Global Dialogue

Waves - Lives

2012-02-09T23:45:00.002Z

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

2012-02-07T09:24:00.003Z

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

2012-01-31T15:30:00.004Z

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

2012-01-01T12:18:00.005Z

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

2011-12-27T10:10:00.000Z

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......

2011-12-24T01:28:00.000Z

"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

2011-12-19T01:01:00.003Z

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

2011-11-14T23:12:00.003Z

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

2011-10-06T23:06:00.001+01:00

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

2011-09-26T13:01:00.004+01:00

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

2011-09-19T01:44:00.005+01:00

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?

2011-09-14T01:24:00.005+01:00

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

2011-09-02T01:19:00.002+01:00

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

2011-08-26T16:10:00.005+01:00

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

2011-07-31T22:36:00.000+01:00

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

Education XXI, Socrates

2011-07-27T22:14:00.005+01:00

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

2011-07-05T12:30:00.002+01:00

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"?

2011-06-27T00:11:00.010+01:00

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

2011-06-12T01:20:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-06-07T01:00:00.003+01:00

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

2011-06-02T14:30:00.005+01:00

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

2011-05-26T16:06:00.010+01:00

"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

2011-05-16T22:13:00.003+01:00

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

2011-05-07T16:14:00.004+01:00

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

2011-04-30T11:05:00.001+01:00

"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

2011-04-08T07:08:00.002+01:00

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?

2011-04-05T07:03:00.000+01:00

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

2011-04-03T00:29:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-26T21:14:00.004Z

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

2011-03-22T23:30:00.002Z

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

2011-03-15T07:34:00.000Z

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

2011-03-11T11:17:00.007Z

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

2011-03-09T21:10:00.000Z

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

2011-03-07T00:37:00.003Z

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

2011-03-04T15:05:00.002Z

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

2011-02-26T07:07:00.000Z

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

2011-02-23T07:28:00.002Z

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.....

2011-02-18T22:32:00.006Z

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.

2011-02-07T23:19:00.004Z

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

2011-01-24T21:15:00.009Z

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?

Steve Jobs adressing students

2011-01-23T22:14:00.004Z

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

(Steve Jobs, founder and creative soul of Apple Computer addressing students at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. You can read the full address in: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505)

how should a religious person live?

2011-01-20T23:20:00.004Z

Today I was thinking: how should a religious person live?
How should he earn a living?

(photograph by Armit Ere)

To look at yourself

2011-01-17T22:38:00.003Z

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; now, this morning.

(J. Krishnamurti, addressing young students in Rishi Valley, India. Passage extracted from the book "On Education")

(Dedicated to Hugo)

New Year, Self

2011-01-01T02:21:00.003Z

Let's start the new year with some chanting....

(Video from BeingnessTV)

How strange is to be alive

2010-12-23T23:02:00.004Z

Today a peculiar feeling crept into my mind: "how strange and fantastic is to be alive". Normally we are aware that we are doing something or that we want something or that we feel something ......Not the feeling of being able to do things or to think something....... No, just to be aware that one is alive.....simply that....

(from the dictionary: fan·tas·tic:

1. Quaint or strange in form, conception, or appearance.

a. Unrestrainedly fanciful; extravagant: fantastic hopes.

b. Bizarre, as in form or appearance; strange: fantastic attire; fantastic behavior.

c. Based on or existing only in fantasy; unreal: fantastic ideas about her own superiority.

3. Wonderful or superb; remarkable: a fantastic trip to Europe.)

Impermanence II

2010-12-15T21:27:00.004Z

I have been thinking a lot and looking at things under the "impermanence" optic....

In the entry "Impermanence I" of october 11th, I wrote that:

"In the millions of years of the universe existence, has there been two moments in which the universe has been identical? Does this continuous change anything to do with impermanence? If there are not two moments in which the universe was identical, that means that there is no permanence.....not only it does not exists now, but there has never been.... That means that from the very beginning of the universe, impermanence has been a constant feature......"

And these days it seems to me that our mind, essentially, works on the premises of permanence. It is almost as if it would not consider the fact that impermanence is a kind of law...
Yesterday I got a "feeling" that was difficult to crystallize in words, but I will try here. It was something like this: when the mind projects a future, this projection is based on permanence, it is a kind of permanence.....it does not take into account impermanence......not to take into account such an important law makes this projection a kind of unreal projection.......which makes the present the only real thing.....
Same with the so called "ego". It is a kind of "permanent" projection......

