary Rodrigues
August 27 – 29, 2021
Zoom online

A long-time contributor and friend of the Krishnamurti Centre, Hillary was welcomed back to present a three day online workshop exploring the teachings of J. Krishnamurti in contrast to modern and ancient nondual teachings which have been attracting a great deal of interest in recent years. Sixteen people were in attendance for the event. Hillary began with the essential issue he wanted to consider with us: the possibility of having a transformative realization that is more real andexperiential than mere knowledge, which has its own place. Over the three sessions of 1 ½ hours he went into the history of nondualteachings such as Advaita Vedanta and the Upanishads in the Hindu tradition, including the teachings of Shankara, Buddhist teachings such as Zen, and modern offshoots such as Ramana Maharshi and current teachers such as Rupert Spira and Adyashanti. He then led an investigation of Krishnamurti’s teachings along similar lines and where there were at least apparent differences and emphases. Along the way we touched on various questions of identity, knowledge, and awareness,as well as some of the paradoxes that arise as the mind attempts to understand something which essentially cannot be grasped through thought. When asked to guess at the source of a number of quotes from different spiritual teachings it became apparent that it is in many cases difficult to distinguish between them.

When it came to looking at Krishnamurti’s expression of self inquiry, we spent some time exploring his approach to being with pain and
suffering. K gives great emphasis on not moving away from our suffering and not creating a duality between the observer and the observed or the “me” and the “other”. It is our movement away from “what is” that is the problem in that it creates a duality which results in conflict. When we stay with “what is”, it changes. This change leaves no residue and there is a transformation. These ideas were explored, sometimes very seriously and sometimes with a sense of humour and lightness which did not detract from the depth of the inquiry and the resulting sense of freedom and uncaused joy felt by some. Hillary’s integration of academic skillfulness and logic, along with his depth of direct realization of thatwhich he speaks, created a space where it was possible to touch at least a somewhat different dimension of consciousness. We are grateful for his ongoing participation in the life of the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada.

The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Zoom Online

     Nine participants attended this month’s gathering, with a few alerting us they would be involved with necessary activities and unable to be present. The meeting began with a guided meditation exploring the quality of attention to the “outer” and the “inner” suggested by Krishnamurti in his talks and writings. We then focused on the chosen readings for the month, beginning with the chapter entitled “Dependence” near the end of the Krishnamurti book The Urgency of Change. K enters into a discussion of the topic with a “questioner” and brings up the issue of attachment and resistance. We alternatively read passages from the text and then explored the questions, observations, and experiences that group members were moved to share related to their own study of the chapter. A dialogue took place that was quite alive and seemingly not without some conflict, which was absorbed into the movement of the inquiry. We looked at the issue of attachment to objects, to ideas and concepts, as well as to people and relationships. This involves possessiveness in different forms.

     Krishnamurti points out in the chapter that, although attachment gives rise to various problems and to pain, the solution is not to become detached. Neither attachment or detachment brings the freedom that we feel is necessary for living without division and the conflict of opposites. Both are forms of resistance. What is necessary is a flow of life like a river without any boulders. It was suggested that each of us must do the inquiry into our true nature that dissolves the barriers to the natural “flow” and awakens a life of harmony. These truths were explored and expanded in a number of ways by the participants, sometimes with a sense of resonance and sometimes less so. It was suggested that we can be in a continuous process of looking, listening, and learning about ourselves, and that our interactions can be fuel for the seeing and insight that is the essence of that process. It was asked if we can be both individuals and, at the same time, a “part” of an undivided reality. Although the ideas may have been expressed in slightly different words, these were some of the issues we investigated and which seemed to be valuable to explore. It is not easy to describe precisely all the elements of such a meeting that is alive and spontaneous.

     We had planned to look into the chapter headed “Fear” because of its close links with the “Dependence” chapter, but there was not enough time to do so. It would probably be appropriate to tackle the “Fear” chapter at our next meeting in September.

The Ending of Time

July 22 – 25, 2021

Zoom Online

 

This four-part workshop was presented by Mukesh Gupta from Varanasi, India, over four days. The focus of inquiry was the text The Ending of Time, a collection of conversations between J. Krishnamurti and renowned physicist Davi Bohm in which they explore in a number of meetings the possibility and importance of ending psychological time or ending the effort to become something one is not. Including the facilitator and staff, the event was attended by nineteen people.

Mukesh began by introducing the book and the relationship between Krishnamurti and David Bohm. He also explained that the material discussed in the text was very challenging and demanding, perhaps likely to bring students to a point of “not-knowing” or feeling unable to move in any direction towards meaningful answers to the questions raised by the two dialoguers. This, he said, may not be a bad thing at all. Mukesh made it clear that he is always learning about these deep issues and is not to be considered an authority.

The first question raised in the text is whether mankind at some point made a mistake in its understanding of life and has been suffering ever since from the results of it. After some inquiry, it was seen that the origin of the problem may not be so important but, rather, the mistake that thought is making every time it conceives of life, the world, and the self in terms of duality and separateness. The mistaken belief that we are all separate from each other and from the world Is the basis for our psychological suffering. This is not rational thinking; it creates division and conflict in all areas of life. K, David Bohm, Mukesh, and presumably the rest of us, are asking whether this false division in our thinking can be seen clearly and thereby dissolved. Thought could then take its right place in our lives.

Over the four days of the workshop a number of interrelated questions and issues were explored in addressing the core issue of going beyond the psychological self and its constructs or beliefs. Can there be an understanding or insight into the nature of thought and from that a living in freedom from fear and conflict? This was explored from different angles in smaller groups and the whole group together. And then there was the question raised by K and Bohm as to whether there is a “Ground” which is beyond the self and even beyond the ‘universal mind”. This seemed to stretch our capacities of comprehension but possibly awakened a sense of intensity in the inquiry. Can there be a depth and intensity of listening to another and to oneself that can open a door to that which is beyond the limited egoic self? When thought is silent at its core, then another form of intelligence may be able to act within our daily existence and a flowering of a life without division and conflict may take place. This does not happen through control and effort but, rather, through observation and insight.

It was a very interesting and “hopefully” fruitful exercise in dialogue and inquiry and we thank Mukesh for the dedication required to create such an experience. Thanks also to the participants for joining as co-creators of the happening.