VSP

"I’m finding it almost impossible to write about the economic news right now. It’s not just the scale of the disaster; it’s the way we were led into disaster by Very Serious People who were quite sure that their prejudices somehow constituted wisdom."
(Paul Krugman, economist)

Patterns in the brain II

Today, a group of people organized a one-day Vipassana meditation course, and invited me. It was organized in one of these people's house in a small village. The house was humble but nice, without non-essential things (like luxuries). Nobody knew other people's lifes.

On several occassions the voice of S.N. Goenka would say "observe without craving and aversion".

And because I am working lately on brain patterns, I realized this is one of the most rooted pattern in our brain: craving and aversion.

Is it possible to be aware of such a pattern without falling into the pattern itself of craving and aversion?......

Patterns in the brain

I am driving and listening to Krishnamurti and David Bohm's dialogues in the series "The ending of time". My CD player is a bit old, so I can only listen to the first half of each disk.

Yesterday and today I have been listening to dialogue number 9 (actually chapter 10 in the book).

The beginning is so beautiful, I thought to share it here with whoever....

"I would like to talk over with you....... Man's brain has been evolving through millennia upon millennia, yet it has come to this divisive, destructive point, which we all know. So I am wondering whether the human brain - not a particular brain, but the human brain - is deteriorating? Whether it is just in a slow and steady decline? Or whether it is possible in one's lifetime to bring about in the brain a total renewal from all this; a renewal that will be pristine, original, unpolluted? I have been wondering about this, and I would like to discuss it.

I think the human brain is not a particular brain; it doesn't belong to me, or to anyone else. It is the human brain which has evolved over millions of years. And in that evolution it has gathered tremendous experience, knowledge and all the cruelties, vulgarities and brutalities of selfishness. Is there a possibility of its sloughing off all this, and becoming something else? Because apparently it is functioning in patterns. Whether it is a religious pattern, a scientific, a business, or a family pattern, it is always operating, functioning in small narrow circles. Those circles are clashing against each other, and there seems to be no end to this. So what will break down this forming of patterns, so that there is no falling into other new patterns, but breaking down the whole system of patterns, whether pleasant or unpleasant? After all, the brain has had many shocks, challenges and pressures upon it, and if it is not capable of renewing or rejuvenating itself, there is very little hope. You follow?"