Krishnamurti Study Group

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  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, July 5, 2014   Ten people participated in the study session, again based on the text Freedom From the Known.   Chapter 13 is focused on thinking and understanding the beginning of thought, among other topics.  After reading some of the chapter we took some quiet time to explore within ourselves the arising of thought and what might be driving the seemingly obsessive need to think, even when it is completely unnecessary.   There followed a very interesting discussion of what had been seen, leading into further inquiry and more reading from the text.  There seems to be plenty for people to discuss and we only completed half of the chapter.  

Further K/Self Exploration

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  Inquiry Sunday July 6, 2014 Afternoon Session     Six people met to view a DVD of Krishnamurti in the Evelyn Blau series, this one entitled “What is the Religious Mind?”   Krishnamurti spoke on what is not religion, not the sacred, and the necessity of putting aside what it is not.   What is left is the real thing.   After the half hour video the group split up into pairs and shared in a structured sharing process what had been significant for them in the material seen and how it applies in their lives.  There was then time for a group discussion, which became quite involved with what it means to “die” psychologically and what we are afraid of in approaching such a radical letting go of the known.   Participants expressed an appreciation of the whole session with its various aspects and ways of exploring.

Krishnamurti Study Group

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  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, June7, 2014     This week we studied Chapter 12 in Freedom From the Known.   The subject was “The Observer and the Observed”, one of the topics that K speaks of most frequently in his talks and which seems to be very central to his inquiry into the nature of thought and the mind.   The insight that “the observer is the observed” has great significance in the realm of psychological transformation.   After reading some of the chapter there was a ten minute silence during which we looked at how we were observing and what we could understand of this important insight.   This was followed by a group dialogue with the ten participants.  We were able to sit out on the lawn and enjoy the lovely views and natural surroundings on a sunny spring afternoon.   The discussion was very engaging for the group and participation was with keen interest.   Among the topics explored were the meaning of the statement that the observer is the observed and what happens when this is clearly seen.

Krishnamurti Video Showing in Victoria

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  Krishnamurti Video Showing Victoria, June 8, 2014     The public Krishnamurti video showing and dialogue for the month of June in Victoria was held at the Church of Truth location on Superior Street.  Twelve people attended the presentation of an interview from 1981 wherein a British BBC personality, Bernard Levin, spoke with K for half an hour.   Levin asked a series of penetrating questions in the attempt to more fully comprehend what K is expressing in his teaching.  The interview has a freshness and spontaneity to it that is quite delightful as well as producing some very interesting responses on the part of Krishnamurti. The interview was followed by another half hour DVD on “Meditation” from the Real Revolution series of talk from Ojai, 1966.  This was the first time Krishnamurti had allowed his talks to be videotaped and the energy and passion of the man at that time of his life (71 years old) is fully evident.   After a short silent period and the serving of some tea, the group entered into a lively dialogue spanning a few different aspects of what had been seen in the videos and what K seems to be inviting us to explore on our own accord.   A central topic of investigation was how we are to proceed in looking at ourselves and the importance of awareness or attention in the moment as opposed to a seeking of some conceptual understanding by a process of analysis or thinking.   As is often the case, the significance of seeing the arising of a “me”, “observer”, or “self” in the thinking process was central to the discussion.  The seeing is the action;  no other action is needed.   It seems curious to notice how something that is perhaps in essence very simple can become quite complicated as soon as we enter into conceptualization and discussion.   A key ingredient to effective and useful exploration was seen to be the interest level of the participants and the seeing of the danger of living without attention and clear seeing.

