Life 30 (Jun 18 - Oct 18)

Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Fri Aug 31, 2018 12:27 pm

Conflict of the opposites

I wonder if there is such a thing as evil? Please give your attention, go with me, let us inquire together.

We say there is good and evil. There is envy and love, and we say that envy is evil and love is good.

Why do we divide life, calling this good and that bad, thereby creating the conflict of the opposites? Not that there is not envy, hate, brutality in the human mind and heart, an absence of compassion, love, but why do we divide life into the thing called good and the thing called evil?

Is there not actually only one thing, which is a mind that is inattentive? Surely, when there is complete attention, that is, when the mind is totally aware, alert, watchful, there is no such thing as evil or good; there is only an awakened state.

Goodness then is not a quality, not a virtue, it is a state of love. When there is love, there is neither good nor bad, there is only love.

When you really love somebody, you are not thinking of good or bad, your whole being is filled with that love. It is only when there is the cessation of complete attention, of love, that there comes the conflict between what I am and what I should be. Then that which I am is evil, and that which I should be is the so-called good.

... You watch your own mind and you will see that the moment the mind ceases to think in terms of becoming something, there is a cessation of action which is not stagnation; it is a state of total attention, which is goodness.

The Book of Life, February 22, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:02 am

The quality of desire

... What happens if you do not condemn desire, do not judge it as being good or bad, but simply be aware of it?

I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing.

Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware when you enter a room, to see all the furniture, the carpet or its absence, and so on—just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgment—is very difficult.

Have you ever tried to look at a person, a flower, at an idea, an emotion, without any choice, any judgment?

And if one does the same thing with desire, if one lives with it—not denying it or saying, “What shall I do with this desire? It is so ugly, so rampant, so violent,” not giving it a name, a symbol, not covering it with a word—then, is it any longer the cause of turmoil?

Is desire then something to be put away, destroyed? We want to destroy it because one desire tears against another creating conflict, misery and contradiction; and one can see how one tries to escape from this everlasting conflict.

So can one be aware of the totality of desire? What I mean by totality is not just one desire or many desires, but the total quality of desire itself.

The Book of Life, April 4, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: www.jkrishnamurthi.com
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:11 am

At times it feels that our cup of woe and grief are overflowing. How can we overcome them?

Where the mind is active, all the three worlds exist! Where there is no mind, nothing exists there.

Mind is the main cause of your suffering and misery. To control the mind, you must keep your desires under check.

Nature sets an ideal to the entire humanity to imbibe the spirit of sacrifice and lead a spiritual life. Our scriptures teach that the world is temporary and full of misery, so contemplate on the Divine.

Ask yourself, despite knowing these truths, why are you not able to cultivate the spirit of sacrifice? Despite knowing the truth that the body is temporary, why are you still bound by desires?

Since there is no end to desires, you are being subjected to endless misery. To get rid of your misery, you must follow the ideals of Nature. Nature is the best preacher. It exhorts you to cultivate love, compassion and spirit of sacrifice.

- Divine Discourse, Aug 25, 1999.

Service will become meaningful only when it manifests love that issues from sacrifice.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:15 am

True religion

Do you know what religion is? It is not the chant, it is not in the performance of puja, or any other ritual, it is not in the worship of tin gods or stone images, it is not in the temples and churches, it is not in the reading of the Bible or the Gita, it is not in the repeating of a sacred name or in the following of some other superstition invented by men. None of this is religion.

Religion is the feeling of goodness that love which is like the river living moving everlastingly. In that state you will find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; and this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different.

The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good—not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it—that is true religion.

But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part.

Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don’t say, and that is the beauty of life.

The Book of Life, December 16, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:21 am

How should a genuine seeker handle circumstances in life, when one is served with difficulties and suffering?

True devotion lies in being in a state of equanimity during both pleasure and pain.

Remain equipoised in happiness and sorrow, gain and loss, victory and defeat.

Such equanimity can be attained only through selfless love - it is the fundamental force.

Once you develop selfless love within, you will never hate anybody. Give up your ego and lead your life with love. There is no greater devotion than this.

- Divine Discourse, Aug 25, 1999.

Grief or fear can never exist wherever the Divine’s name is chanted with love and faith,
since the Divine Himself manifests there.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:46 am

As we observe teachers day (in India), let us ask why is the role of a teacher so important?

The profession of a teacher is the noblest and the most responsible one in every country. If the teacher strays from the path of truth, the entire society will suffer. Hence teachers must make every effort to live their life uprightly.

You have in your charge, looking up to you for guidance, innocent children who have no knowledge yet of the world and its ways. It is only when the teachers themselves are wedded to discipline and observe good habits that their pupils will be able to shape themselves into ideal individuals and citizens.

Cultivate in your own heart the spirit of sacrifice, the virtues of charity and the awareness of Divinity. Then you will easily cultivate these in the hearts of the children.