(Picture is titled "impermanence" by Jason Theaker, http://www.flickr.com/people/photoimage/)

dentist waiting room

2010-12-11T13:00:00.000Z

One of the best things about going to the dentist is to sit in the waiting room. I always feel very relaxed, as I know I have to be there, I am not wasting time, there is not the feeling that I should be doing something else....

Yesterday I went to the dentist (my dear and admired J., it is so obvious that he tries to do the best work he can, that always when I come out I feel like doing also my best in my job). The waiting room was quite full, and the "gossip" magazines were all taken, so I had to take a kind of "scientific" magazine titled something like "Very Interesting".

And I found an article titled "how do we spend our life?", and I found it very interesting, so I asked the nurse for a pen, and I copied a graph from the article: "If a person lives 70 years, he/she spends:
- 11 years: in housekeeping (washing, cleaning, cooking, etc)
- 13 years: studying and/or working
- 17 years: free time
- 29 years: vital functions (sleeping, eating, hygiene, etc.)

So, I thought, only 17 years of free time out of 70......and something came to my mind then. If we leave the religious "practice" for our free time, kind of separate from the rest of our lives, it is a very small proportion of our life....and I remembered what Krishnamurti said: "meditation" should be all the time, even in our "normal" daily life...

life outside Earth

2010-12-08T17:56:00.000Z

An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold — comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced (Sept. 29).

If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g, would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star's habitable zone — a region where a planet's temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface.

And the planet's discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there.

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

The star is located 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

Red dwarf stars are about 50 times dimmer than our sun. Since these stars are so much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them and still remain in the habitable zone.

Estimates suggest Gliese 581g is close enough to its star to be able to complete an orbit in just under 37 days.

With support from the National Science Foundation and NASA, the scientists — members of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey — collected 11 years of radial velocity data on the star. This method looks at a star's tiny movements due to the gravitational tug from orbiting bodies.

The subtle tugs let researchers estimate the planet's mass and orbital period, how long it takes to circle its star.

Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times Earth's, the researchers estimated. From the mass and size, they said the world is probably a rocky planet with enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.

Just as Mercury is locked facing the sun, the planet is tidally locked to its star, so that one side basks in perpetual daylight, while the other side remains in darkness. This locked configuration helps to stabilize the planet's surface climate, Vogt said.

But whether Gliese 581g harbors life may not be the most striking aspect of this find. Vogt says the discovery of a potentially habitable world less than 100 light-years away means that habitable worlds may be much more common than astronomers thought. Given the number of stars in the Milky Way, Vogt explains, that could mean there are "potentially billions" of Earth-like worlds out there.

With the vastness of the universe, and the innumerable possibilities of combinations, it seems to me that the existence of life outside Earth might be not only possible, but unavoidable.... What if this life has been only 1000 years ahead of us in development? If they have gone through the challenges and difficulties we are going through now? their consciousness has gone through the evolutionary shaping process? What would be the impact on us if we could eventually communicate with such forms of life? By the way, what is life? is it something that comes up from a certain environment and evolves interacting with the evolving environment? is it just a type of manifestation in the universe?, is it separate from it?......

(This artist's conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host star, a red dwarf star only 20 light years away from Earth. The large planet in the foreground is the newly discovered GJ 581g, which has a 37-day orbit right in the middle of the star's habitable zone and is only three to four times the mass of Earth, with a diameter 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth. Credit: Lynette Cook) (Text and image taken from www.space.com)

The Obsolete Consciousness VII: The Holocaust part II

2010-12-05T21:08:00.010Z

(Children walking to the gas chamber in Birkenau)

In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed by the SS Men. The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews.

But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis.

The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.

The SS Men wore black uniforms with a skeleton's head on their hats, the motto "Unsere Ehre heisst Treue" (Our honor is loyalty) on their belts and their symbol was the double S-rune. They had sworn eternal faith to Adolf Hitler and they were his most ruthless henchmen, men often seen as the very personifications of evil.

These masterminds of death were found to be quite psychologically normal. They were men of fine standing, husbands who morning and night kissed their wives, fathers who tucked their children into bed.

But murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts were an everyday occurrence.

Stangl (Treblinka's commandant), Hoss (Auschwitz's commandant) and Bergen commandants were quite "normal" people, Eichmann the same, they wanted to do a good job, wanted to ascend in the ranks, be respected in the SS, be loyal to their group, be somebody.....

The "will to power" (german: "der Wille zur Macht") concept, describes what Friedrich Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in all living things. Briefly, it means that all living species try to prevail over the rest of species, even if that meant to violently exterminate those species.

The holocaust is very difficult to comprehend. But it comes to my mind several factors that led to it:

1) It seems to me that a big part of our conditioning does not come through things that happen in our life time, but rather we inherit from our long distant evolutionary past. So, one possible factor is this "will to power" that Nietzsche is referring to, the intrinsic tendency in all living things to try to prevail over other living groups. The tendency of one group to destroy other groups, and thus survive better.

2) The strong "drive for security" of all living creatures. And the security inside a group is to be well regarded, to do a good job, to be respected in that group, to be somebody....This is also a conditioning coming from a long distant evolutionary past...

3) The tremendous conditioning through propaganda that happened in the 3rd reich ("Jews are evil", "ubermensch", to get more "lebensraum" (living space), etc.....)

1, 2 and 3 are not separate entities, but there is a lot of overlap between them. We already may be conditioned with 1 and 2 when we are born. Number 3 may happen during our life time, with different degrees of intensity.....

And now comes the terrible question: properly conditioned, could any one of us be a nazi?

The Obsolete Consciousness VI: The Holocaust part I

2010-11-27T19:09:00.000Z

I read this book last spring, and I wanted to share it with you, and hopefully engage in a dialogue about its content.

Only four men commanded Nazi extermination (as opposed to concentration) camps. Franz Stangl was the "Kommandant" of Treblinka, one of the most terrible camps. After the war he escaped to Syria and then Brazil, where he lived with his family and worked in a factory.
After extradition to Germany, he was tried for the deaths of around 1,200,000 people. He admitted to these killings but argued: "My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty ...". Found guilty on October 22, 1970, Stangl was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of a heart attack on June 28, 1971.

Gitta Sereny talked to him in prison for about 70 hours, asked him questions of how he came about to be in charge of an extermination camp, how he felt then, how he was feeling now, what relationship he had with his family.
I think she does not go deep enough (maybe it is not possible) in the psychological roots of organized cruelty, I have the feeling that Stangl himself does not know how it all happened, only that it happened. But this unique book has some parts which are quite thought provoking.

One point that emerge from reading the book is that Stangl was not a psychopath or a nazi fanatic. He was rather a "grey" person, a person that wanted to please his superiors, that wanted to ascend in the rank, that wanted to do a "good" job, that wanted to be somebody.....and on top of all he loved his family (!!!)

It seems that the main power behind the holocaust was an IDEA. Just an idea. The idea of a superior race (übermensch). And the moment you project the idea of a superior race, automatically you have inferior races. What a power an idea, a thought, could have.

And how obsolete a consciousness that can generate and pursuit to the end, unchequed, such idea.....

Education IX

2010-11-11T22:57:00.000Z

I read Krishnamurti´s book "On education". The very first entry starts with such a beautiful text:

You know, you live in one of the most beautiful valleys I have seen. It has a special atmosphere. Have you noticed, especially in the evenings and early mornings, a quality of silence which permeates, which penetrates the valley?........and wherever you go, in cities or in other places, man is destroying nature, cutting down trees to build more houses, polluting the air with cars and industry......but probably you have become used to it. You do not look at the hills any more, you do not listen to the birds any more and to the wind among the leaves. So you have gradually become indifferent.....

Education is not only learning from books, memorizing some facts, but also learning how to look, how to listen.....Education is not just to pass examinations, take a degree and a job, get married and settle down, but also to be able to listen to the birds, to see the sky, to see the extraordinary beauty of a tree, and the shape of the hills, and to feel with them, to be really, directly in touch with them. As you grow older, that sense of listening, seeing, unfortunately disappears because you have worries, you want more money, a better car, more children or less children. You become jealous, ambitious, greedy, envious; so you lose the sense of the beauty of the earth....... And you will grow up to fit into this. Is this right, is this what education is meant for, that you should willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called society?