Relax, You’re A Rainbow

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“We see a rainbow, but what we have is drops of rain and light—a process. Similarly, what we ‘see’ is a self; but what we actually have is a whole lot of thoughts going on in consciousness. Against the backdrop of consciousness we are projecting a self, rather than a rainbow. If you walk toward the rainbow you will never get there.” David Bohm, Thought as a System “Relax, you’re a rainbow” is my favourite new personal mantra. It’s a powerful reminder that this “self” at the heart of my experience is really just as illusory as a rainbow. It’s truly enlightening to consider how the processes behind the formation of a rainbow are analogous to the processes behind the formation of the self. Instead of taking my emotional reactions for granted as I have in the past, this understanding is helping me observe and process them in an entirely new way. It is helping me form a new relationship with my thoughts and emotions, and ultimately, my self. What is this “self” that so many of us protect so vigilantly? Like a rainbow, it’s the result of disparate elements converging to form something that is seemingly unified and singular. And also like the rainbow, its existence is totally contingent on perception. Without the combination of vision and mind to perceive the rainbow, the rainbow cannot exist. In a very real way, our perception creates the rainbow. And just as our perception creates the rainbow, it also creates the self. Without perception, there is no self. While the natural elements behind the formation of a rainbow may be material, the rainbow itself is an illusion. Water and light (or lens and light) are the basic ingredients that form what we perceive as being a rainbow. Thought, sensation and memory are the basic ingredients of what we typically perceive as self. The next time you notice your self reacting in an unpleasant way to a given situation, perhaps you can find a moment to examine the situation and inquire into the internal processes behind your reaction. When we are threatened or challenged in any way, we tend to blindly jump into the role of protector; as a result of our conditioning, we automatically defend anything that we identify as being core to our identity, including (of course) the almighty self that is apparently at the heart of it all. If you can observe these defensive processes as they are unfolding, I encourage you to try and locate the “self” that they are defending. To your amazement or horror, you may find that it is not actually there. Observe with a keen awareness, and you may see that the thing you are defending in those moments is actually a construct of the defense processes themselves. In the middle of that storm of thought and emotion, there is… nothing. But don’t despair, that emptiness isn’t just any emptiness- it’s pure consciousness. It’s a place of deep inner peace that you carry with you at all times, and if you so choose, it can be the ground for forming a beautiful new relationship to self. This new understanding can enable you to take situations much less personally. You might see that your reactions, as well as the so-called self that you are defending, are all the result of processes rooted in the past. Instead of truly relating to your experience in the present, you’ve been relating to it through the lens of past experiences, and needlessly complicating it by assigning it a great deal of psychological weight. That weight is probably dragging you down or eating away at your heart and soul, whether you’re aware of it or not. Every time you identify personally with these experiences, with these processes, you let them define you. And as you accumulate further definitions of self based on conditioned reactions to external situations, you continue to construct a self that grows further and further from the ground of your being which is your true self. Consider that you are indeed like a rainbow; perhaps you can start identifying the basic ingredients that make up this illusion you’ve come to perceive as “self”. Instead of simply taking your self so seriously, you can begin nurturing a much more dynamic and flowing relationship to your experience. You can, hopefully, move towards a way of being that isn’t painfully caught up in the push and pull of cause and effect, challenge and response, action and reaction. Perhaps you can then begin living a life that is truly, fundamentally, free. So… Relax, you’re a rainbow.  

Inquiry Sunday on Love

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  Inquiry Sunday June 1, 2014     In the afternoon session of our Inquiry Sunday on June 1 eight people attended the showing of Krishnamurti speaking on “Love:  The Flame Without Smoke”.   It was a half hour video in the Evelyn Blau series “Beyond Myth and Tradition”.   The main thrust of K’s treatment of the subject was that to find out what love is we have to “negate” everything in us that is not love.  What remains is the “perfume” of love or compassion.   Love, in the sense that K is speaking of it,  is not personal,  not a phenomenon happening between a “me” and a “you”.   It is something much vaster and more significant. The video was followed by a short silence and an animated dialogue which revealed that people have varying ideas about love based on their different experiences and thoughts.   It seems the value of such group inquiry is not in coming to some agreement on a conceptual level but more in what the questioning process  may reveal to each one of us about ourselves, our assumptions, and our unexamined beliefs.  It seems more important to keep the questioning alive in oneself than to come to some conclusion in thought.  This can leave the door open to deeper insight or direct seeing.

