Death, Love, and Time
August 26 – 28, 2022
With Hillary Rodrigues
Zoom Online
We were very pleased to have Hillary Rodrigues join us for another of his numerous presentations sponsored annually by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada. As a professor of religious studies, he brings an interesting and valuable blend of academic knowledge and personal experience to the contemplation of J. Krishnamurti’s teachings. Fourteen people were present as we faced some initial technical difficulties which were grappled with effectively. We were able to emerge with an attitude that Hillary described as “orienting ourselves so that it may be possible for us to have an experience of awakening”. Some quotes shared by Hillary emphasised the importance of listening and being still. An example was Shunryn Suzuki’s statement, “Let thoughts come and go; just don’t serve them tea.” Krishnamurti quotes included pointers about being aware in this present moment of what is going on in us.
– “Meditation is the free, sceptical inquiry into the whole field of knowledge, which is our consciousness.”
– “”To inquire freely, you must have doubt.”
– “Dying to time is love.”
The workshop was organised in the form of three ninety-minute sessions over three days dealing with different aspects of death, time, and love. We began with a consideration of death in the conventional sense. Humans know they will die and have a healthy fear of it. We feel a necessity to contemplate this fact of life, which has led to all kinds of religious beliefs and practices. This was discussed at some length before we looked at another level of concern with death: the existential fear of non-existence. Human beings deal with this challenge mainly by denying its reality. There was a sharing of ideas and experiences in the group which ended with some anticipation of looking into Krishnamurti’s approach to the questions of death, time, and love.
On the second day we looked further into some of the religious practices developed by Buddhists and Sufis as well as the Teachings of Don Juan as described by Carlos Castaneda. The discussion then moved into Krishnamurti’s interest in contemplating “psychological time” along with the question, “Is time necessary in order to see something clearly?” There was an exploration of the idea that “the seeing is the ending” and therefore it has a quality of urgency to it which gives a kind of power to “the Now”. The session ended with an interest in moving forward to the vital question of the workshop, which might be described as “What is love?”
On the third day Hillary opened with a review of the previous two sessions and expanded on some of K’s main ideas and how David Bohm’s explorations fitted with them. In terms of “The Implicate Order”, are we afraid of letting go into it and dying before we die, as various spiritual teachings have recommended and K has explored in his own way. In K’s case, he has spoken of dying to yesterday, seeing the nature of one’s attachments, and looking clearly at what is not love rather than seeking for love directly. We also discussed in some depth K’s recommendation to “remain with suffering but do not indulge in it” and his statement that “love is dying to the ‘me’.” These various ideas were explored in group dialogue for the last half hour of the session
Hillary was dealing with some health issues that made his job more difficult and everyone very much appreciated his commitment and dedication in guiding us skillfully through the three days of investigation into the chosen aspects of Krishnamurti’s teachings. It seemed that the experience was appreciated and enjoyed by all participants.
DB