..... you will conform, because that is the easiest way to live.....You have to change society.... Society is you and I. You and I create the society in which we live. So you have to change..... And you, living in this extraordinary valley,.....Are you going to conform, fit in, accept all the old values? ....... But if you now begin to think, to observe, to learn, not from books, but learn for yourself by watching, listening to everything that is happening around you, you will grow up to be a different human being - one who cares, who has affection, who loves people. Perhaps if you live that way, you might find a truly religious life.....

Do you know what it means to attend, to pay attention? ..... See the totality of the tree. Look at it that way, because I am going to talk about something to which you have to pay attention. Attention is very important, in the class, as well as when you are outside, when you are eating, when you are walking. Attention is an extraordinary thing.

I am going to ask you something. Why are you being educated? Do you understand my question? Your parents send you to school. You attend classes, you learn mathematics, you learn geography, you learn history. Why? Have you ever asked why you want to be educated, what is the point of being educated? What is the point of your passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job and settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Is that what you are going to do, is that the meaning of education? ....Human beings throughout the world.....are being educated to conform, to fit into society and into their culture, to fit into the stream of social and economical activity, to be sucked into that vast stream that has been flowing for thousands of years. Is that education, or is education something entirely different? Can education see to it that the human mind is not drawn into that vast stream and so destroyed; see that the mind is never sucked into that stream; .....That stream is our culture. So, the question is how to bring about the right kind of education so that the mind can withstand all temptations, all influences, the bestiality of this civilization and this culture.

We have come to a point in history where we have to create a new culture, a totally different kind of existence, .....but a culture based upon a real quality of religion. Now how does one bring about, through education, a mind that is entirely different, a mind that is not greedy, not envious? How does one create a mind that is not ambitious, that is extraordinarily active, efficient; that has a real perception of what is true in daily life which is after all religion.

(.....means a part of the text has been edited out. If you want to read the whole text go to: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=43&chid=297&w=krishnamurti+%22on+education%22)

It seems to me such an important book, that I feel one should not just read it, but STUDY it. And why not study it together with other people?. So, I opened a new blog, called "Studying Krishnamurti". You can see it here.
I transcribe here some of the intentions of this blog:

"Why study? What is to study? To study is to try to realize the full meaning originally intended in a text. To study is to go SLOWLY over the text, with an open mind, suspending our conditioning, and letting the meaning of the text emerge (both locally as a sentence and as whole text). It has nothing to do with casually reading....

Why together? It is our experience that a group of people reading the same text together and commenting what they read, is like looking from many different angles. This way of reading has always worked very well. With the advent of internet, it is hoped that people from very far, unlikely to get physically together, could "come together" and study something together....

This blog does not belong to anybody in particular. It belongs to the people using it. Anybody can suggest a book or an audio or even a video tape, to be studied together. Moderation will be kept to a minimum.
For the people that do not have the paper book, it will be suggested where to download it. In this case, it is suggested that a small donation is made to the corresponding foundation."

vertigo

2010-11-08T10:00:00.000Z

I have been 6 days in bed struck by a strong vertigo attack. One cannot move from bed, or the nausea and dizziness became strong. It is like intense sea-sickness, but prolongued. I noticed three things:

- In the first 48 hours, the feeling of sickness was at its peak, and I would sleep on and off, and several times I had the feeling that to die is something like that. Not a big deal. Something like a feeling of being unwell and then slip into unconsciousness....

- I tried to be as "present" as I could, but I realized how difficult is to be "present" with an unpleasant physical feeling. For instance, it was very difficult to be "present", or "mindful", of the nausea feeling. How strong and overriding is the body´s reality......

- As most diseases, this vertigo attack was psicosomatic. I realized several unconfortable to see things about me that have been constant throughout my life. The interesting thing is that one is very honest about oneself when sick........

The obsolete consciousness V

2010-11-01T14:55:00.008Z

The organization Banktrack has released a study showing which finantial institutions/banks are financing the companies manufacturing cluster bombs.

Cluster munitions pose a serious threat to civilian populations during and after a conflict. Cluster munitions are designed to blanket a large area, sometimes as big as 4-5 football fields. They spread a large number, sometimes close to 2000, of submunitions or bomblets. Distribution of submunitions over such a broad area results in a large chance of civilian casualties during and after the attack. Many bomblets or submunitions fail to explode on impact. They remain on the ground like landmines that kill and injure civilians long after the conflict has ended. 98% of cluster munitions victims are civilians.

