Waves - Lives

I was watching this morning the waves breaking at the beach.

Big waves came all powerful, then broke with a lot of sound and foam and then becoming tamed and dying at the shore.

And I thought it is quite similar to our human life.....

Regrets before we dye

Bronnie Ware, an australian nurse who worked for years with people sent home to dye realized that people with little time to live had mainly 5 regrets about their lives. She has written about it in a blog and lately a book.
The following text is taken from her blog:

REGRETS OF THE DYING

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them. When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard. This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence. By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result. We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

violence

It has taken me a long time, but now I saw clearly that whenever I make an act of violence (either a violent thought or to speak with violence, or a violent act), I do not feel well afterwards.......

(picture above: "lightning over Quebec" from http://theweatherclub.org.uk)
(picture below: Lightening activity over the Earth today at 14:40 UT.
Lightning stroke positions are shown as coloured dots which "cool down" from blue for the most recent (occurring within the last 10 min) through green and yellow to red for the oldest (30-40 minutes earlier).
Red asterisks in white circles are active WWLL lightning sensor locations. The terminator (day-night boundary) is shown, with the daylit section of the globe in grey. Click on picture to amplify.
from http://webflash.ess.washington.edu/)

Prejudice

Prejudice comes from a basic need, new research suggests:

Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren't comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others.

In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice since the 1954 publication of an influential book, The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport.

People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. "Of course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it" Roets says. That's also why they favor authorities and social norms which make it easier to make decisions. Then, once they've made up their mind, they stick to it. "If you provide information that contradicts their decision, they just ignore it."

Roets argues that this way of thinking is linked to people's need to categorize the world, often unconsciously. "When we meet someone, we immediately see that person as being male or female, young or old, black or white, without really being aware of this categorization," he says. "Social categories are useful to reduce complexity, but the problem is that we also assign some properties to these categories. This can lead to prejudice and stereotyping."

People who need to make quick judgments will judge a new person based on what they already believe about their category. "The easiest and fastest way to judge is to say, for example, ok, this person is a black man. If you just use your ideas about what black men are generally like, that's an easy way to have an opinion of that person," Roets says. "You say, 'he's part of this group, so he's probably like this.'"

It's virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think. Now for the good news: It's possible to actually also use this way of thinking to reduce people's prejudice. If people who need quick answers meet people from other groups and like them personally, they are likely to use this positive experience to form their views of the whole group. "This is very much about salient positive information taking away the aversion, anxiety, and fear of the unknown," Roets says.

Roets's conclusions suggest that the fundamental source of prejudice is not ideology, but rather a basic human need and way of thinking. "It really makes us think differently about how people become prejudiced or why people are prejudiced," Roets says. "To reduce prejudice, we first have to acknowledge that it often satisfies some basic need to have quick answers and stable knowledge people rely on to make sense of the world."

Text taken fully from ScienceDaily, Dec. 21, 2011.

Original Journal Reference:Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel. Allport’s Prejudiced Personality Today: Need for Closure as the Motivated Cognitive Basis of Prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, (in press)

The obsolete consciousness IX

View this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtnFpXKgeDY&feature=related

and ask yourself if our consciousness, as it presently is, is not obsolete.
It has brought us till here with the miriad reflexes, one of them, maybe the primordial one, the search for security, even if by brutal means.
But it is coming to a crisis.
Evolution will no longer be darwinian, but will be in consciousness

meditation. A Christmas gift......

"In addition to the talks, what perhaps had an even greater impact on me was the opportunity each day to spend time with him alone. This was possible because so few people were really interested. I got to take walks with him. At the time, there were a lot of woods around the campus. I was very drawn to this word “meditation,” though I didn’t really know what it meant. I asked Krishnamurti many times to teach me meditation, but he simply smiled and remained silent.

The first time we took a walk, he said, “Would you mind if we just walked in silence, if we don’t speak?” I thought that was a strange request. I was certainly accustomed to taking walks with others, but it always included talking as well.

