That is true religion

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good; not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it- is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself.

This Matter of Culture, p.128

Here is my reflection:

How does intelligence relate to this question about life taking care of you. Are the two ideas consistent?

Best wishes

Robert

Is a religious life possible?

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Is a religious life possible in this modern world? Which does not mean becoming a monk or joining an organized group of monks. We will be able to find out for ourselves what is really, truly, a religious life only when we understand what religions actually are and put aside all that, and not belong to any religion, to any organized religion, to any guru, and not have any psychological or so-called spiritual authority.

There is no spiritual authority whatsoever. That is one of the crimes that we have committed—we have invented the mediator between truth and ourselves. So you begin to inquire into what is religion, and in the very process of that inquiry you are living a religious life, not at the end of it. In the very process of looking, watching, discussing, doubting, questioning, and having no belief or faith, you are already living a religious life.

That Benediction is Where You Are, pp 71-72

Here is my reflection:

To inquire you must have no belief, and the groundwork for this is to understand everything in yourself that gives authority to another, that cedes your intelligence to another's memory and conditioning. Can you do all this is what K is asking here? Can you be a light to yourself?

The very idea of a mediator between you and truth, which is the priest, the teacher, the parent, etc., is akin to Nietsche's account of morality in On The Genealogy Of Morals. The weak, physically and morally, create religion to make the 'strong' feel guilty for being what they are. Morality is then the weapon of the weak. Nietsche pints it in stark terms but his basic premise is correct: religion is not about finding God or Truth; it is about power and control; subordination and domination. It is the weapon of those who live with and by fear, those who cannot - in K's term - stand alone.

For K the religious experience can never come with mediation. It can only come directly when, for example, we see it in a sunrise, in nature; not through the memory, motives, ambitions, and jealousy of another. When you can simply look at something and observe it in itself, whether that is a chair or your wife or husband, that is a religious experience. To do this you need to look very seriously at how you look, where you look from, your images of that person or thing; your pre-conceptions and all of that stuff that makes you feel secure in your world, your consciousness.

To live with that attention is to take responsibility for your own life.

Best wishes

Robert

To understand God

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

To understand God, you must first understand your own mind—which is very difficult. The mind is very complex, and to understand it is not easy. But it is easy enough to sit down and go into some kind of dream, have various visions, illusions, and then think that you are very near to God. The mind can deceive itself enormously. So, to really experience that which may be called God, you must be completely quiet; and have you not found out how extremely difficult that is?

Have you not noticed how even the older people never sit quietly, how they fidget, how they wiggle their toes and move their hands? It is difficult physically to sit still, and how much more difficult it is for the mind to be still! You may follow some guru and force your mind to be quiet; but your mind is not really quiet. It is still restless, like a child that is made to stand in the corner. It is a great art for the mind to be completely silent without coercion, and only then is there a possibility of experiencing that which may be called God.

Life Ahead, pp 67-68

Here is my reflection.

If you try to find God, or if you try to quiet your mind (they are the same thing), there is always effort because there is always a goal. Can you meditate without goal? Can you, in fact, look at all the goal making, imagining, activity of your mind, and in so doing cease trying? Once you make yourself the object of observation all trying ceases. You cannot maintain the contradiction that is inherent in trying to meditate once you see yourself in that contradiction. Intelligence tells you that this is absurd. It is the fear of what comes after death that is behind all this trying; the belief that our trying will be rewarded with everlasting life. But isn't the truth that we simply end up with a life that is anxious, never living in the present because we are worried about the future? If we can observe ourselves and see the play of our fears, then we can come to life with abundance and with joy. We can kiss each moment as it passes by, to use Blake's phrase.

Best wishes

Robert

What does a religious life mean?

Good morning everyone,

Continuing with Religion today:

So, what is the basic cause of this corruption, this degeneration, this hypocrisy, the non-religious life? All your stuff, all the garlands and all that you put round yourself is not a religious life. Right? You are following somebody. Forgive me because you are all sitting in front of me, I can't help it. Don't laugh sir, it's much too serious. This is not a religious life. A religious life implies a life in which there is complete harmony in your daily action, in your daily life. We'll go into that if we have time later on. But all the temples, all the gurus, all the circus that's going on in the name of religion really has no meaning whatsoever. If you want to discuss that we will.

But after discussion are you willing to throw all this aside? Or you say 'That's your opinion, my opinion is different' - we are not discussing opinions. We want to find the truth of the matter and to find the truth of the matter one has to have a mirror that doesn't distort your reactions, a mirror that tells you the truth of what you are so that it doesn't allow you to escape, that is, face exactly what you are, and from there move, change, radically bring about a transformation. But if one is all the time avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, then we never come face to face with ourselves.

