Archive for category: Event Summaries

Facing a World in Crisis

Six online sessions with Mukesh Gupta

June 25 – 30, 2020

A series of six online talks and discussions with Mukesh Gupta from Varanasi, India, were sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada during the last week of June. Mukesh has been deeply involved with Krishnamurti’s teachings for a long time and given presentations in India, Europe, and the USA. He has also previously led retreats at the Krishnamurti Centre near Victoria, British Columbia. The number of participants attending the sessions varied from twenty-two to twenty-six, including Mukesh and K Centre staff.

Mukesh opened his first presentation with a survey of the development of the universe, as far as we know it, and the evolution of the human being. He pointed out that the “conditioning” of the human being must be looked at from a universal perspective rather than a personal one. We are all subject to similar conditioning factors, which include thinking and image-making, the weaving of stories and the identification with them, preoccupation with what “should be” and “becoming”, and a desire for security and pleasure with its shadow, fear.

Mukesh asked if we can be free of conditioning and suggested that only through being aware of it can there be freedom. Seeing illusion as illusion is the end of it. It is essential to ask an authentic question, and one such question is the inquiry into why we are not aware of our insensitivity to life and other beings. Is there a lack of the sense of togetherness, affection, and love? And why do we have so little peace and harmony in our lives? Can we stay with such important questions?

Over the six days Mukesh covered topics such as listening, looking, learning, leisure, the art of living, self-knowledge as the door to freedom, the constituents of our suffering, the power of choiceless awareness, passionate attention, the nature of the self or “me”, and other related subjects. Many questions were raised by the participants and clearly addressed by Mukesh. There were opportunities to break into small groups and have more intimate sharing. Questions and issues could also be shared by email. Appropriately, the final session focused on the nature of “meditation”.

Mukesh is very adept at presenting Krishnamurti’s teachings clearly and responding to issues that arise in the study and integration of the teachings into our daily lives. We are grateful for his willingness to join us and to be a meaningful part of the Centre’s programs. He will be with us again beginning July 18 for a further round of online meetings.

Self Study Meeting

Sunday, June 21, 2010

Zoom online

Six of us were in attendance for this Sunday morning online session. Our focus was the February 16 entry in The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti. The selection is entitled “Action Without Idea”. The entry is just one paragraph in length but it is rich with significant pointers to truths that are at the core of Krishnamurti’s teachings. In several ways he asks us to go beyond the bundle of ideas which is the “me”. The mind may then be silent and in a state of experiencing. “Then one shall know what truth is”.

We began with a short guided meditation, read the text, enjoyed a few minutes of silent contemplation, then opened the discussion to an exploration of what participants had found remarkable about the passage. There were quite a number of questions and comments from all the group participants and the dialogue was penetrating and meaningful. This was confirmed by the feedback at the end of the session. The intensity of presence generated in the group created a sense of clarity and a sensitivity of awareness felt by the writer when taking a walk outdoors after the meeting.

The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group
Thursday, May 27, 2020
Via Zoom (online)

This was an extra meeting for those in the Urgency of Change Dialogue Group who wished to have some contact beyond the one scheduled monthly meeting. It was a beautiful sunny day, which may have created less likelihood of large attendance at this early evening session. Four of us were present to explore the last half of Chapter 2 in The Urgency of Change by J. Krishnamurti. The chapter is entitled “Is There a God?” Krishnamurti discusses the subject of belief and illusion, what is left when there is no illusion, the sacredness of “what is”, the changing nature of the observed and the observer, and then moves with the “questioner” into the nature of love. The focus on “God” shifts to an investigation of love wherein K states that love is when “you” are not.
After some initial silence we read through the second part of the chapter together and discussed our impressions, insights, and questions stimulated by the passage. We explored what is involved in accessing the sacredness that K speaks of and the state of love that is so important in resolving our human problems. There were many heart-felt expressions from the participants and a sense of direct and concrete experiencing of what was being inquired into. It seemed that the opportunity to have the extra time together was greatly appreciated by each participant.
Next month’s “extra” meeting will be focused on Chapter 4 in the same book, The chapter is entitled “How to Live in this World”

The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Online Meeting

Although we were potentially in competition with Mother’s Day activities, the majority of group members showed up for our afternoon online meeting. Nine of us were present for the two and a half hour session which focused on material in the first chapter of the Krishnamurti book The Urgency of Change. The first half of the chapter had been explored during the previous meeting, stimulating extensive discussion and therefore slow movement through the text. Resuming the reading of the chapter quickly provoked numerous observations that had arisen for participants in their own reading and self-inquiry process concerning the nature of perception, awareness, naming, the psychological “me”, insight, and thought. Also worthy of noticing was the process of the dialogue itself and how each one of us was interacting with the movement of thought and attention as we shared our ideas and understandings. There was appreciation on the part of some that we could come together in this way and talk about issues that are seldom looked into or investigated in any depth. At the same time there was the experience for others of impatience and frustration with the sense that the discussion was overly conceptual or caught in revolving thought patterns. It seems sometimes to be challenging for most of us to suspend our sharings in the centre of the group and look at them together without moving to conclusions or fixed viewpoints. Our communication can therefore be accompanied by a thought-generated energy which prevents resting as awareness or Being. The difficulty in staying in touch with the capacity to “simply be” at the same time that we communicate with each other can then create a sense of incompleteness or lack of wholeness. This in turn can feel frustrating. It’s worth noting that David Bohm mentioned this phenomenon in his writings on dialogue. Frustration and conflict are, he says, a natural part of the process and should not be avoided. The group should continue to move through the obstacles, looking at how we might be contributing to the limitations being experienced, and exploring how a greater presence and attentiveness might be possible. There can be great learning in staying with “what is”.

Krishnamurti Study Session
Sunday, April 26, 2020

This was the second online meeting of the K Study Group. Nine people participated in the two-hour session, logging in from as far away as Dubai and across Canada. This group has been using The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti as a stimulus for inquiry into the nature of our own consciousness and the possibility of freedom from the limitations of the egoic self. The text for study this week was the February 12 selection entitled “The Screen of Belief”, wherein K discusses belief as a way of escaping from the fact of what we are.
We began with a guided meditation on being aware of our thoughts, images, feelings, and sensations. We read through the selection, had a short period of silence, then participants were invited to share what had impressed them about the reading. There were many deep and penetrating observations about the passage along with questions about more personal issues causing confusion and lack of clarity for participants. The conversation spontaneously flowed into investigating some of the points in the chapter before tackling the personal issues shared. There was a focus on the central significance of noticing, or being choicelessly aware of, whatever arises in consciousness and the power of such awareness. It was acknowledged by most at the end of the session that, although not by any means all of the personal issues had been addressed, there was a sense that, through the inquiry, an energetic shift had taken place which produced a greater ease, peacefulness, lightness, and joy as well as a quality of attention which was more sensitive and aware of the wholeness of Being.