K and I would walk for half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour – around the campus, in the woods. After the initial awkwardness, I started to actually like it. He was comfortable walking in silence, so I became comfortable as well. It was new to me.

I had walked silently by myself and with close friends before, for example, along the Atlantic ocean and lake Michigan. However, I barely knew this man.

Q: What was that experience like? Were you walking along paths? Was he looking up at leaves, walking up to trees? Was he looking up at the sky? Did he stop?

A: He’d pause sometimes. Sometimes the birds would chirp and he’d stop and say, “Let’s listen for a few minutes.” So we did. Or he would stop and smile. But he didn’t make it a project, like, “Let’s stop now, I’m about to teach you meditation the natural way” – he didn’t do that. Mostly we just walked and enjoyed moving in silence. Sometimes it was in thickly wooded areas, sometimes it was a path. He seemed very happy. He saw that I enjoyed it and kept returning, so we took such walks every day.

About a day or two before it was time for him to leave Brandeis, on one of the walks, he stopped and said, “Pick out anything. A plant, a leaf, a flower, part of a tree. See if you can look at it for a few minutes without labeling it, naming it or thinking about it. Simply, with innocence, as if for the first time, just take a look at it. Let’s do that for a while.” He didn’t say how long.

I’m not sure what I picked. I think it was a leaf or a few leaves. At first, my mind got very busy and didn’t like doing this, didn’t want to simply sustain attention. There was clearly resistance to just looking. I would sneak a peek at Krishnamurti, looking for some sign that we had done this long enough and could start walking again. After a while, though, my mind settled down a bit. I was just watching when, suddenly, the leaf became interesting. I was incredibly moved emotionally, which was totally unanticipated. I started to really see, in a new and vivid way, ordinary aspects of the leaf. Its shape, color, veins, and stem really held my interest. It was all so alive. Green was now really green! There was a whole little world going.

Then he said, “Well, how was it?” So I said, “It was fascinating. It was just beautiful.” And I went on and on about it. I told him how moved I was and how much I saw and how much I learned, that I never was so interested in detail – I had just kind of glossed over nature. Here I got in really close and it was fascinating and moving and it held my interest.

He said, “OK. Now, when you want to meditate, just sit down and do the same thing with your mind.” And that was it. [laughs] Period. And we resumed the walk."

(From: Meeting Krishnamurti. Interview with Larry Rosenberg. By M. Drexler)

conditioning

My now friend M.F. showed us his beautiful and inspiring film "Tropico da Saudade: Levi-Strauss Journey to Amazonia", where he shows the visits of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to the Nambikwara indians in the Amazon. M.F. has also lived for years with this amazonian tribe and he can tell many stories of their wisdom and amazing life close to Nature.

He ends his film with a quote from Levi-Strauss' book "Tristes Tropiques":

"Other cultures are perhaps no better than our own; even if we are inclined to believe they are, we have no method at our disposal for proving it. However, by getting to know them better, we are enabled to detach ourselves from our own culture. Not that our own culture is peculiarly or absolutely bad. But it is the only one from which we must free ourselves. We can only be free through others."

Such a powerful sentence. And after reading it on the screen, I thought one could exchange the word "culture" for the word "conditioning", and then the sentence would be something like:

"Other conditionings are perhaps no better (or worse) than our own; even if we are inclined to believe they are, we have no method at our disposal for proving it. However, by getting to know them better, we can detach ourselves from our own conditioning. Not that our own conditioning is peculiarly or absolutely bad. But it is the only one from which we must free ourselves. We can only be free through others."

(pictures from http://www.indiegogo.com/Return-of-the-Captured-Spirits)

The accidental and the fundamental IV: thinking

I was driving on the highway, and I realized that most of my thoughts deal with accidental (irrelevant to the fundamental) things........

Farewell Steve Jobs

Things that he said in this meeting are quite thought provoking, even very spiritual. I do not mind that much all his creating a big business, creating incredibly beautiful electronic devices ( I do not have any). But I listened to this very direct and personal talk, and if it reflects something of his inner world, it is quite deep, even religious.
Rest in peace, fellow human being....

