Swanwick Star Issue No. 13 (2020)
Unconditionally Free
Unconditionally Free
Krishnamurti’s description of his life work’s intent or goal
Unconditionally Free describes a state of mind, not its content.
When discussing the writing of his biography Krishnamurti encouraged the writer to “Begin with the vacant mind.” The vacant or silent mind describes a state of mind, not its content.
The so-called teachings of Krishnamurti, as Bill Quin and Padma note, describe the limitations of thought as a means of psychological mutation or transformation. This insight is central to all of Krishnamurti’s collected works, the teachings.
The most direct summary of the one thing Krishnamurti described a thousand ways is:
Truth, which is the natural, unconditioned, state of the mind, is a pathless land. The state of the mind called truth cannot be approached by any path, any system, any method, which are all forms of conditioned content.
Paths, systems, methods, including the so-called teachings, are implicitly conditioned. We used the metaphor of noise, or darkness. A mind that is creating noise is incapable of experiencing silence. A mind that that is blinded by the noise it is producing cannot experience the bright light of a mind that silent. Love, intelligence and compassionate action abide in that light, not in conditioned darkness.
Nearly all of the 250,000 pages of Krishnamurti collected insights describe the limitations of thought as a means of psychological mutation or transformation.
In doing so, this body of insights reveals how thought operates as a structure or system, including its obsessive, compulsive tendency to misuse, and therefore ‘get lost’ or ‘enchanted’ by, its capacity to create mental images.
Because we don’t know how the process of thought operates, we fragment this image making capacity and create an image of a thinker that we falsely believe is producing thought, instead of perceiving directly what we are doing, that thought creates the image of the thinker, and not the other way around.
Unnoticed, this fragmentation, a pervasive misuse of memory and imagination, produces inwardly the appearance or image of a self as we know it, and outwardly the image of ‘culture’ (or ‘the world’). Both are reified, assumed to be real (independent things), when on close examination both are actually the same capacity to create mental images projected in the mind differently, inwardly as self, the thinker, and outwardly as culture. Krishnamurti’s core insight was to see in himself this misuse of memory and imagination, which is the source of conflict and sorrow throughout the world.
According to Samdhong Rinpoche, this direct realization or insight is common to all who achieve what is called the Buddha Mind or Buddha Nature. There is one enlightenment and thousand descriptions, depending on the unique time in history of the insight, the culture, language and capacity of the listener.
The overarching theme of the book Unconditionally Free is the simple observation that noise or darkness cannot bring about silence or light, which is the same as K’s seminal statement Truth is a Pathless Land.
Attention is the key to the direct experience of a mind that is Unconditionally Free, not content. Complete, 100% attention leaves no attention remaining for the brain to create mental images from its conditioned memory. Complete attention returns the brain-mind to its natural order, which is described as silence or emptiness. This natural order is free from the limitations implicit in conditioned thought and memory, which brings us back to the title of the book Unconditionally Free.
Being free from the limitations and implied blindness of conditioning, such a state, without effort, will or control, is open to the full, complete and infinite spectrum of direct, innate perception and potential participation in creation (Tantra), which is something that the conditioned state of the brain can never perceive. As Rinpoche described, fragmented thought can never contain the whole.
The missing step or ‘original sin’ in Western culture is believing, without proof or even questioning, the fundamental assumption that the ego and culture are ‘real,’ independent entities, an assumption, as Bohm described, that embodies a strong defense that conceals the true nature of the self and culture as images.
Being concealed, Western science, psychology and sociology fails to include as part of child and human development what thought is doing to itself, which is the ground floor of the Secret Oral Tradition in Tibetan Buddhist practice. Secret in this regard, is not something intentionally hidden, rather it is a quality of perception that is concealed from most by the defensive nature of the conditioned brain. It takes a rare quality and depth of perception to penetrate this defensive concealment that Bohm described.
The ‘content’ we describe as the teachings of J. Krishnamurti attempt to reveal what is generally hidden or concealed by the normal state of human consciousness. Taking the medicine, as Rinpoche shared, is having the insight into one’s self that the teachings describe. Without taking the medicine, the revelation that the teachings intend remain as an idea or concept in the conditioned mind. There is a lot of activity, rearranging the furniture in the same mental realm or state, but no fundamental change or transformation, which is discovered in a fundamentally different state of the mind, what Krishnamurti called living the teachings.
Not appreciating the above generally results in a ‘begging bowl’ approach that prevents most of us from experiencing directly what the teachings are inviting.
This text was prepared by Michael Mendizza for online sessions hosted by KECC in May 2020, based on his upcoming book ‘Unconditionally Free: The Life and Insights of J. Krishnamurti’.
