Life 31 (Oct 18 - Jan 19)

Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:37 pm

To climb high, one must begin low

Religious organizations become as fixed and as rigid as the thoughts of those who belong to them.

Life is a constant change, a continual becoming, a ceaseless revolution, and because an organization can never be pliable, it stands in the way of change; it becomes reactionary to protect itself.

The search for truth is individual, not congregational. To commune with the real, there must be aloneness, not isolation but freedom from all influence and opinion. Organizations of thought inevitably become hindrances to thought.

As you yourself are aware, the greed for power is almost inexhaustible in a so-called spiritual organization; this greed is covered over by all kinds of sweet and official-sounding words, but the canker of avariciousness, pride and antagonism is nourished and shared. From this grow conflict, intolerance, sectarianism and other ugly manifestations.

Would it not be wiser to have small informed groups of twenty or twenty-five persons, without dues or membership, meeting where it is convenient to discuss gently the approach to reality?

To prevent any group from becoming exclusive, each member could from time to time encourage and perhaps join another small group; thus it would be extensive, not narrow and parochial.

To climb high one must begin low. Out of this small beginning one may help to create a more sane and happy world.

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

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Sat Nov 17, 2018 5:37 pm

To climb high, one must begin low

Religious organizations become as fixed and as rigid as the thoughts of those who belong to them.

Life is a constant change, a continual becoming, a ceaseless revolution, and because an organization can never be pliable, it stands in the way of change; it becomes reactionary to protect itself.

The search for truth is individual, not congregational. To commune with the real, there must be aloneness, not isolation but freedom from all influence and opinion. Organizations of thought inevitably become hindrances to thought.

As you yourself are aware, the greed for power is almost inexhaustible in a so-called spiritual organization; this greed is covered over by all kinds of sweet and official-sounding words, but the canker of avariciousness, pride and antagonism is nourished and shared. From this grow conflict, intolerance, sectarianism and other ugly manifestations.

Would it not be wiser to have small informed groups of twenty or twenty-five persons, without dues or membership, meeting where it is convenient to discuss gently the approach to reality?

To prevent any group from becoming exclusive, each member could from time to time encourage and perhaps join another small group; thus it would be extensive, not narrow and parochial.

To climb high one must begin low. Out of this small beginning one may help to create a more sane and happy world.

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

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Sun Nov 18, 2018 8:15 am

Look with intensity

... It seems to me that learning is astonishingly difficult, as is listening also. We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult.

I think—or rather, it is a fact—that if one can listen to something with all of one’s being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is a liberative factor, but unfortunately you never do listen, as you have never learned about it.

After all, you only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics, you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation.

To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.

If you want to learn about a leaf—a leaf of the spring or a leaf of the summer—you must really look at it, see the symmetry of it, the texture of it, the quality of the living leaf.

There is beauty, there is vigor, there is vitality in a single leaf. So to learn about the leaf, the flower, the cloud, the sunset, or a human being, you must look with all intensity.

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

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 18)

Postby winston » Mon Nov 19, 2018 6:42 am

The old mind is bound by authority

The problem then is: Is it possible for a mind that has been so conditioned—brought up in innumerable sects, religions, and all the superstitions, fears—to break away from itself and thereby bring about a new mind?...

The old mind is essentially the mind that is bound by authority. I am not using the word authority in the legalistic sense; but by that word I mean authority as tradition, authority as knowledge, authority as experience, authority as the means of finding security and remaining in that security, outwardly or inwardly, because, after all, that is what the mind is always seeking—a place where it can be secure, undisturbed.

Such authority may be the self-imposed authority of an idea or the so-called religious idea of God, which has no reality to a religious person. An idea is not a fact, it is a fiction.

God is a fiction; you may believe in it, but still it is a fiction. But to find God you must completely destroy the fiction, because the old mind is the mind that is frightened, is ambitious, is fearful of death, of living, and of relationship; and it is always, consciously or unconsciously, seeking a permanency, security.

The Book of Life, January 17, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 31 (Oct 18 - Jan 18)

Postby winston » Tue Nov 20, 2018 8:22 am

See the truth in the false

You may superficially agree when you hear it said that nationalism, with all its emotionalism and vested interest, leads to exploitation and the setting of man against man; but to really free your mind from the pettiness of nationalism is another matter.

To be free, not only from nationalism but also from all the conclusions of organized religions and political systems, is essential if the mind is to be young, fresh, innocent, that is, in a state of revolution; and it is only such a mind that can create a new world—not the politicians, who are dead, nor the priests, who are caught in their own religious systems.

So, fortunately or unfortunately for yourself, you have heard something which is true; and if you merely hear it and are not actively disturbed so that your mind begins to free itself from all the things which are making it narrow and crooked, then the truth you have heard will become a poison.

Surely, truth becomes a poison if it is heard and does not act in the mind, like the festering of a wound.

But to discover for oneself what is true and what is false, and to see the truth in the false, is to let that truth operate and bring forth its own action.

The Book of Life, August 7, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 31 (Oct 18 - Jan 18)

Postby winston » Tue Nov 20, 2018 8:22 am

See the truth in the false

You may superficially agree when you hear it said that nationalism, with all its emotionalism and vested interest, leads to exploitation and the setting of man against man; but to really free your mind from the pettiness of nationalism is another matter.