(people willing to listen the full address, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc)

The accidental and the fundamental III, Impermanence III

I was trying to have a feeling for what is accidental and what is fundamental. And in that frame of mind I also thought about impermanence....

And somehow I blended it together in my brain....and it came to my mind that...what is accidental is what is impermanent....

And then the question: is there something which is not impermanent? which means, what is fundamental?

Is what is impermanent (accidental) an external manifestation? a manifestation of something which is not manifested, which is not impermanent, which is fundamental?

....And maybe they are just aspects of the same thing......

The accidental and the fundamental II

The other day I was so angry...I even realized I was angry, but could not stop being angry.

I went for a walk, but my mind was razed by repeating recreations of the situation that made me angry.

As I was not enjoying the walk I came back home. I was alone. I looked out through the kitchen window and I saw the silhouette of the old church, still and silent.

And something came to my mind: "the anger razing through my mind, the reasons for it, and the (my) personality that was reacting like that were all accidental" .....not fundamental

(photograph: it is the actual view of the church described above)

Education XXII: How to educate to be compassionate?

I was looking at my twins (now 18 months old) and wondering what would be the "thing" that I would like that they have when they are older.

And it came to my mind that above other things I would like that they have a "compassionate mind".

This is a term that I have heard mainly coming from buddhist people. But, I do not want that they are conditioned by a whole array of chants, concepts, writings, methods, etc, as it seems to me that all those things have been added over time, as layers, to something quite simple (by the way, is there such a thing as "simple, pure, buddhism?).

So the question is: how to educate compassion?. Is it something that one can give to, produce, provoque? or is it something that is already there and has to be un-covered?

This, to me, is such an important question in education. All the rest is very secondary.

Perspective

This image of Earth (on the left) and the moon (on the right) was taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft onboard camera on Aug. 26, 2011, when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million kilometers) away, on its way to Jupiter.

This is how "important" we look from a distance.....

(http://missionjuno.swri.edu/)

The accidental and the fundamental

This summer we were reading Krishnamurti´s book "Education and the significance of life". In chapter 1 there was a paragraph that we did not pay much attention to, but has been resonating in my head since:

"We must distinguish between the personal and the individual. The personal is the accidental; and by the accidental I mean the circumstances of birth, the environment in which we happen to have been brought up, with its nationalism, superstitions, class distinctions and prejudices. The personal or accidental is but momentary, though that moment may last a lifetime; and as the present system of education is based on the personal, the accidental, the momentary, it leads to perversion of thought and the inculcation of self-defensive fears. "

This reference to the personal (accidental) and the individual was only mentioned in this paragraph, and not later in the text.

This prompted me to look at myself an others, and I think there are things in our lives which are accidental and there is something else which is fundamental.

The accidental being where we have been born, in what town or country or what family, how we have been conditioned, what desires we have, what people have we met, what we have studied or learned, and a long etcetera. Maybe we can even include what we think and feel.

And that we tend to have a life centered in this accidental realm. this is the realm in which we normally move....

And what is, then, the fundamental?

To discover

"You can only discover something which already exists"
(Socrates)

Education XXI, Socrates

HIPPOCRATES: You are right, my dear Socrates, as always. But won't you put aside your method this time and tell me the answer immediately?

SOCRATES: No, my friend, even if I could, I would not do this, and it is for your sake. The knowledge somebody gets without work is almost worthless to him. We understand thoroughly only that which - perhaps with some outside help - we find out ourselves, just as a plant can use only the water which it sucks up from the soil through its own roots.

(from "A socratic dialogue in mathematics" by Alfred Renyi)

Education XX: rewards

Yesterday it was a very hot day. We were going by car to swim in a lake in the mountains. The twins (almost 16 month old now) were in their seats on the back. And suddenly one of them started blowing air into a harmonica.

It was just blowing in and out, but I like the sound and the fact that he was producing it. And both his mother and I started saying "very good", "great" with a very friendly tone of voice. And he stopped "playing" and laughed.

