Life 30 (Jun 18 - Oct 18)

[winston]

Can the performance of good and holy actions alone, take us to our goal?

The performance of actions prescribed by the scriptures like sacrificial rites, charity and penance, is regarded as meritorious actions.

While engaged in these acts, if you are concerned with worldly gains, egotism arises - there is the feeling, “I am doing these sacred rites”.

All actions, good or bad, result in bondage! Chains that bind may be made of gold or iron, but they are chains all the same. Hence, the scriptures declare that "Realising the Divine" and 'Attaining union with the Divine" cannot be attained by rituals or good deeds alone.

As they are external acts related to the body, they are not conducive to the development of your inner vision. Only when you are able to get rid of egotism and attachment, you can develop the inner vision.

To realise the Divine always, the sense of duality must be eradicated. Perceiving divinity everywhere is Wisdom.

- Divine Discourse, Sep 28, 1984.

Command the mind, regulate your conduct, and keep your heart straight and clear,
then you will get the grace of the Divine.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What are the weeds we must remove from heart?

A farmer desirous of raising crop must remove all weeds from his field. All varieties of weeds adversely affect the crop. Hence, weeding is an essential pre-condition to get a good yield.

Similarly, a spiritual aspirant eager to realise bliss, must remove from one’s heart, the various manifestations of qualities of passion and dullness in the form of malice, desire, greed, anger, hatred and jealousy.

None can experience the joy and bliss of the soul as long as these weeds are present.

The six attributes of are sleep, drowsiness, fear, anger, laziness and inertia.

- Divine Discourse, Sep 12, 1984.

Anger breeds danger.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

The chattering mind

You know, to perceive something is an astonishing experience. I don’t know if you have ever really perceived anything; if you have ever perceived a flower or a face or the sky, or the sea.

Of course, you see these things as you pass by in a bus or a car; but I wonder whether you have ever taken the trouble actually to look at a flower?

And when you do look at a flower, what happens? You immediately name the flower, you are concerned with what species it belongs to, or you say, “What lovely colors it has. I would like to grow it in my garden; I would like to give it to my wife, or put it in my buttonhole,” and so on.

In other words, the moment you look at a flower, your mind begins chattering about it; therefore you never perceive the flower.

You perceive something only when your mind is silent, when there is no chattering of any kind. If you can look at the evening star over the sea without a movement of the mind, then you really perceive the extraordinary beauty of it; and when you perceive beauty, do you not also experience the state of love?

Surely, beauty and love are the same. Without love there is no beauty, and without beauty, there is no love. Beauty is in form, beauty is in speech, beauty is in conduct.

If there is no love, conduct is empty; it is merely the product of society, of a particular culture, and what is produced is mechanical, lifeless.

But when the mind perceives without the slightest flutter, then it is capable of looking into the total depth of itself; and such perception is really timeless.

You don’t have to do something to bring it about; there is no discipline, no practice, no method by which you can learn to perceive.

The Book of Life, October 13, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: Jkrishnamurti.com

[winston]

Meeting life anew

One of the things, it seems to me, that most of us eagerly accept and take for granted is the question of beliefs.

I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it.

One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism which is an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up.

There is the Hindu belief, the Christian belief, the Buddhist innumerable sectarian and national beliefs, various political ideologies, all contending with one other, trying to convert one other.

One can see, obviously, that belief is separating people, creating intolerance; is it possible to live without belief?

One can find that out, only if one can study oneself in relationship to a belief.

Is it possible to live in this world without a belief—not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another, but be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute?

This, after all, is the truth: to have the capacity of meeting everything anew, from moment to moment, without the conditioning reaction of the past, so that there is not the cumulative effect which acts as a barrier between oneself and that which is.

The Book of Life, February 13, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: JKrishnamurti.com

[winston]

What is the surest way to merge with the Divine?

Whatever scriptures you may study, whatever spiritual efforts (sadhanas) you may practise or pilgrimages you may undertake, unless one succeeds in getting rid of the impurities in the heart, life will remain worthless and meaningless.

Purification of the heart is the essence of all scriptural teachings and the basic goal of life.

No spiritual study or sadhana can help in purifying your heart unless you makes the effort yourself. And when the heart is purified, it becomes a worthy abode for the Divine.