Try your best to reshape the present educational system. In the initial stages you will find this task very difficult and exhausting, but be assured, in time, you will find your task more easy.

- Divine Discourse, Jul 25, 1978.

A good student is an offering that a good teacher makes to the nation.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:49 am

Conscious sorrow and unconscious sorrow

Sorrow is ... grief, uncertainty, the feeling of complete loneliness. There is the sorrow of death, the sorrow of not being able to fulfil oneself, the sorrow of not being recognized, the sorrow of loving and not being loved in return.

There are innumerable forms of sorrow, and it seems to me that without understanding sorrow, there is no end to conflict, to misery, to the everyday travail of corruption and deterioration...

There is conscious sorrow, and there is also unconscious sorrow, the sorrow that seems to have no basis, no immediate cause.

Most of us know conscious sorrow, and we also know how to deal with it. Either we run away from it through religious belief or we rationalize it, or we take some kind of drug, whether intellectual or physical; or we bemuse ourselves with words, with amusements, with superficial entertainment. We do all this, and yet we cannot get away from conscious sorrow.

Then there is the unconscious sorrow that we have inherited through the centuries. Man has always sought to overcome this extraordinary thing called sorrow, grief, misery; but even when we are superficially happy and have everything we want, deep down in the unconscious there are still the roots of sorrow.

So when we talk about the ending of sorrow, we mean the ending of all sorrow, both conscious and unconscious. To end sorrow one must have a very clear, very simple mind. Simplicity is not a mere idea. To be simple demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity.

The Book of Life, July 14, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:51 am

Freedom from occupation

Can the mind be free from the past, free from thought—not from the good or bad thought?

How do I find out? I can only find out by seeing what the mind is occupied with. If my mind is occupied with the good or occupied with the bad, then it is only concerned with the past, it is occupied with the past. It is not free of the past.

So, what is important is to find out how the mind is occupied. If it is occupied at all, it is always occupied with the past because all our consciousness is the past. The past is not only on the surface but on the highest level, and the stress on the unconscious is also the past...

Can the mind be free from occupation? This means—can the mind be completely without being occupied and let memory, the thoughts good and bad, go by without choosing? The moment the mind is occupied with one thought, good or bad, then it is concerned with the past. ...

If you really listen—not just merely verbally, but really profoundly—then you will see that there is stability which is not of the mind, which is the freedom from the past.

Yet, the past can never be put aside. There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe and not to choose.

Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation; and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past; and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated.

The Book of Life, February 27, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:56 am

What is the first step necessary to overcome cynicism, apathy and worry?

Today, cynicism and apathy are rampant. Most of you are caught up in meaningless worries, endless desires and unattainable ambitions and have no peace of mind.

To everyone groping in the darkness of ignorance, spiritual illumination alone reveals the right path. However learned you may be, whatever position you may occupy, or whatever greatness you may possess, if you lack human values, you are no human being at all.

What is humanness? Essentially it means unity in thought, word and deed. Remember, when what you think differs from what you say and do, you cease to be human; you are then becoming a demon. Hence, what everyone must first do is to cultivate unity and purity in thought, word and deed.

True human qualities can grow only in a heart filled with spiritual aspirations like a seed sown in a fertile soil and not on a piece of rock.

To develop these qualities, you must develop compassion and equanimity amidst the vicissitudes of life.

- Divine Discourse, Mar 24, 1989.

Human values are not mere verbal expressions. They originate from the heart.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Fri Sep 07, 2018 12:02 pm

Can a human being change?

One must have asked oneself, I’m quite sure, whether one changes at all.

I know that outward circumstances change; we marry, divorce, have children; there is death, a better job, the pressure of new inventions, and so on.

Outwardly there is a tremendous revolution going on in cybernetics and automation. One must have asked oneself whether it is at all possible for one to change at all, not in relation to outward events, not a change that is a mere repetition or a modified continuity, but a radical revolution, a total mutation of the mind.

When one realizes, as one must have noticed within oneself, that actually one doesn’t change, one gets terribly depressed, or one escapes from oneself. So the inevitable question arises, can there be change at all?

We go back to a period when we were young, and that comes back to us again. Is there change at all in human beings? Have you changed at all?

Perhaps there has been a modification on the periphery. But deeply, radically, have you changed? Perhaps we do not want to change, because we are fairly comfortable...

I want to change. I see that I am terribly unhappy, depressed, ugly, violent, with an occasional flash of something other than the mere result of a motive; and I exercise my will to do something about it.

I say I must be different, I must drop this habit, that habit; I must think differently; I must act in a different way; I must be more this and less that.

One makes a tremendous effort and at the end of it one is still shoddy, depressed, ugly, brutal, without any sense of quality. So one then asks oneself if there is change at all. Can a human being change?

The Book of Life, October 29, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
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