Krishnamurti

Day 2962, control.

Daily picture, Quotes

J. Krishnamurti

The Krishnamurti reader
15 Life without a Shadow of Control

…So the question arises, can thought be aware of itself? You are thinking now, aren’t you? When I ask you a question, the whole movement of thinking arises. Right? Obviously. Now I am asking  whether that thinking itself sees itself thinking? No, it is not possible. You see, I am asking whether one can live a life without having a single conflict, a single effort, without any form of control. We live with effort, we struggle; there is always achieving, moving, and so our life is lived in constant struggle, constant battle, constant contradiction-“I must do this, I must not do that, I must control myself, why should I control myself, that is oldfashioned, I will do what I want to do.” All that is a movement of violence. We are asking if it is possible to live without any shadow of control. Which does not mean doing everything you want to do. That is too childish, because you cannot. Where there is control there is conflict, there is a battle going on, which expresses  itself in many, many different ways-violence, suppression, neuroticism, and permissiveness. So I am asking myself and you whether we can live a daily life without a shadow of control. To live that way, I have to find out who the controller is. Is the controller different from the controlled? If they are both the same, there is no need for control. If I am jealous because you have everything and I have nothing, from that jealousy arises anger, hatred, envy, a sense of violence. I want to have all that you have, and if I can’t get it I get bitter, angry, and all the rest follows. So can I live without jealousy, which means without comparison? Test it out. Can you live your daily life without comparing at all? Of course there is comparing when I choose something to wear. I am not talking about that. I am talking about not having any sense of measurement psychologically, which is comparison. If you have no measurement at all, will you decay, will you become a vegetable, do nothing, stagnate? Because you are comparing, because you are struggling, you think you are living, but if you don’t struggle, it may be a totally different form of living.

Day 2832, steps.

Daily picture, Quotes

Krishnamurti

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others” 

Day 2744, do you remember.

Daily picture, Quotes

Jiddu Krishnamurti

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen?

Day 2721, remember.

Daily picture

I like reading books from Jiddu Krishnamurti. I like his work because he bridges the world’s different philosophies; at least, that is what I think of it. Yesterday, I read part of the Network of Thought; you can read in it his ideas about our thinking and how we all share that capacity.

“Thought is the common factor of all mankind. There is no Eastern thought or Western thought; there is only the common capacity to think, whether one is utterly poor or most sophisticated, living in an affluent society. Whether a surgeon, a carpenter, a laborer in the field, or a great poet, thought is a common factor of all of us. We do not seem to realize that thought is the common factor that binds us all.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Network of Thought

I like the idea of thinking as a function we all share like we all share the mechanism that makes our heart beat or how we digest our food. We often believe that our thoughts are coming from a special place within, but though our thoughts might be unique, they are made in the same factory, so to speak, one we all have.

I remembered today the time I worked in Cambodia. My brain back then was the same as I now have in that it has the same function: producing my thoughts. My brain created little fear in that dangerous environment because it was busy coping with the situation and the safety of the team with whom I was there. I saw some disturbing things and was sometimes in dangerous situations, but I didn’t register that at the moment. Only later, and repeatedly, have I felt the heaviness of what I experienced. I can Imagine that we all share this function of our brain, the capability of repressing thoughts of imminent danger to make room in the mind to take responsible actions.

I still see the civilian sometimes who slowly died in our car in Cambodia; he was shot by his neighbor and left for dead beside the road. It is not something I suffer under, but it is something that never goes away. I assume we all have this mechanism and are all hunted by thoughts that have a large impact. In my case, I have several hunting thoughts, I guess that’s normal.

Sometimes, I meet people from who I expect that they live in a constant and extensive hunting thought. It is as if something in their life was so traumatic over such a long time that they constantly relive that period.

Maybe we all do that without knowing?

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Day 2382, The cause of our talents.  