It was clear that he like we praising him, it was a reward. And then I thought that I would like that he likes to play music by itself, not by the reward that it might bring him. And how often we have been educated like this, through reward and punishment. And then we end up doing something not by the thing itself, but because we like the reward.....and that might create a lot of confusion and suffering.

What are the origins of the "ego"?

Last night, I was going to bed, and as I was heading towards the bathroom, a strange idea came to my mind: The "ego" is not a thing, a "center", it is a function, the action of surviving, of having security, of achieving, of going "forward". It is the same difference as "a walk" (a thing) and "walking" (a function).

It is not a thing from where an action stems. It is rather the drive that makes thoughts happen, the drive that makes things happen.

And then a question came to my mind quite diffusely, rather difficult to put into words: what is the origin of this drive? And I thought the same drive that makes a thought happen is the same drive that makes the whole universe go forward, exist, expand, be.

So, this universal drive to exist, takes a certain shape in human beings, and we call it "ego". The shape is determined by a particular evolutionary path. That universal drive takes a different shape in other living things, in molecules, in galaxies...

And when I saw this, I understood it might be wrong to "demonize" the "ego", to suppress it, to think it is the source of many evil things, as some religions do. Maybe we can just observe its origins which determine its essence, the evolution which gives it a shape, and its universality......

Today I realized it is just one more example of the "holographic" nature of the universe, that David Bohm was talking about: if the universe has this drive to exist, we have to partake of this drive also.....

(photograps taken by Hubble telescope: top, the Carina Nebula, bottom, Gas Pillars in a Star-Forming Region of the Eagle Nebula. http://hubblesite.org.

Note about the bottom picture (from Wikipedia): This photograph is known as the "Pillars of Creation", a part of the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light-years distant. These columns––which resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern––are composed of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, which act as incubators for new stars.

The longest of the 'Pillars' is seven light years long, and because of their massive density interior gasses contract gravitationally to form stars. Due to the huge distance between us, the Pillars of Creation may already be gone, and instead a stellar star nursery could have taken its place. In early 2007, scientists using the Spitzer discovered evidence that potentially indicates that the Pillars were destroyed by a nearby supernova explosion about 6,000 years ago, but the light showing the new shape of the nebula will not reach Earth for another millennium.)

(to read more about holography, see http://dialogueglobal.blogspot.com/2009/04/fractals-and-holograms.html)

We see everything with the mind

Today I had a strange feeling: that we see everything with the mind. And we feel, and act, and live through the mind.
And inevitably that seeing is tainted by the mind, the conditioning, the long evolution.....

Is there a seeing not with the mind?

(photograph by Jude McConkey)

how many times have we died?

This morning while I was waking up, I was thinking of past events, things that I have said and done, some long time ago, and realize that the man that said or did that had already died. Only the name or the passport number is the same and that gives the appearance of a continuity. Since 1992 I have died 3 times......

Following two birds

This morning two birds were flying together. Their paths were crossing, they would turn and go up and down. I was following their flight, and an idea came to my mind: if I can follow something so dynamic as the flight of a bird, I can watch something so dynamic as a thought....

(video by WB8BCO)

Freedom, problems

"The other day when we met here, I was talking about the necessity of freedom; and by that word freedom I do not mean a peripheral or fragmentary freedom at certain levels of one's consciousness. I was talking about being totally free - free at the very root of one's mind, in all one's activities, physical, psychological, and parapsychological. Freedom implies a total absence of problems, does it not? Because when the mind is free, it can observe and act with complete clarity; it can be what it is without any sense of contradiction. To me, a life of problems - whether economic or social, private or public - destroys and perverts clarity. And one needs clarity. One needs a mind that sees very clearly every problem as it arises, a mind that can think without confusion, without conditioning, a mind that has a quality of affection, love - which has nothing whatever to do with emotionalism or sentimentality.

