Archive for category: Event Summaries

Krishnamurti Study Group Saturday, October 18, 2014 Five people gathered on the lawn to continue with the study of Freedom From the Known.  None of the participants had not been at the previous meeting and the interest was in looking at the last half of Chapter 15, which had been explored at that time.  The main subject being discussed by K was meditation and attention, but other issues were also presented by inquirers.  There was a questioning of K’s apparent dismissal of all teachers and the proposal was made that there have been teachers for all of us who have been of great help.   It was suggested that K is saying that Life itself is the teacher, which could include “teachers” as well as anyone we meet or any situation or happening in our daily lives.  Perhaps he is indicating that depending on teachers is a way of not looking for ourselves at what is actually going on. A further question was concerning K’s sometimes harsh judgements about the pettiness of most people and the seeming contradiction when he says we must look at ourselves without condemnation or approval, without judgement of any kind.  Without presuming to have an answer to the question, it was suggested that he may speak the way he does because he is attempting to shock us into paying attention and “waking up.” Next meeting we will enter into the last chapter of the book. Inquiry Sunday Sunday, October 19, 2014 Inquiry Sunday usually consists of a morning and an afternoon session.  This time the morning session highlighted a video of American teacher Adyashant entitled “The Redeeming Presence of Love”.  In fact most of the talk discussed the issues of birth, life, and death.  Four people were present.   Adya went into the ideas of birth and death and pointed to the importance of transcending the fear of death, not only as an ultimate event but as a psychological reality every moment of life.  The fear of death is inseparable from the idea that we are born as opposed to the awareness of our true nature as that which is prior to birth.  He then spoke of the need to go beyond transcendence and to bring the understanding into the day to day small events of living.   This merging of the transcendent with the immanent is what he called the redeeming quality of Love. The video was followed by some brief discussion about “how” one brings love into everyday actions.  It was suggested that it is a question of love acting and not “us” acting. The afternoon session began with a video of Krishnamurti speaking on “The Violent Self”, a collection of segments of his talks on violence.  This is one of the Evelyn Blau compilations in the “Beyond Myth and Tradition” series.  The main emphasis of K’s pointings was that if we can look at ourselves without division, without the conflict of the observer and the observed, then a tremendous energy is made available which puts an end to violence completely.  This is an understanding and an action that Krishnamurti applies to all self examination and possibility of radical change. The video was as usual followed by a discussion of aspects of what had been listened to which were of particular interest to the participants.         

Krishnamurti Video and Dialogue October 12, 2014 This public showing of Krishnamurti took place at the Church of Truth in Victoria on Sunday afternoon. Six people were in attendance for the video from the series “Attention and Order”, talks given by K in Ojai, California, in 1984.   We had already shown the first two talks in the series; this was the first of two Question and Answer sessions where K read out questions that had been submitted and then entered into a dialogue with the questioner on the topic raised.  He pointed out fairly soon that there were too many people in the audience to allow for personal interaction so he would represent the questioners and have a dialogue with himself.  A particularly interesting point he made right from the start was that the answer is in the question and not apart from it.  The question has to be looked into for the assumptions and beliefs that are limiting the understanding of the questioner, and this is much more important than providing some sort of conceptual answer to any question.   He also discussed in some detail the issue of thought and attention as well as other questions. The dialogue that followed picked up on the issue of whether there is a kind of attention or awareness that can see the limitation of thought and bring about a change or “mutation” in the brain.  Some earnest exploration took place which included the sense that we must all find out for ourselves through our own inquiry, whether that takes place in the supportive atmosphere of a group setting or in one’s own daily life.

    A Glimpse Into Total Freedom October 3 – 5, 2014     This weekend retreat was facilitated by Richard Waxberg and Deborah Kerner who live in Ojai and have led many retreats at the Krishnamurti Centre there.  The main focus of the weekend was on pure seeing:  “a direct impersonal seeing beyond the limitations of thought, its structures, and the illusion of a separate “me”.  The format included brief periods of silent sitting, a videotape of Krishnamurti in conversation with Pupul Jayakar in India, and group dialogues which were designed to “create a radical space of exploration”, of “seeing and listening”.  There was also a good balance of free time for walks and enjoying the property at the Swanwick Centre.  Altogether fifteen people (including facilitators) participated in the program. The facilitators were very skillful in creating an atmosphere of mutual support and affection as well as challenging participants to question assumptions and beliefs and to delve into their experience.  The participants in their turn seemed very eager for and capable of a deep looking into themselves.  It seemed the dialogues were unusually profound and valuable for everyone, bringing many insights and often a sense of an energetic shift in consciousness from “becoming” to “being” and a greater appreciation of the mystery of beingness “beyond time, beyond meaning and purpose”.  There was a good deal of talk about how wonderful the weekend had been and how another such meeting could be arranged in the future.  Hopefully Richard and Deborah will be returning before very long.

One of K’s famous books and teachings was titled “Freedom from the Known.” But, as with all words, “known” can be a paradox of sorts. Rupert Spira uses the word (pointer) to establish the relationship of Awareness and Experience. Here is a small excerpt from Rupert’s latest Essay/Dialogue published this month in the SAND 2014 Newsletter, “The Nature of Experience.” I found it very compelling and recommend reading the entire essay. Here is the link.  “Our only experiential knowledge of the world is perception – sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. In fact, nobody has ever found an independently existing object or world; all that is ever found are perceptions. We cannot therefore even say we have perceptions of the world because that world has never been found. We can only say for sure that we know perceptions. And perceptions are never known independently of Awareness. This is the startling but simple fact of experience that our culture has not yet faced: matter, the dead inert stuff out of which the independently existing universe is supposed to be made, has never been found. Matter is a concept, a valuable concept that is useful as a working model in some situations, but nevertheless a concept. It has never been found. Nor will it ever be found for whatever is found is, by definition, never known independently of Awareness. In fact, even the model of thoughts, sensations and perceptions appearing in Awareness does not stand up to the scrutiny of experience. It is a half way stage that dissolves the belief in the independent reality of matter and mind and establishes the presence and the primacy of Awareness. But once this has been established, not philosophically but in our actual experience, this model too has to be abandoned in favor of one that more accurately reflects the reality of experience. All we know of a thought is the experience of thinking, all we know of a sensation is the experience of sensing, all we know of a sight is the experiencing of seeing, all we know of a sound is the experience of hearing etc. And all that is known of thinking, sensing, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling is the knowing of them. And what is it that knows this knowing? Only something that itself has the capacity to know could know anything. So it is knowing that knows knowing. All that is ever known is pure knowing, knowing and being itself. And that knowing is your self. All that is known is Awareness knowing itself, the self knowing the self. There is only your self – not a self that belongs to any object or person because there are no objects or people as such to which it could belong. This knowing belongs to itself alone. It is itself and knows itself alone. There are no others or objects there, no inside self or outside world. And what is the name we commonly give to this absence of otherness, distance, separation and objectness? It is beauty or love. Beauty is the discovery that objects are not objects; love is the discovery that others are not others.”