A part of the consciousness has created a huge finantial system to have its own security no matter if it is by using force and maiming another part. It considers itself a part, separate from the whole. Such economic system, based on this fragmented consciousness, can never be fair and seems to lead to imbalance and conflict......

(picture, above: a boy wounded by a cluster bomb in Irak in 2003, by A. Niedringhaus; below, a cluster bomb)

Feelings arise from a mind not at peace....

2010-10-30T22:43:00.006+01:00

A person close to me sends me a letter today:

"Last couple of days have been very bad here for me. I have known 'hell'. I was tired and resentful. And everything kept going from bad to worse. A vicious circle. I have known 'heaven' too (as a figure of speech). I have felt free, joyful, abundant, with an expansive, quiet and reconciled energy. But the last two days the 'ego' struck me hard. Made me evil, desperate, despondent. I only wanted to ESCAPE. And I couldn't. I have known the 'peaks of ecstasy' and the 'depths of despair'. Such contrasts! Today, not in its grips any longer, I see that FEELINGS control us. That they arise from a MIND not at peace. That the only real escape rests in the mind, nowhere else."

Like a good doctor she made a precise diagnosis, and pointed to the root cause of the illness....

What is a mind at peace?. It cannot be one part trying to control another part.....that would not be peace.......so, what is it?

(dedicated to E.)

sense of humor

2010-10-27T16:49:00.001+01:00

Two things I have read this week that made me laugh:

- "if you beleive you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents" (Ram Dass, quoted by Eckhart Tolle in his book " A new Earth")
(My own particular version: "If you think you have progressed a bit on the spiritual path, go and have twins"....).

- "The only opinion that really matters to me is my own" (Karl Lagerfeld, fashion designer)

"continuum"

2010-10-25T12:43:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I was swimming in the sea, and an "strange" feeling came to me: "what if the mind is a continuum with the blue of the sea, with the ocean or with some more?"

Context II

2010-10-22T21:00:00.000+01:00

The other day something happened that could perfectly have made me irritated.
But it did not. And I realized I was not irritated because the morning that it happened, I was feeling good and relaxed......So the mental environment, the context, with which we receive the stimulus, makes a big difference in what we feel...if we have a mental environment of dissatisfaction, or of anxiety, etc, it will influence very much how we react to things, how we perceive life....

Sometimes this "mental environment" comes from a far away past, and has stayed, it has become part of the regular functioning of our brain.....it has become "chronic", a "chronic mental environment".....a part of what we call "personality".....

Is it possible to feel, to be aware of this mental environment, mental context?.......could we have a kind of "propriocepcion" to it?...... could we try right now?......

irritation and compassion

2010-10-17T20:00:00.004+01:00

How easy is to react with irritation and anger....
and how difficult is to react with understanding and compassion.....
.....a sign of a shallow mind?

Education VIII

2010-10-14T19:24:00.004+01:00

Can we see the limitations of a shallow mind?.....

And can we have a feeling for a mind that has space, a big space....that is not narrowed by spinning continously around something, that is not full of worries and fears about security, that is not narrowed too much by the sense of "being somebody"......that can see all the limitations, that can see its own space....

But can one educate to have such "big space" mind?...... How?.....

(picture: "Shallow Water" (6x8") oil painting by Todd Bonita)

The shallow mind

2010-10-14T19:20:00.002+01:00

What is a shallow mind?

A shallow mind is the mind that has very little energy to go into the religious aspect of life....(although it has plenty of energy for other things....)

to be special

2010-10-13T00:15:00.003+01:00

I am spending time near the sea, and I see many people with tattoos.

We all want to be special, different....

There isn´t anything as ordinary as wanting to be special.....

Impermanence I

2010-10-11T21:16:00.008+01:00

Today I was walking with H., we looked at the sky and we were wondering if in the millions of years of existence of our planet, there has ever been two identical clouds.....

In the millions of years of the universe existence, has there been two moments in which the universe has been identical?

Does this continuous change anything to do with impermanence?
If there are not two moments in which the universe was identical, that means that there is no permanence.....not only it does not exists now, but there has never been....
That means that from the very beginning of the universe, impermanence has been a constant feature......how could we expect it now???