To be in this state of freedom - which is extremely difficult to understand, and requires a great deal of probing into - one must have an undisturbed, quiet mind; a mind that is functioning totally, not only at the periphery, but also at the center. This freedom is not an abstraction, it is not an ideal. The movement of the mind in freedom is a reality, and ideals and abstractions have nothing whatsoever to do with it. Such freedom takes place naturally, spontaneously - without any sort of coercion, discipline, control, or persuasion - when we understand the whole process of the arising and the ending of problems. A mind that has a problem, which is really a disturbance, and has escaped from that problem, is still crippled, bound; it is not free. For the mind that does not resolve every problem as it arises, at whatever level - physical, psychological, emotional - there can be no freedom and therefore no clarity of thought, of outlook, of perception.

Most human beings have problems. I mean by a problem the lingering disturbance created by one's inadequate response to a challenge - that is, by the incapacity to meet an issue totally, with one's whole being - or by the indifference which results in the habitual acceptance of problems and just putting up with them. There is a problem when one fails to confront each issue and go to the very end of it, not tomorrow or at some future date, but as it arises, every minute, every hour, every day."

(J. Krishnamurti, Second Talk in Saanen, 1964)

Can we have a "taste" of the vastness he is talking about?

(picture titled "dessert storm", courtesy of Gerry Johnson, http://www.gerryjohnsonphotography.com )

Education XIX: how easy is to put fear in a child´s mind

These last days something happened that was interesting. One of the twins (14 months old) started to be quite afraid and concerned about helicopters. It all started because whenever a copter flew past above us, we would point our hand towards it and changed our normal tone of voice and said "Look, helicopter". We uncounsciously changed our tone of voice to make it more interesting.

But know we are a bit worried, because whenever there is a helicopter, or he even hears the word "helicopter", he says "Uh, Uh" and looks worried and afraid.

So, we realized how easy is to put fears in a child´s mind, and how easy they pick up these fears. It feels as if their mind is quite receptive to incorporate fears. It is fertile ground to let these fears root in it. This is something we have to have in mind if we do not want to educate through fears, to put fears in their minds....so they are safe....

The obsolete consciousness VIII

This separation in beleifs, in religions, in nations, in groups. This apparent wanting "the best for the people, for the world", no matter the method used. This lack of respect for life and for human lives. This lack of compassion. This deep conviction that we are separated....
All this is a sign of an obsolete consciousness. We should not judge this as right or wrong, but maybe we should see it at another level, as symptoms of obsolescence in our consciousness, of which we are also a part....
This realization may be an alternative......

denying time

"So can my mind refuse to use time and deny time as a means to mutation? Do you see the beauty of it? Then what takes place?

The thing which I want changed has been put together through time, it is the result of time, and I deny time. Therefore I deny the whole thing and therefore mutation has taken place. I do not know if you see this. It is not a verbal trick.

Have you understood it? If I deny my conditioning as a Hindu, which is the result of time, and I deny time, I deny the whole thing. I am out of it. If I deny ritual - the Christian, Hindu or Buddhist - deny it because it is the product of time, I am out. I do not have to ask how to bring about mutation. The thing itself is the result of time and I deny time - it is finished."

"A mind that functions in time is still a limited mind. But a mind which does not function in time is extraordinarily alert"

"You have to understand the quality of a mind in which mutation has taken place. It has taken place the moment you deny time. You have thrown the whole past out. You are no longer a Hindu, a Christian."

(J. Krishnamurti, "On education", pages 82 and 83)

"Time" is not an abstract concept in physics. Here he is using the term as something very concrete: our conditioning. And that conditioning determines the way we live the present and project the future.

And what is to "deny"? To deny is to be fully aware of that conditioning, without judging it. Are we fully aware, without judging, of the whole field of our conditioning? Are we totally aware/realize that the way our brain works is in this field of time, which is just conditioning moving from past to present to future? Are we fully aware/realize that when we live/see something is with the past, which is completely conditioned?

And to be completely aware of it, is to be out of it, to "deny" it, because this awareness is not conditioned.

And until we see this, we cannot "be in the present".... by just an act of will.....

This is how I took it to mean today, but maybe some other people see it in another way......