Krishnamurti Study Group

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  Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, May 24, 2014   A small group of four gathered for the study session, which focused on the second half of chapter 11 in Freedom From the Known.   The main topics of the chapter are looking and listening, which Krishnamurti treats as the same.   He also goes into the nature of love and how love and perception are connected.  We generally tend to see the world and other people through our images of them rather than seeing them as they actually are.  As a result there is no real relationship or communion with others or the world of nature.   After reading a segment from the text participants were guided into a meditative exploration where we sat quietly for ten minutes and noticed how we were observing objects and people around us.   Do we see through images?  Is there an observer separate from what is observed?  What happens when we become aware of how we are observing?  It seemed that this experiential exercise was very interesting and useful, and it led to some dialogue which went quite deeply into a few issues such as psychological or “ego” death.   Perhaps the small size of the group allowed for a more profound sharing of ideas, questions, and insights.  The session ended by reading to the end of the chapter.   The topic of observation will be further explored in Chapter 12.

Another Fine Retreat at the Krishnamurti Centre

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I returned to Swanwick this past weekend to attend the “Approaches to Meditation” spiritual retreat facilitated by Dr. Hillary Rodrigues. I didn’t expect to return to the centre for a retreat quite so soon, but a new friend related how powerful his retreats have been for her, and so I decided it would likely be worth my while to attend. I’m glad to report that Dr. Rodrigues is indeed an amazing facilitator, as well as an impressive individual, and the retreat was truly a formative experience for me. The content revolved almost entirely around discussion and dialogue concerning various meditation techniques, with a focus on inquiring into the usefulness of these techniques in the context of the goal of “pivotal spiritual transformation”. Some of the themes were the various techniques, gradual versus instantaneous awakening, insight versus understanding, mindfulness and choiceless awareness. This retreat was of immense value to me due to the quality of the dialogue and Dr. Rodrigues’ skillful facilitating style, but also due to the quality of the participants. Each and every one of them had something very valuable to offer to the group, and the time spent getting to know them in the casual time between and after each day’s dialogues was truly inspiring and life affirming for me. At times I truly felt as if I was taking part in an enlightened philosophers’ club. It was truly validating for me on a deep personal level, to be in such fine company and to feel like I belonged. In a strange way, I felt like I had found my home (a feeling I took with me). The value of connecting with people who share the same passion for inquiry and philosophical exploration cannot be understated for me, personally. It’s so important that we surround ourselves with likeminded, and likehearted, people; otherwise, it’s easy to forget that we do indeed belong somewhere, that we’re not alone on this journey. I decided to stay for an extra night after the retreat had ended. On Sunday night, one of the participants, who I felt a deep connection with, had handed me a copy of Hillary’s book, “Insight and Religious Mind: ‪An Analysis of Krishnamurti’s Thought”. On Monday morning, I woke up with a diagram from that book floating in my mind. Sometimes the simplest distillations can lead to the greatest epiphanies. We had enjoyed perfect weather over the course of the weekend, and it was another beautiful morning. I poured myself a cup of coffee, and proceeded to go outside with Hillary’s book in hand. I was delighted to see him sitting on the steps, with the sun pouring down and the ocean shimmering in the distance. I had a wonderful conversation with him. Ralph and David eventually wandered up from the ocean, and one of them jokingly asked if I had moved in, as it was obvious I was quite comfortable. We all sat around a table on the patio there, and enjoyed more relaxed and enlightening conversation. It was a beautiful way to end a beautiful weekend. I’d like to thank Dr. Hillary Rodrigues for leading such a fine retreat, and all the amazing participants for making it the truly special experience that it was for me.