Daily picture

This is a picture of a door with someone’s art painted on it. I don’t like showing of pictures of something that in itself is beautiful or interesting. The problem is that most things you take pictures of are interesting in themselves. A colorful sunset is beautiful, and a picture can show that, but as a photographer, you have to manipulate that reality to make the sunset yours. There is a thin line between just a picture of a sunset or landscape or a picture of these scenes that is in itself worth watching.

The art on the door and fence is interesting in itself if you go to the place where it is, you can enjoy it too, but there is a lot of distraction around it, and it might be cold or too warm and the light harsh. This picture shows what the original artist probably intended, and that is the illusion and movement. Though I manipulated this photo just like I do with a picture of a sunset, I find it still strange to take credit for it, and that is strange because a sunset is mothers nature’s work, but in a sense, so is the art we make as humans, as individuals too.

I sometimes make pictures that can be considered as art, but I have never put any effort into learning these skills. I take a lot of pictures, but that’s what I like to do and what I know of composition and style is something I just had without any effort. I had the luck that I got a camera from my parents when I was young so I could discover these qualities in me, I would have never known without the right people around me at the right time. I also find enough motivation and inspiration to keep on taking pictures, but again, there is no effort in that because it’s what I have always done when my mind is set on something, it’s “baked” in me.

I just want to say that we can praise the artist for what comes out of their mind or hands, but I think we should praise even more the coincidence that so much talent has come together in one place and gave birth to that art. I think some humility is good for all of us, and we shouldn’t inflate what “we” bring to the table ourselves. Some say that we are just conscious, I don’t know about that, but we are at least conscious of ourselves and our talents, and we should also know that we are not the cause of our talents, at most caretakers.

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Day 2088, or anything else.

Day's pictures

Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

Day 1894, shadows.

Daily picture, Poetry

The shadows we make

don’t always come from the sun

Nochrisis

 

We need tremendous energy to bring about a psychological change in ourselves as human beings, because we have lived far too long in a world of make-belief, in a world of brutality, violence, despair, anxiety. To live humanly, sanely, one has to change. To bring about a change within oneself and therefore within society, one needs this radical energy, for the individual is not different from society — the society is the individual and the individual is the society. And to bring about a necessary radical, essential change in the structure of society — which is corrupt, which is immoral — there must be change in the human heart and mind. To bring about that change you need great energy and that energy is denied or perverted, or twisted, when you act according to a concept; which is what we do in our daily life. The concept is based on past history, or on some conclusion, so it is not action at all, it is an approximation to a formula. So, one asks if there is an action which is not based on an idea, on a conclusion formed by dead things which have been.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Day 1876, open a door.

Day's pictures, Poetry

I sometimes open a door

just to see what’s inside

Nochrisis

I think it was somewhere in my early twenties that I for the first time red something of/about Jiddu Krishnamurti. I think I got to him through my interest, back then, in Annie Besant, she’s quite a character, though she has some strange religious ideas. Krishnamurti is for me someone that represents both an eastern and western approach to philosophy. I often recommend people that are interested in life’s question and/or struggling with these questions to read some Buddhist texts. When you read them superficially, they can often uplift you and help you to relativize your problems. If they like reading these Buddhist texts I will make sure that they hop over to Krishnamurti before they go to deep into Buddhism, because at the end Buddhism is not much more than a doctrinal religion like Christendom or Islam, a “do this, than that will happen” religion.

Krishnamurti is a critical thinker with a deep and personal history with eastern philosophy, religion and mysticism. I see him as a good bridge to western philosophy when your interest is mainly eastern philosophy. A lot of western, mainly young people, gravitate to eastern ideas because western ideas seem to them “dirty” and the cause of…I don’t really understand this, as if there are no “problems” in the east, but a bigger problem is that these people that are looking for a solution…are looking for a solution. They look for some kind of overarching system that would solve their problems, as if you are not responsible for that yourself. This is in short, the philosophy of Krishnamurti and a good gateway to western philosophy, a philosophy that is more rooted in critical thinking, questioning why and not telling how.

 

“You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don’t know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn’t find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn’t answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no savior. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.

I think that will be enough, won’t it?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti