The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group Meeting, June 20, 2021

The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group Meeting

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Zoom Online

Five members of the group informed us that they would not be able to attend this meeting for various reasons to do with summer-time activities, birthdays, and so on. There were nine of us in attendance. The focus for this meeting was to consider any questions or insights still alive from our previous gathering related to the chapters “Perception” and “Suffering” and then to move into a study of the chapter entitled “The Mind and the Heart”. All selections were from The Urgency of Change by J. Krishnamurti. There were some issues from the first chapters that still were of interest to some participants. “What does it mean to perceive totally?” provoked some valuable inquiry which touched on the idea that the whole of life is present in each moment, as stated by Krishnamurti in the text. There was some questioning of whether there is any such thing as “moments” or is there, rather, an undivided flow of life which cannot be separated into moments. Some valuable discussion of the nature of suffering arose before we moved on to the chapter on mind and heart, which again provoked a good deal of significant inquiry. There was a sense that the dialogue was touching into a number of subtle and deep points in our exploration of ourselves and that it was looking into important and essential questions about the functioning of consciousness. We spent a good deal of time exploring the concept of “negation”, which has a central place in Krishnamurti’s teachings.

The opening guided meditation introduced the challenge of approaching what often appears to be complicated ideas with simplicity and a direct seeing of “what is”. The subject came back into the discussion a number of times and seemed to have a definite significance. It was a valuable journey of self-knowledge apparently enjoyed by all present.