Life 30 (Jun 18 - Oct 18)

[winston]

Memory negates love

Is it possible to love without thinking? What do you mean by thinking? Thinking is a response to memories of pain or pleasure. There is no thinking without the residue which incomplete experience leaves.

Love is different from emotion and feeling. Love cannot be brought into the field of thought; whereas feeling and emotion can be brought. Love is a flame without smoke, ever fresh, creative, joyous. Such love is dangerous to society, to relationship.

So, thought steps in, modifies, guides it, legalizes it, puts it out of danger; then one can live with it. Do you not know that when you love someone, you love the whole of mankind?

Do you not know how dangerous it is to love man? Then, there is no barrier, no nationality; then, there is no craving for power and position, and things assume their values. Such a man is a danger to society.

For the being of love, the process of memory must come to an end. Memory comes into being only when experience is not fully, completely understood. Memory is only the residue of experience; it is the result of a challenge which is not fully comprehended.

Life is a process of challenge and response. Challenge is always new but the response is ever old. This response, which is conditioning, which is the result of the past, must be understood and not disciplined or condemned away.

It means living each day anew, fully and completely. This complete living is possible only when there is love, when your heart is full, not with the words nor with the things made by the mind. Only where there is love, memory ceases; then every movement is a rebirth.

The Book of Life, May 12, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Where is the Divine and how can we recognise Him?

See the Divine in everyone you meet; see the Divine in everything you handle.

His Mystery is immanent in all that is material and non-material; as a matter of fact, it has been discovered that there is no matter or material. It is all Divinity, an expression of His Mystery!

Derive joy from the springs of joy within you and without you; advance, do not stand still or recede.

Every minute, must mark a forward step. Rejoice that it is given to you to recognise Divinity in all.

Welcome all chances to sing His Glory, to hear His chronicle, and to share His presence with others.

The Divine has His hands in all handiworks, His feet on all altitudes, His eyes beyond all horizons, and His face before every face.

The Kalpavriksha (Wish- fulfilling tree) in the human heart is being suffocated by wild greenery and bushy briars. Remove this stifling undergrowth and the tree will grow and yield fruit.

- Divine Discourse, Mar 9, 1968.

Divinity is the current that activates everything everywhere. Sharpen your intellect, then the Unity in nature will become evident.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

Memory clouds perception

Are you speculating, or are you actually experiencing as we are going along?

You do not know what a religious mind is, do you? From what you have said, you don’t know what it means; you may have just a flutter or a glimpse of it, just as you see the clear, lovely blue sky when the cloud is broken through;

But the moment you have perceived the blue sky, you have a memory of it, you want more of it and therefore you are lost in it; the more you want the word for storing it as an experience, the more you are lost in it.

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

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Transformation without motivation

How am I to transform? I see the truth—at least, I see something in it—that a change, a transformation, must begin at a level that the mind, as the conscious or the unconscious, cannot reach, because my consciousness as a whole is conditioned. So, what am I to do?

I hope I am making the problem clear. If I may put it differently; can my mind, the conscious as well as the unconscious, be free of society?—society being all the education, the culture, the norm, the values, the standards.

Because if it is not free, then whatever change it tries to bring about within that conditioned state is still limited, and therefore no change at all.

So, can I look without any motive? Can my mind exist without any incentive, without any motive to change or not to change? Because, any motive is the outcome of the reaction of a particular culture, is born out of a particular background.

So, can my mind be free from the given culture in which I have been brought up? This is really quite an important question. Because if the mind is not free from the culture in which it has been reared, nurtured, surely the individual can never be at peace, can never have freedom.

His gods and his myths, his symbols and all his endeavors are limited, for they are still within the field of the conditioned mind. Whatever efforts he makes, or does not make, within that limited field, are really futile in the deepest sense of that word.

There may be a better decoration of the prison, more light, more windows, better food, but it is still the prison of a particular culture.

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

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Beyond the noise of words

Listening is an art not easily come by, but in it, there is beauty and great understanding.

We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view.

We do not listen simply; there is always the intervening screen of our own thoughts, conclusions, and prejudices. ...

To listen there must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention. This alert yet passive state is able to hear what is beyond the verbal conclusion.

Words confuse; they are only the outward means of communication; but to commune beyond the noise of words, there must be in listening an alert passivity.