Recognising this fact, the Scriptures has indicated a three-stage path to Divinity:
1. Engaging the body in good deeds
2. Using the mind to develop good thoughts and human qualities
3. Contemplating on the Divine through worship of the Divine

Through this, any individual can reach the stage where, like a river joining the ocean, they merge in the Divine (Brahman).

- Divine Discourse, Sep 28, 1984.

When the heart is pure, the light of wisdom shines.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What are the simple tools we all need in life, to set right our minds?

These days when one goes on a picnic, one takes a mirror, a comb and a handkerchief. Why do people keep them? While travelling, wind may blow their hair out of place, so they use a mirror and comb to tidy it. These help you look beautiful.

Similarly, don’t you need a few tools to correct the disturbed beauty of your mind? Just as your mirror tells you whether your hair is disheveled or not, the utility of devotion reveals the state of your mind!

With this clean mirror, it will be easy to see whether there is impurity in the mind or not. When we recognise that the mind is disturbed, we must correct it immediately and to do so, we need the comb of wisdom!

Detachment is the cloth that wipes the dirt from our heart. As you journey along life, wherever you are, always carry the virtues of devotion, wisdom and detachment.

- Divine Discourse, Sep 12, 1984.

The first task of all teachers is to cultivate virtue in the hearts of their students.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

Beyond time

The conditioned mind, surely is incapable of finding out what lies beyond time. That is, sirs, the mind as we know it is conditioned by the past.

The past, moving through the present to the future, conditions the mind; and this conditioned mind, being in conflict, in trouble, being fearful, uncertain, seeks something beyond the frontiers of time.

That is what we are all doing in various ways, is it not? But how can a mind which is the result of time ever find that which is timeless?

The house of your beliefs, of your properties, of your attachments and comforting ways of thinking is constantly being broken into. But the mind goes on seeking security, so there is a conflict between what you want and what life’s process demands of you. This is what is happening to every one of us.

I do not know if this problem interests you at all. Everyday existence, with all its troubles, seems to be sufficient for most of us.

Our only concern is to find an immediate answer to our various problems. But sooner or later the immediate answers are found to be unsatisfactory because no problem has an answer apart from the problem itself. But if I can understand the problem, all the intricacies of it, then the problem no longer exists.

The Book of Life, September 28, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: JKrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Observation without thought

There is no feeling without thought; and behind thought is pleasure; so those things go together: pleasure, the word, the thought, the feeling; they are not separated.

Observation without thought, without feeling, without word is energy.

Energy is dissipated by word, association, thought, pleasure and time; therefore there is no energy to look.

The Book of Life, May 8, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: JKrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Most of us spend time in listening to inspiring discourses and talk. But is listening alone sufficient spiritual practice?

Today the spiritual exercises are confined to listening to talks and not to practising the teachings. Listening has become a kind of disease.

Merely after listening, people go about bragging that they know everything. This crazy boastfulness is deepening people's ignorance.

One should ruminate over what has been heard. After rumination, one should put into practice the lessons. Only then there is the triple purity of thought, word and deed.

Today, people are content with mere listening to discourses. This will not lead to Realisation. The practice of "repeated writing of the Divine’s Name as a spiritual exercise" promotes harmony in thought, word and deed (first think of the Divine’s Name, then utter it and write).

All these three processes should be carried out only with a pure heart.

- Divine Discourse, Oct 7, 1993.

If you wish to enjoy enduring happiness, you must fill your mind with pure thoughts and entertain fine feelings in your heart.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

Self-knowledge

Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not true.

You and the world are not two different entities with separate problems; you and the world are one. Your problem is the world’s problem.

You may be the result of certain tendencies, of environmental influences, but you are not different fundamentally from another.

Inwardly we are very much alike; we are all driven by greed, ill will, fear, ambition, and so on. Our beliefs, hopes, aspirations have a common basis.

We are one; we are one humanity, though the artificial frontiers of economics and politics and prejudice divide us.

If you kill another, you are destroying yourself. You are the center of the whole, and without understanding yourself you cannot understand reality.

We have an intellectual knowledge of this unity but we keep knowledge and feeling in different compartments and hence we never experience the extraordinary unity of man.

The Book of Life, January 30, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: JKrishnamurti.com