And is there a relationship between impermanence and infinite potential (or it could be called multiplicity)?. They seem related to me. If there haven´t been two identical moments in such a length of time, that means a tremendous capacity to generate diversity......so, maybe, after all, impermanence is related to creativity......

Only our mind tends to want to put everything in a continuity, in a changeless state......by putting this total multiplicity into patterns.....

Education VII

2010-10-06T00:19:00.004+01:00

Last night I saw a beautiful and inspiring film: "How to cook your life" (2007). Zen cook and monk Edward Espe Brown explains how to prepare bread and other foods.

But it is not only about food. Brown interlaces the preparation of food to topics as anger, anxiety, the mind and suffering.

This is how education has to be understood, and Edward Espe Brown acts as a real educator. He takes a seemingly simple act (as cooking), and uses it to go to very real and deep subjects of everyday life.

Watching the film several points popped up in my mind:

- A real teacher is not the product of many clever courses about (alternative or wholistic) education. It is the depth of the person who is a teacher that makes a difference.

- What is the role of religious people in a new kind of education? Should they come out of their monasteries and get more involved in education?

- Education cannot be just passing information-knowledge. Edward Espe Brown takes one subject like cooking and explores the relationship of the student with the subject, the relationship between the people in the class/group, the relation of the students with their own mind and the relationship of the student´s mind with life in general. And still learning something technical, like bread making, in a highly skilled way. One highlight of the film is when he refers to the bumps that have the metal tea pots, and he says they are a symbol for a person, as life inevitably produces bumps on you, but he refers to the dignity of the tea pots still serving its function.

- Another thing that popped in my mind, a bit unrelated to the film, was that if we want to send our children to a school, we should know the school really thoroughly, not just by references. In that sense, schools should offer some classes to the parents, so one could know firsthand the school and the teachers.

You could see a small clip of this film here.

Education VI

2010-10-04T21:07:00.000+01:00

I am observing how my young twins develop. Since they are 3 month old, something happens that I did not understand at the beginning: when they are laid down they cry ferociously.

They calm down when you pick them up and show them things or when they are contemplating a new thing.

And the idea came to my mind that their brain (at this stage, at least) needs this stimulus to develop. Lines, textures, flavors, colours, not only feed information, but make the brain develop.

It is a kind of hunger. Same as the body is hungry for food to develop, the world is the food for the brain development.......

So, at this stage, we do not have to give any education, only to allow their exposure to the world.

The obsolete consciousness IV

2010-09-30T00:21:00.000+01:00

The picture top most was taken from Marie Claire (September 2010), a well known fashion magazine. The text to the right of the picture says:
Jacket, 1990$, by Oscar de la Renta;
top, 595 $, Phillip Lim;
pants, 147$, Plastic Island;
shoes, 1395$, Michael Kors;
ring, 280$, Alexander McQueen

The bottom picture is a child picking through trash at a garbage dump in Philippines (1990).

These huge differences are another sign of an obsolete consciousness.......

Education V

2010-09-28T01:19:00.001+01:00

My friend A. told me that when his daughter was born he took her in his hands and thought: " There is intelligence already here"....

This morning I was looking to one of my 6 month old twins and I saw this intelligence in his eyes......

So intelligence is already there. We do not have to produce it by means of so called education. Actually it would be completely impossible to do it. It would be more difficult than creating a new organ, a new arm.....

So, if intelligence is already there, what are the implications for education?.....
Do we have to add or to remove layers that prevent its expression?
Is education a process of adding or of uncovering?
If it is uncovering, mainly, what does it have to be uncovered, and what is the covering factor(s)?........

The obsolete consciousness III

2010-09-21T23:37:00.005+01:00

The Aral sea from space in 1985

The Aral sea from space in 2009

The Aral Sea was one of the four largest lakes of the world with an area of 68,000 square kilometres (26,000 sq mi), the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by the Soviet Union for cotton irrigation projects. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size.

The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The retreat of the sea has reportedly also caused local climate change, with summers becoming hotter and drier, and winters colder and longer.