Those who love may listen; but it is extremely rare to find a listener. Most of us are after results, achieving goals; we are forever overcoming and conquering, and so there is no listening. It is only in listening that one hears the song of the words.

The Book of Life, January 3, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

A mind without anchorage or haven

You need a new mind, a mind that is free of time, a mind which no longer thinks in terms of distance or space, a mind that has no horizon, a mind that has no anchorage or haven. You need such a mind to deal not only with the everlasting but also with the immediate problems of existence.

Therefore, the issue is: Is it possible for each one of us to have such a mind? Not gradually, not to cultivate it because cultivation, development, a process, implies time. It must take place immediately; there must be a transformation now, in the sense of a timeless quality.

Life is death, and death is awaiting you; you cannot argue with death as you can argue with life. So is it possible to have such a mind?—not as an achievement, not as a goal, not as a thing to be aimed at, not as something to be arrived at, because all that implies time and space.

We have a very convenient, luxurious theory that there is time to progress, to arrive, to achieve, to come near truth; that is a fallacious idea, it is an illusion completely—time is an illusion in that sense.

Such a mind is the urgent thing, not only now, but always... When the house is burning, there is no time to discuss whether you are a Hindu, a Muslim, or a Buddhist, whether you have read the Gita, the Upanishads; a man who discusses those things is totally unaware of the fact that the house is burning.

And when the house is burning, you may not be aware of it, you may be dull or insensitive, you may have become weak. ... If you say that it is not possible, then there is nothing that can be done; then you have closed the door yourself. ...

If you say that it may be possible and if it is not a hope, then it means it may be possible; you do not know. Do you understand the difference between the two?

The Book of Life, October 19, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

What is the most important blemish we must remediate within ourselves and why?

Anger is a deadly poison. It affects others by its fumes, manifested through the eye, the tongue and the hands.

The seed of a poison tree sprouts into a poisonous plant and when it becomes a big tree, its leaves, flowers and fruits will also certainly be poisonous.

So too, the person addicted to anger can only emanate poison, through thought, word and deed.

An angry thought is like a pebble thrown into the calm waters of the "Lake of the Mind" present inside man. It creates a circular effect which spreads through the entire lake.

Anger is very injurious to the progress of youth. Strive by all means to prevent the poison entering your mental make-up.

Cultivate love, kindliness, the spirit of service, and encourage all thoughts of cooperation with others. See the Divinity in each one, as you must see it in your own selves.

- Divine Discourse, Dec 7, 1978.

Anger breeds danger.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What must we do to transcend the three qualities of the mind?

Man is a mixture of "divinity, demon and man".

The wickedness of the demon nature can be overcome by the quality of mercy and charity, sympathy and the feeling of fellowship;

Pride can be overcome by self-control, detachment, and renunciation; the egoism of the man aspect can be overcome by following spiritual practices prescribed by the impartial sages who have been purified by penance, and by canalising their instincts and impulses into fruitful fields.

When these three are thus sublimated, man is transformed into the Divinea.

Each one must take up this process of purification, by discovering his faults and failings and realise the road to success.

If you have sympathy, self-control and righteousness, that will take you beyond the realm of the three qualities of the mind; there is no need then for getting a Name or Mantra from the Guru and repeating it.

- Divine Discourse, Jul 24, 1964 .

Practice first, precept next.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

Happiness vs. gratification

What is it that most of us are seeking? What is it that each one of us wants?

Especially in this restless world, where everybody is trying to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge, surely it is important to find out, isn’t it? What it is that we are trying to seek, what it is that we are trying to discover?

Probably most of us are seeking some kind of happiness, some kind of peace; in a world that is ridden with turmoil, wars, contention, strife, we want a refuge where there can be some peace. I think that is what most of us want.

So we pursue, go from one leader to another, from one religious organization to another, from one teacher to another.

Now, is it that we are seeking happiness or is it that we are seeking gratification of some kind from which we hope to derive happiness?

There is a difference between happiness and gratification. Can you seek happiness? Perhaps you can find gratification but surely you cannot find happiness.

Happiness is derivative; it is a by-product of something else. So, before we give our minds and hearts to something which demands a great deal of earnestness, attention, thought, care, we must find out, must we not?

What it is that we are seeking; whether it is happiness, or gratification?

The Book of Life, July 1, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: Jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

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: Jkrishnamurthi.com