Daily Quote, Wednesday March 11, 2009
Good morning,
Terrific sunrise today if you're up. Did anyone see the glorious full moon as the sun was setting last night? Would these be Krishnamurti's ideas of beauty? How would that relate to what he is saying below about "that state of the new which is timeless." In that moment is there truth? Is that the immeasurable, which would be the measurable when the measures of the "me" are no longer operating? Has anyone been exploring this in their daily life, in their interactions with people, ideas and things?
Robert
Here is the quote for today:
That moment of creation when there is no recognition.
I do not know if any of you have had a moment of creativity, not action - I am not talking of putting something into action - I mean that moment of creation when there is no recognition. At that moment, there is that extraordinary state in which the 'me', as an activity through recognition, has ceased. I think some of us have had it, perhaps most of us have had it. If we are aware, we will see in that state that there is no experiencer who remembers, translates, recognizes, and then identifies; there is no thought process which is of time. In that state of creation, creativity, or in that state of the new which is timeless, there is no action of the 'me' at all.
We do not have to seek truth. Truth is not something far away. It is the truth of the mind, truth of its activities from moment to moment. If we are aware of this moment-to- moment truth, of this whole process of time, this awareness releases consciousness or that energy to be. As long as the mind uses consciousness as the self activity, time comes into being with all its miseries, with all its conflicts, with all its mischiefs, its purposive deceptions; and it is only when the mind, understanding this total process, ceases, that love will be. You may call it love or give it some other names; what name you give is of no consequence.
Collected Works, Vol. VI - 323
Wow, I love the sentence: "Truth is not something far away." So jarring.
ReplyDeleteTo explore (and recognize the falsity) of the idea that there's some *distance* between here/now and truth seems deeply transformative. The word "truth" in English comes from an earlier word, "troethe." The latter still exists in our language, but means something different. Think of "be-troth." A pledge, a promise. The idea of truth emerged in English-speaking cultures in the 1500s, and it was a word tied to the idea of a promise or pledge. (The word was mostly used in the context of economic exchange; early merchants had to prove that they were credit-worthy, that they would do what they said they were doing to do; truthfulness, then, was close to trustworthiness.) And that means that truth is only realized in the future, when someone makes good on his/her pledge/promise. The burning question, however, is whether that future realization ever comes -- or whether, instead, that "moment of truth" is forever deferred, put forever into the future with each instance of the pledge/promise.
Somehow that early idea of truth, truth that is realized in the future, has been retained in our culture. Truth is something we wait for ... or, rather, since we're very industrious, something we go searching for.
What would it mean to find the realization of the pledge in the timeless now? To find it in the least distance, the most intimate? And what *is* truth, in this sense? (There's no answer.)
Final thought: so many Eastern philosophers and spiritual teachers use the word "truth." I wonder what word they're translating, and what *that* word means. Is there a word like "truth" in Sanskrit or Hindi or Mandarin that *doesn't* imply a deferral in time?