Thursday, May 14, 2009

Krishnamurti Thought



I habitually read a daily "meditation" from J. Krishnamurti's The Book of Life - one can take it or leave it, but I usually take it. He was just the sort to get teed off if you accepted anything he said without question and I greatly admire that.
here's the entry for today, May 14.




Remain with a Feeling and See

What Happens




"You never remain with any feeling, pure and simple, but always surround it with a paraphernalia
of words. The word distorts it; thought, whirling around it, throws it into shadow, overpowers it

with mountainous fears and longings. You never remain with a feeling, and with nothing else: with hate, or with that strange feeling of beauty. When the feeling of hate arises, you say how bad it is; there is the compulsion, the struggle to overcome it, the turmoil of thought about it....

Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that's what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love or with the word love. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. can you? have you ever tried? Try to remain with a feeling , and see what happens. you will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not leave the feeling alone; it comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its do's and don'ts, its everlasting chatter.


Pick up a piece of shell.
Can you look at it, wonder at its delicate beauty, without saying how pretty it is, or what animal made it? Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time; a spring that knows no summer."

2 comments:

Chandra Garsson said...

Your blog is the coolest of all, Tom!

Mars Will Send No More said...

I love that part about looking at the shell. Yes. Maybe not a simple state of perpetual bliss, though. Sometimes there seem to be good reasons for keeping up mental barriers. Don't you think if we totally blew our minds on the deep perpetual awesomeness of everything all the time, we would have no defenses?