Swanwick Star Issue No. 14 (2021)

What Can We Do?

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic has brought us many challenges, including a degree of physical isolation that we have never, perhaps, felt before. It has called upon us to change many of our old habits, which may be a useful exercise in some ways, including examining our relationship to Krishnamurti’s teaching and what we hope to get out of it. The Krishnamurti Educational Centre has also had to adapt to these new circumstances and 2020/2021 has seen many of our activities and weekend workshops, which were always a delightful and refreshing venue to meet new people, going online. An exciting new aspect of these online sessions is that friends from all over the world have joined in.

At the same time, we face the challenge of climate-change, which is impacting every ecosystem on the planet, and causing the propagation of bacteria, viruses, and fungi along with various destructive insect species. Scientists are predicting that we may have to change our food staples in the future from wheat to unfamiliar items like algae and maggots with changing weather conditions. We are confronted by new situations and environmental conditions, like smoke from wildfires raging all over the continent and an increasing incidence of respiratory disorders and disease. What can we do?

 

These words of K’s from Commentaries on Living seem particularly relevant in this current context:

 

“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem. This freedom

gives the ease of full attention… As long as there is conflict with or opposition to the problem, there can

be no understanding of it; for this conflict is a distraction. There is understanding only when there is

communion…”   Similarly, “Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is;  in this

awareness the problem unrolls itself, and thus it is fully and completely understood” – J. Krishnamurti