Unhappiness

I was in my office today and it was the turn for a middle age woman. She told me she had fainted three times today after vomiting. I asked her if in general she was eating well, sleeping well. She told me yes. She was of arab origin, nice facial features, but there was unhappiness painted in her eyes and the edges of her mouth. I asked her if she was content with her life. Then she said no with her head and started sobbing.

And an idea flashed in my mind. This happiness/unhappiness existed in the world of emotions. But in the "world of awareness", unhappiness did not exist (or happiness for that matter)......

Education XVIII: Where do speak, act FROM?

We were reading/studying Krishnamurti´s text "On Education", and on page 71, he says:

" Because you are free and understand freedom, you will be punctual in your class and from freedom you will talk to the student and not from an idea. To talk from an idea, a formula, a concept is one thing, but to talk from an actual fact which you have seen - that the student must be free and therefore orderly - is totally different. When you as a teacher are free and orderly you are already communicating it, not only verbally but non-verbally and the student knows it immediately.

Once you see the fact that punishment and reward in any form are destructive, you never go back to them. By throwing them out, you yourself are disciplined and that discipline has come out of the freedom of examination. You communicate to the child the fact of that and not any idea. Then you have communicated to him not only verbally, but at a totally different level."

And a question came to my mind: Where are we speaking FROM?, Wherea are we acting FROM?

Awareness and existence

I was reading one of Ramana´s books, and I found this sentence:

"Do you remember, I told you once previously that existence and awareness are not two different things but one and the same?"

("Maharshi´s Gospel", page 94)

Education XVII: what we bring from our evolutionary past

My twins are now 1 year and 15 days old. Since they were 9 month old I have observed something in their behaviour which I find very interesting.

One is playing with, say, a small bottle, he is examining it, bringing it to his mouth. Then the other sees that object and comes to take the bottle from the other twin. Then screaming breaks out and the one having the bottle bites the other in the hand or the face or even the head. Sometimes biting is quite hard and painful. Both of them show this behavior. Of course, it does not happen all the time, it is a minority of times, but it happens.

Obviously, they have not seen this behaviour from us....so this reaction is not learned but it has to come in their genes, from their evolutionary past......

Many things are involved in this kind of incidents: a sense of possesion, a sense of me (I am possesing this object and somebody else, separate, comes to take it away), and violence, come in-built in our genes....they are expressions of our evolutionary history.......is a kind of evolutionary conditioning...acting all our life.....

Education XVI: the world is the teacher

I was watching one of my twins trying to climb a rock. He was getting better and better at it, was quite determined about it, and showed a great joy at trying it.

And an idea came to my mind: The real techer is not a person in a school..... the real teacher is the world. All is there.

And then I thought: Yes, two elements are the main teachers, and they are enough to learn it all. One is the world, and the other the capacity to look, not only outwardly, but more importantly inwardly.........

(photograph from: http://parkerlab.bio.uci.edu/nonscientific_adventures/canyonland_arches.htm)

real freedom

I go to work and in the car I listen to D. Bohm and Krishnamurti dialogue number 15, towards the end of it there is a part that I found remarkable:

K: .....................It means he must listen to me, but my brother refuses to listen.

DB: It seems that there are some actions which are not possible. If a person is caught in a certain thought such as fragmentation, then he can't change it, because there are a lot of other thoughts behind it.

K: Of course.

DB: Thoughts he doesn't know. He is not actually free to take this action because of the whole structure of thought that holds him.

And that sparks an idea in my mind: "Maybe real freedom is just to listen, to listen completely, because when you listen completely, there are no thoughts, no influences from my structure, from my past......and in those moments I am free of them..........

tsunami

My afection and solidarity for everybody that is suffering by today's tsunami.....we feel close to you.....

I think we are heading towards a world that feels like a unity....

(lower picture: children in Ahmedabad, India, by Amit Dave)

Education XV: behaviour 2

And keeping reading an answer came, a bit in an unexpected twist:

".....So there has to be affection, a sense of tenderness, kindliness, generosity. If there is such affection, then behaviour is dictated by that affection and is not dependent on environment, circumstance, or people. And to find that affection is one of the most difficult things .......
...... And so to have affection right through life is one of the most difficult things and without it life becomes very empty. You may have children, you may have a nice house, a car and all the rest of it, but without affection life is like a flower that has no scent. And it is part of education, is it not, to come to this affection, from which there is great joy, from which alone love can come?