Approaches To Meditation Retreat

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  “Approaches to Meditation” Weekend retreat, May 16 – 18, 2014 Dr. Hilary Rodrigues, Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Lethbridge, has facilitated a weekend retreat once a year for the past six years at the Swanwick Centre/Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada.   This year the title of his workshop was “Approaches to Meditation”.   Hilary has a wide knowledge of the many traditions and practices of meditation as well as of Krishnamurti’s teachings on the subject, and he has a deep personal experience of the spiritual search.   His manner of presentation is at the same time very erudite and humorous,  profound and light.   The attendees expressed how much they enjoyed the weekend spent with Hilary and the other participants and the hope that he will return again. The retreat began on Friday night with a talk by Hilary entitled “Can Anyone Really Ever Meditate?”   Twenty-one people showed up for the event and the comments afterwards were to the effect that the talk was exceptionally clear and informative.  A number of meditative approaches were discussed, ending up with Krishnamurti’s “non-meditation” approach.   A lively discussion followed which went later than expected due to the eager participation of the group. The remainder of the weekend was attended by fifteen people, some from as far away as Hawaii and Texas, and began on Saturday morning with a short talk by Hilary on “Awakening/Transformation”, with a number of quotations from various sources to stimulate inquiry.   The talk was followed by a group dialogue.   After lunch and some time to walk in nature on the beautiful property there was another short talk entitled “Meditative Methods”, again with some quotes and an engaged group dialogue.   After a tea break there was a “Question and Answer” session with a free flowing dialogue.  Saturday evening included a talk on “Mindfulness and Choiceless Awareness of What Is”, followed by a group discussion which again went on rather late because of the high level of interest in the topic and the interchange. On Sunday morning, after more time to be outdoors in the lovely weather, Hilary gave a short talk on the question “Which method is best for transformation?”   The talk again led seamlessly into a group dialogue.   After lunch and free time a half hour video was shown of Krishnamurti speaking on meditation from the Real Revolution series of talks in Ojai, in 1966.   There was then time for a final dialogue and closing sharing.  There was a sense of having covered quite a lot of ground over the weekend and also that there was probably much more to explore and discover.  It was very refreshing for participants to spend time in such a conducive environment and it seemed that most were definitely intending to return.

A Different Self, A Different Society

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“Who am I?” It’s a strange thing, how the answer to this question eludes us even as it drives us to build our lives the way we do, always striving to protect or solidify some “functional” sense of self. Taking society’s lead, many people fill in this blank with doing, and they come to associate what they do with who they are. There can be value in this. If what we do in our lives is in alignment with our true nature, if it honours our experience and our wisdom (and we are ALL wise in our own ways), then perhaps it is not such a miss to associate doing with being. On the other hand, if what we do is not in alignment with that deeper part of ourselves, then it seems to me to be a dark tragedy to allow ourselves to become something that is so far from who we really are. Unfortunately, we live in a society that coerces many people into situations where much of what they do does not at all honour who they truly are. While some people are content with what they are doing, countless others are caught in a trap of meeting expectations and obligations that they neither enjoy nor agree with. Many others believe they are doing something that is an honest expression of who they truly are, but the image of self that they are serving is really nothing more than an implant, often one meant to serve the system rather than the individual. I don’t think it would be farfetched to suggest that many of modern civilization’s most toxic behaviours would vanish if people were given the opportunity to understand themselves more and commit to work that resonated with their core values and deeper needs. The end result of millions of upon millions of people serving a superficial system that seeks only to perpetuate itself is inevitably imbalance and destruction. This is the reality of our current situation, and the destructive nature of this modality of existence is something that no informed person can deny. “Who are we?” We are so reluctant to prescribe our own answers to this question, and yet we let society prescribe them for us in ways that shape our entire existence. We strive to construct our lives in ways that serve a definition of self- and other- that is ultimately contingent on functionality within both the cultural and economic apparatuses of our society. If this is who we are, then we are nothing more than ghosts living in the shadow of a terrible machine that is destroying the planet. What if… What if we decided that there was a different answer to this question, one that didn’t stem from our conditioning, from our governed experiences? What if, instead of teaching people from a young age that who they are depends on what they do, that we encouraged them to look inside and openly share their feelings and thoughts, and then worked at creating and strengthening communities in ways that honoured those feelings and thoughts? What if we placed less emphasis on self as an isolated entity? Or, what if we decided that each of us is a manifestation of the sublime energy that animates all life? What if we decided that who we truly are, each and every one of us, is nothing less than divinity itself? What would society look like then?