Self-Inquiry with John Duncan, September 3, 2025

/in /by

We did not have the pavilion room available to us due to a scheduling mishap, and the group decided to sit outside on a nearby picnic table. This afforded the group a greater intimacy due to the close quarters of the picnic table, as well as the opportunity to relate to the beautiful trees surrounding us as we communed with one another. 

We began with a period of silence. One person remarked on the affectionate quality of the silence, and the palpable sense of heart presence – simply from silence. Beautiful, and if it had ended here it would still have been worth the while. 

We read a passage from Krishnamurti on the state of “I do not know.” We considered this statement and the fact that, as each moment is new, that this moment and all moments can inherently not be known, so this ‘not knowing’ is not a state of confusion but rather one of understanding. This lightens the propensity to want to cull from memory some bits of knowledge that might be mined in order to reconstruct past insights or understandings. Furthermore, the living and dying of each moment in the present brings forth the challenge of meeting death in the present rather than having it hovering around somewhere in the future, creating a fear of the unknown. 

Living with death is a central theme of Krishnamurti’s teaching, perhaps the most important to understand and to live, because without this all our actions are a substitution for or a distraction from this challenge. 

Also, time and the timeless came into the discussion, time as a psychological construction containing both the dead past and the imaginary future in the living present. Can we live without the challenges of past trauma and fear of death in the future invading the present? Is that what humanity is doing? No, and how is that working out on a global relationship scale both now and throughout history? So, the ending of time, which is putting away the past and meeting death in the present (this is the stopping point for most) was considered and why we might still resist it even in light of seeing the fact of its necessity. 

The beautiful day, the beautiful surroundings and the affection felt within the group: yes.

 

  • John Duncan