Education XIV: behaviour

One of the most difficult things in life is to find a way of behaviour that is not dictated by circumstances. Circumstances and people dictate, or force you to behave in a certain way. The way you conduct yourself, the way you eat, the way you talk, your moral, your ethical behaviour depend on where you find yourself and so your behaviour is constantly varying, constantly changing.

This is so when you speak to your father, your mother or to your servant - your voice, your words, are quite different. The ways of behaviour are controlled by environmental influences, and by analysing behaviour you can almost predict what people will do or will not do.

Now can one ask oneself if one can behave the same inwardly, whatever the circumstances? Can one's behaviour spring from within and not depend on what people think of you or how they look at you? But that is difficult because one does not know what one is within. Within, a constant change is going on also. You are not what you were yesterday.

Now can one find for oneself a way of behaviour which is not dictated by others or by society or by circumstances or by religious sanctions, a way of behaviour that does not depend on environment?

(J. Krishnamurti "On Education", chapter 9)

Good point to ask ourselves and to raise in an educational setup

Education XIII

Student: If you have lots of time, how would you spend it, Sir?

Krishnamurti: I would do what I am doing. You see, if you love what you are doing, then you have all the leisure that you need in your life. Do you understand what I have said? You asked me what I would do if I had leisure. I said, I would do what I am doing; which is to go around different parts of the world, to talk, to see people and so on. I do it because I love to do it; not because I talk to a great many people and feel that I am very important. When you feel very important, you do not love what you are doing; you love yourself and not what you are doing. So, your concern should be not with what I am doing, but with what you are going to do. Right? I have told you what I am doing. Now you tell me what you will do, when you have plenty of leisure.

(Krishnamurti in "on education", chapter 8)

Humanity

Education XII. What is to learn from oneself and from outside?

It seems so important in education to learn about the world inside us, and the world outside......which means to "look" inside and to "look" outside.......Maybe they are not different....... it seems to me, if the looking inside and outside is the same, that is the "unifying" factor..........

This is the crucial question......how to look?

We are reading the book "on education" by J. Krishnamurti (where he is talking to young students) in the other blog, and so far there has been 3 occasions in which he describes meditation, which probably is this "looking".

Let's put these 3 pieces together to have a look at its beauty:

- "You must know fear and not escape from it so that you can look at fear. It is like going for a walk and suddenly coming upon a snake, jumping away and watching the snake. If you are very quiet, very still, unafraid, then you can look very closely, keeping a safe distance. You can look at the black tongue and the eyes that have no eyelids. You can look at the scales, the patterns of the skin. If you watch the snake very closely you see and appreciate it and perhaps have great affection for that snake. But you cannot look if you are afraid, if you run away"

- "Have you ever sat on the banks of a river and watched the water go by? You cannot do anything about the water. There is the clear water, the dead leaves, the branches. You see a dead animal go by, and you are watching all that. You see the movement of the water, the clarity of the water, the swift current of the water and the fullness of the water. But you cannot do anything. You watch and you let the water flow by"

- To learn about meditation, you have to see how your mind is working. You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall. You see all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall, and as you watch, you see all the movements. In the same way, watch your thinking. Do not correct it. Do not suppress it. Do not say, "All this is too difficult". Just watch

Education XI. Not just ideas, concepts.....

I was driving today, coming from a beautiful land, green, with a rough coastline where the sea and sky rival in beauty.
And I was listening in the car dialogue number 13th of "The ending of time" between David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti, and a section of this dialogue was something like this:

"K: So you see it is enormously difficult to be free of knowledge.

DB: We could ask, why doesn't knowledge wait until it is needed?

K: That means to be psychologically free of knowledge, but, when the need arises, to act from freedom, not from knowledge.

.........