The ecosystem of the Aral Sea has been nearly destroyed, not least because of the much higher salinity. The receding sea has left huge plains covered with salt and toxic chemicals – the results of wepons testing, industrial projects, pesticides and fertilizer runoff – which are picked up and carried away by the wind as toxic dust and spread to the surrounding area. The land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted and the people living in the area are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates of certain forms of cancer, lung diseases, tuberculosis and certain types of cancer. Infectious diseases are common ailments in the region and liver, kidney and eye problems can also be attributed to the toxic dust storms. Health concerns associated with the region are a cause for an unusually high fatality rate amongst children and pregnant women.

This kind of separation from Nature and this kind of interaction with the environment is another sign of this obsolete consciousness.......

Education IV

2010-09-20T23:09:00.006+01:00

I was reading through the Chidaksha Geeta by Bhagawan Nityananda, and I found this entry about education:

"A man or women should be educated. What is education? Jeeva should know the secret that He is the Paramatman."

"Explanations (from the lady that collected these teachings, Tulsiamma): That which we get in schools and colleges is no real education; that by which we recognise the unity of Jeevatma and Paramatma is real education. That which we ordinarily get is called "Apara-Vidya" (Inferior Knowledge); that which we get from a spiritual preceptor is called the "Para-Vidya" (Superior Knowledge). Man or Woman must be educated in the spiritual education i.e. they must realise the unity of Jeeva with Siva. This is real education."

- Jeeva: a jiva is a living being,or more specifically, the immortal essence of an individual living organism (human, animal, fish or plant etc.) which survives physical death.
- Paramatman: the whole Universe

(Bhagawan Nityananda born November/December, 1897 in Kerala, South India – died August 8, 1961.
Nityananda gave relatively little by way of verbal teachings. Most of the time he was silent, though occasionally he would give teachings. A devotee named Tulsiamma wrote down some of his teachings and his answers to her specific queries. Later, these notes came to be known as the Chidaksha Geeta.)

If interested, you can download the Chidaksha Geeta in here.

parenthood

2010-09-16T23:42:00.003+01:00

How do you know that you love your children?

When you became a father most things change. The first thing that changes is the (cherished) sense of freedom of going here or there, of deciding by yourself what to do....the being constantly around the newborn. The changes in how you relate to your friends. To live in a different place than the one you want. The impossibility to be quiet, to read. Sometimes they could drive you to your limits. The change in mealtimes, in sleep patterns.....

Trying to answer the question posted above, I think is when their happiness is more important for you than the troubles you are going through.....or to put it in another way, when their happiness is more important to you than your suffering......

consciousness

2010-08-31T03:57:00.005+01:00

When you became completely conscious of the consciousness you are in,
then you are out of it....

what is the purpose of education?

2010-08-28T00:38:00.005+01:00

what is the purpose of education?

I was thinking about this question. There are many things which are important. But I was thinking what is the top of the piramid?...the thing from where all else cames from?....

And it flashed in my mind that the purpose of education is to know who you (really) are.

All else might be secondary......

It seems to me this is common with spirituality, as we could say that the purpose of spirituality is to know who you (really) are.........

And now....what?

"everything that you understand,you can only understand through concepts"

2010-08-27T11:58:00.005+01:00

"Everything that you understand,
you can only understand through concepts"

(Nisargadatta Maharaj)

It should be VERY important that we are aware of this limitation.......

solidarity

2010-08-26T14:15:00.004+01:00

I was reading about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and I wanted to share a couple of paragraphs:

"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough."

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway."

And also I found her inner doubts, very likely a product of her intense inner search and questioning:

"Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

have we human beings solidarity by nature?

I look in the dictionary, and I found that solidarity comes from the french "solide" (solid), almost implying that solidarity comes from a sense of unity of "all one"......

(From the dictionary: Solidarity, from French solidarité "mutual responsibility," a coinage of the "Encyclopédie" (1765), from solidaire "interdependent, complete, entire," from solide (solid))

solidarity...to a girl in Pakistan

2010-08-17T23:15:00.006+01:00

She is 7 or 8 years old. One can see the distress in her face. Probably she is hungry, maybe she got separated from her family. But she is helping her little brother. I can see how she supports her right thumb in her left sleeve. Probably she has been carrying him for hours and her arm is tired. She has put her own scarf over him to protect him from the rain. They are both soaked....but she goes on....

My affection for you, little girl. You simbolize the best of us. I hope all goes well with you.