To be free, not only from nationalism but also from all the conclusions of organized religions and political systems, is essential if the mind is to be young, fresh, innocent, that is, in a state of revolution; and it is only such a mind that can create a new world—not the politicians, who are dead, nor the priests, who are caught in their own religious systems.

So, fortunately or unfortunately for yourself, you have heard something which is true; and if you merely hear it and are not actively disturbed so that your mind begins to free itself from all the things which are making it narrow and crooked, then the truth you have heard will become a poison.

Surely, truth becomes a poison if it is heard and does not act in the mind, like the festering of a wound.

But to discover for oneself what is true and what is false, and to see the truth in the false, is to let that truth operate and bring forth its own action.

The Book of Life, August 7, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 31 (Oct 18 - Jan 18)

Postby winston » Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:06 am

What is reincarnation?

Let us find out what you mean by reincarnation—the truth of it, not what you like to believe, not what someone has told you, or what your teacher has said. Surely, it is the truth that liberates, not your own conclusion, your own opinion.

... When you say, “I shall be reborn,” you must know what the “I” is. ...Is the “I” a spiritual entity, is the “I” something continuous, is the “I” something independent of memory, experience, knowledge?

Either the “I” is a spiritual entity, or it is merely a thought process. Either it is something out of time which we call spiritual, not measurable in terms of time, or it is within the field of time, the field of memory, thought. It cannot be something else.

Let us find out if it is beyond the measurement of time. I hope you are following all this. Let us find out if the “I” is in essence something spiritual. Now by “spiritual” we mean, do we not, something not capable of being conditioned, something that is not the projection of the human mind, something that is not within the field of thought, something that does not die.

When we talk of a spiritual entity, we mean by that something which is not within the field of the mind, obviously. Now, is the “I” such a spiritual entity? If it is a spiritual entity, it must be beyond all time; therefore it cannot be reborn or continued. ...

That which has continuity can never renew itself. As long as thought continues through memory, through desire, through experience, it can never renew itself; therefore, that which is continued cannot know the real.

The Book of Life, November 18, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 19)

Postby winston » Fri Nov 23, 2018 7:09 am

There is no freedom of thought

I do not know if it is clear to each one of us that we live in a state of contradiction.

We talk about peace, and prepare for war. We talk about non-violence, and are fundamentally violent. We talk about being good, and we are not. We talk about love, and we are full of ambition, competitiveness, ruthless efficiency. So there is contradiction.

The action which springs from that contradiction only brings about frustration and further contradiction...

You see, sirs, all thought is partial, it can never be total. Thought is the response of memory, and memory is always partial, because memory is the result of experience, so thought is the reaction of a mind which is conditioned by experience.

All thinking, all experience, all knowledge is inevitably partial; therefore, thought cannot solve the many problems that we have.

You may try to reason logically, sanely, about these many problems, but if you observe your own mind you will see that your thinking is conditioned by your circumstances, by the culture in which you were born, by the food you eat, by the climate you live in, by the newspapers you read, by the pressures and influences of your daily life...

So we must understand very clearly that our thinking is the response of memory, and memory is mechanistic. Knowledge is ever incomplete, and all thinking born of knowledge is limited, partial, never free. So there is no freedom of thought.

But we can begin to discover a freedom which is not a process of thought, and in which the mind is simply aware of all its conflicts and of all the influences impinging upon it.

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

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life 30 (Jun 18 - Nov 19)

Postby winston » Fri Nov 23, 2018 7:22 am

What is the legacy that we must yearn to inherit?

What is it that you can offer to the Divine who is omnipotent, omnipresent and all-knowing?

The Divine has endowed you with all his wealth and Divine potentialities. You are inheritors of His wealth. You have to discover what that wealth is.

The Divine's wealth is nothing but pure, selfless and boundless Love. You must inherit this Love, fill yourselves with it and offer it to the world. This is your supreme responsibility.

To realise the divine, Love is the easiest path. Just as you can see the moon only with the light of the moon, the Divine who is the Embodiment of Love, can be reached only through Love.

Regard selfless love as your life breath. Love was the first quality to emerge in the process of creation. All other qualities came after it.

Therefore, fill your hearts with pure selfless love and lead your life with selfless love as the foundation.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 23, 1986.

Pure Love sees all as one Divine Family.

Source: radiosai.org
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Re: Life 31 (Oct 18 - Feb 19)

Postby winston » Sat Nov 24, 2018 10:25 am

Listening brings freedom

When you make an effort to listen, are you listening? Is not that very effort a distraction that prevents listening? Do you make an effort when you listen to something that gives you delight?...

You are not aware of the truth, nor do you see the false as the false, as long as your mind is occupied in any way with effort, with comparison, with justification or condemnation...

Listening itself is a complete act; the very act of listening brings its own freedom. But are you really concerned with listening, or with altering the turmoil within?

If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.

You see, we are constantly trying to be this or that, to achieve a particular state, to capture one kind of experience and avoid another, so the mind is everlastingly occupied with something; it is never still to listen to the noise of its own struggles and pains.

Be simple ... and don’t try to become something or to capture some experience.

The Book of Life, January 5, Harper San Francisco, 1995

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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