Daily Quote on Monday February 16, 2009
Good morning everyone,
Here is the daily quote from the Krishnamurti Foundation.
Today's topic is evil. Is effort towards a goal the very definition of evil, that it is to do good in the wrong direction.
Would you say that to live in a way where the attention is fragmented is the definition of evil. Is this consistent with other aspects of Krishnamurti's thought that we've looked at so far?
Let me know. Don't be afraid to post any thoughts!
Robert
To live with effort is evil
As I was saying, if we do not understand the nature of effort, all action is limiting. Effort creates its own frontiers, its own objectives, its own limitations. Effort has the time-binding quality. You say, 'I must meditate, I must make an effort to control my mind'. That very effort to control puts a limit on your mind. Do watch this, do think it out with me. To live with effort is evil; to me it is an abomination, if I may use a strong word. And if you observe, you will realize that from childhood on we are conditioned to make an effort. In our so-called education, in all the work we do, we struggle to improve ourselves, to become something. Everything we undertake is based on effort; and the more effort we make, the duller the mind becomes.
...Where there is effort, there is an objective; where there is effort, there is a limitation on attention and on action. To do good in the wrong direction is to do evil. Do you understand? For centuries we have done 'good' in the wrong direction by assuming that we must be this, we must not be that, and so on, which only creates further conflict.
Collected Works, Vol. XI - 229
I had to ask myself the question.. what remains in the absence of effort? In yoga postures we sometimes describe the span of extension as that point between effort and ease. If I remove the effort then what remains is a more neutral state or a state of ease. I thought about when some action feels easy. Others may look at the same action and assume there was great effort involved. When we act from a sense of ease does it come from intelligence? Does effort come from the intellect?
ReplyDeleteReading Krishnamurti, I think effort comes from the will, which itself is the product of accumulated desire. Desire comes from remembered pleasure, the desire to re-experience what is pleasurable rather than appreciate it as the singularity that it is.
ReplyDeleteI agree that someone who is making great effort in a yoga posture or in anything else will project that effort onto someone else. If they talk to them after the class about this the other person might then feel like they should be making great effort! As in I am the world and the world is me.
Intelligence would be the opposite of all this effort and willing. It would be to simply observe one's own effort so that the ease of being can reveal itself. To say a bit more, you negate the negative so that only the positive is left, rather than creating a plan and designing a method to get from the negative to the positive, which is just more effort. You can see how this allows the mind to expand rather than narrow. When a mind that is full of effort can observe its own effort-ing, then at that moment a place of ease appears. You must be in a place of ease to see the effort. It's that total movement that we were talking about a bit last night at the study group.
My question would be...
Does the will hyjack the intellect to achieve desire?
Building on Robert's comment "you negate the negative so that only the positive is left":
ReplyDeleteIn conversation with Allan Anderson, K states: No, negation is to deny what is false not knowing what is truth. To see the false in the false and to see the truth in the false, and it is the truth that denies the false. You see what is false, and the very seeing of what is false is truth.