K: That is freedom from knowledge. And being free, it is from freedom and not from knowledge that one communicates.

K:....... And if I am going to understand myself, I must be free to look."

And at that moment it flashed in my brain that we have been educated in ideas, in concepts, in opinions. A tremendous importance has been given to that, probably because this is the way our brain works...... I studied history and it was all knowledge, opinions about what had happened, who was "good" or "bad", all a virtual reality...and I realize I continue in my adult life living in a world of ideas, concepts......

Would it be possible to be aware of this and educate not giving so much importance to concepts, ideas....and educate giving importance to something real?

(No idea how, but the clarity about this need is there.....)

(photograph from the actual place described above, made yesterday by S. de Ch.)

Education X. The appreciation of beauty.

Two days ago I took my twins to the mountains. They are 10 month old. We went into a beautiful valley, there was snow, but the valley was wide and full of sun light. And it was very silent. Although both of them were at the beginning somehow agitated, slowly they quiet down, somehow they "melted" into the general quietness of the place.
I was carrying one of them in a kid carrier, on my chest. At one point I stopped to look at a small water stream. I was looking at the stream and something unexpected happened. I heard him giggling. I looked at him and he was looking at the water stream and smiling and giggling with excitement.
And I realized he was happy appreciating the beauty of the stream.

I always thought it was very important in education to educate to appreciate beauty. I did not know how. But when I heard my son giggling at the water stream, I realized the "seed" of appreciation of beauty is already there, probably in all of us. We do not need to educate for it. We just need to expose children to beauty....and in that interaction beauty will act on the "seed"...and make it germinate....
(no need to educate, no need for sophisticated approaches and educational techniques......all the material is already there....the seed and the beauty.......and, now, writing this, I have a doubt, a question: the seed and beauty, are they different, separate, things?.....)

(dedicated to N.C.D.)

Nisargadatta Maharaj's new web site

Manu Namasivayam kindly sends me his new Nisargadatta Maharaj's web site (http://nisargadatta.co.cc/ ), which looks very complete, and there are in it several quotes from Nisargadatta that I did not know, for instance, there is a section called "The last days: Last Teachings", from where I extracted these texts:

Sunday, 9 August 1981 (he died 8th September 1981)— The same young lady wanted to know whether the practice of observing a day every week as the 'day of silence' was a good one. Maharaj smiled and said that it would be an excellent practice if the significance of the word 'silence' was clearly understood. Maharaj explained: I have heard of certain Mahatmas and Gurus, greatly interested in politics, observing 'days of silence', when they do not speak but communicate with the aid of pen and paper. I am sure their throats get a lot of much-needed rest, but other than that, I doubt if there could be any other benefit. What I would understand by 'silence' is total absence of word and thought. Have you ever considered from where the word comes? Before a word becomes vocal, it has to be a thought; a movement in consciousness, and therefore, the source of the word as well as the thought is consciousness. Once you understand this, you will also understand that perfect silence can only be in the absence of thought— only when thought ceases, and conceptualization and objectivization are also suspended. When conceptualization ceases, identity, which is the basis of conceptualization, cannot remain, and in the absence of identity there is no bondage.

Friday, 17 July 1981 — You people have been coming here hoping all the time that I would give you a programme of what you should do in order to get 'liberation.' And what I keep telling you is that since there is no entity as such, the question of bondage does not arise; and that if one is not bound there is no need for liberation. All I can do is to show you that what you are is not what you think you are.

But what I say is not acceptable to most of you. And sortie of you go elsewhere, where they are happy to be given a list of do's and dont's. What is more, they act on such instructions with faith and diligence. But what they do not realize is that whatever they practise as an 'entity' only strengthens their identification with the illusory entity and, therefore, understanding of the Truth remains as far away as ever.

People imagine that they must somehow change themselves from imperfect human beings into perfect human beings known as sages. If only they would see the absurdity in this thinking. The one who is thinking along these lines is himself only a concept, an appearance, a character in a dream. How can a mere phenomenal phantom awaken from a dream by perfecting itself?