Krishnamurti at Rajghat

Here is my reflection:

The idea of a life that has complete harmony in every action: a life without contradiction. How many times do you hear yourself saying "I would do this if...." or "I should do that...". This is contradiction; it is disharmony. This is avoiding ourselves. It is keeping away from "I am this." Do you sometimes find yourself saying "I am angry". Could you see yourself being honest and clear enough to say "I am anger". In other words, can you live without reistance to yourself, can you give yourself complete attention? Can there be no distance between the perceiver, the perceiving, and the perceived. Can you practice samadhi on your anger? Or do you just want to practice samadhi on God? Without total attention to what we are cannot take responsibility for our lives. With this responsibility there is harmony; seeing the responsibility is it's own action.

Best wishes

Robert

The silence of intelligence

Good morning everyone,

K continues with the same theme of what religion and intelligence is.

So in meditation there is no controller, there is no activity of will, which is desire. Then the brain, the whole movement of the brain apart from its own activity, which has its own rhythm, becomes utterly quiet, silent. It is not the silence cultivated by thought. It is the silence of intelligence, silence of supreme intelligence. In that silence that which is nameless comes, nameless is. That is sacred, immovable, it is not touched by thought, by endeavour, by effort. It is the way of intelligence which is the way of compassion. Then that which is sacred is everlasting. That is meditation. Such a life is a religious life. In that there is great beauty.

Mind Without Measure.

Remember the line from William Blake:

"He who kisses joy as it passes by will live on eternity's sunrise".

Religion is the cessation of the “me”

Good morning everyone,

As if right on cue after last night's study group discussion, here is today's quote:

Have we shared this together? Because it is your life, not my life. It is your life of sorrow, of tragedy, of confusion, guilt, reward, punishment. All that is your life. If you are serious you have tried to untangle all this. You have read some book, or followed a teacher, or listened to somebody, but the problem remains. These problems will exist as long as the human mind moves within the field of the activity of the self; that activity of the self must create more and more and more problems. When you observe, when you become extraordinarily aware of this activity of the self, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, sane, healthy, holy. And from that silence our life in everyday activity is transformed. Religion is the cessation of the “me”, and action born of that silence. That life is a sacred life full of meaning.

This Light in Oneself, p 77

Here is my reflection.

What is sacred can never be interpreted and given to us by another. K makes it clear that there has been a falling away from Religion in the sense that this is the gathering together of all energy at all levels to bring about great attention in which there is no frontier in order to understand what thought can never capture.

Religion and to be relgious is not to join a religion, to be a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. It is to see the singularly, the sacredness, in all things; to look without the past and pre-conceptions, to be without the comfort of memory and projection. It is to be unconditionally free to the need to relate the looking to the me.

Religion today, like yoga, has be entertainment, the repetition of rituals, a way of putting onself to sleep. It is about pleasure; the joy has been sucked out by the need of the me. As K points out, as soon as anything becomes organised, it becomes totally superficial; it is about maintaining itself rather than deep attention to the activity of the self. Don't we spend all our time really, organising our sense of "me"?

Best wishes

Robert

What is not meditation.

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

To find out what meditation is, the beauty of it, not the word - the word means to ponder over, meaning of that word, to ponder, to think, to recollect - so to find out what is meditation we must approach it negatively. That is to find out what it is not. You understand? Most of us are so positive, and we think meditation is something that we have to do, practice, but if we can approach it with intelligence, not with desire, but with intelligence, which is to see what it is not. So shall we do it together? What it is not.

The Beauty of Death as Part of Life.

Here is my reflection.

Here K is making it clear that we can't expect the meditation technique to do the work for us. This is just a manifestation of our failure to take responsibility for our own transformation. It would be accurate to say that "I don't want to change, to havea complete inner revolution, there I will will practice meditation'> In other words, I'll do something eles. If I want to change, to change totally and be wholly other than the "me", then I will do that. I won't think about it. I won't wait for the meditation technique to chnange me. I'll change. This only comes through intelligence. Only by seeing the false in the false. We are the negative. Our existence s "me" negates life. So the practice is just to look at ourselves, to see the negative, the false, so that all that is left is the positive. The different is that that we don't go looking for it, no journey, no search, no path. This is to be fooled by the word, which is to avoid living, which is to be intelligence, which is to see the negative, which is to get out of the way with our fears and anxieties and let the new be.

Best wishes

Robert