(Picture by Adrees Latif on the flooding in Pakistan)
(dedicated to E.G.)

“To be the best me I can be today.”

2010-08-15T22:55:00.003+01:00

I am subscribed to a Multiple Sclerosis association, and in a mail arrived today they tell the story of Jim Dunlap. His story is one of courage and strength. Jim was a former professional bike racer and cycling team manager who is now forced to cope with the everyday struggles of living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

The unexpected and uncontrollable symptoms of MS have created new and unforeseen obstacles for him. His ability to walk was first encumbered by the need for a cane, and now he relies on a wheelchair to get around.

To Jim what is important is to accept the obstacles that arise every day and “To be the best me I can be today.”.

(Dedicated to the many, many anonymous heroes living everyday life, the mother that takes such care for her babies, the truck driver exhausted at the wheel because he loves his sons, the people that endure long hours of physical pain or dissability, the people in a monastery or with a normal life that are trying to advance this conscioussness......etc, etc, etc. )

silence

2010-08-13T23:47:00.000+01:00

Is silence just the absence of sound?

The obsolete consciousness II

2010-08-07T00:29:00.005+01:00

On August 6th 1945, at 8:15 a.m. local time, the plane Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb onto Hiroshima. Just 43 seconds later it exploded 1,900 feet above the city, killing 140.000 people.

One part of this obsolete consciousness had learned how to obtain energy by splitting matter. Another part had decided to use this knowledge to fight another part of the same consciousness, divided by something called nationality. Another part flew over Hiroshima and dropped it..... Then a part of the consciousness celebrated the success with joy and another part was crying with pain......

(see a re-enactment in this video)

When is the learning?

2010-07-31T15:11:00.002+01:00

We were in a dialogue, part of an education course. Then C. asked the question: "when is the learning taking place?"......

And in that moment something "flashed" on my mind: "all learning can only be in the present moment"...

I know it sounds even topical, or obvious....but it impressed me as something new and important......

The obsolete consciousness I

2010-07-28T00:24:00.004+01:00

The Dongria Kondhas people inhabit the plateaus of the Niyamgiri hills in India. The Niyamgiri Hills where the Dongria Kondh dwell are covered by superb natural forests and home to many rare species like the Golden Gecko and the Giant Squirrel. The Dongria Kondh call themselves Jharnia meaning those who live by the Jharana (streams). Hundreds of perennial streams flow from Niyamgiri hill, and there are hundreds of Dongria villages by the streams. The Dongria are the protectors of these streams, hills and jungles and are revered by people in the nearby plains.

A british based mining company, named Vedanta (ironic name as "vedanta" refers to the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of Knowledge), wants to turn the the Niyamgiri mountains into a giant bauxite mine to feed its refinery at the foot of the mountain.

It is the mineral wealth lying beneath the slopes of the Niyamgiri mountains that has drawn Vedanta to Niyamgiri. If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed, too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh.

This is a manifestation of the obsolete consciousness which has been pervasive in this time of human evolution.....

See the video

crisis in the outside world mirrors the crisis inside

2010-07-24T21:55:00.004+01:00

It was a dialogue between people interested in education.

Suddenly one person asked: "Where is the crisis?"

And in that moment I saw, not theoretically or intellectually, but with clarity, that the crisis inside me was identical to the crisis in the outside world.

I was in conflict and the world is in conflict. I was trying to be better, and the world is also trying to be better. I am searching for security and the world too.....

A rock

2010-06-30T18:22:00.003+01:00

There is something changeless, motionless,
immovable, rock-like, unassailable;
a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss.
I am never out of it.
Nothing can take me out of it,
no torture, no calamity.

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Marcus Aurelius

2010-06-10T21:14:00.004+01:00

Some quotes from his book"Meditations":

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment"

"Your life is what your thoughts make it"

"Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided."

(Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, born on the year 121- died on the year 180)

Roots in the mind

2010-06-04T17:24:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, at work, I had a problem with a person. There was some tension and some things were said.....This morning, the first thing that came to my mind when I woke up was this incident. "I should have said this and that, I should have not said this and that....."

And then I realized how important is to realize how some thoughts want and do take roots in our mind. That thought of yesterday's incident was forming roots and wanted to stay, to condition the mind.

It would be important to realize this phenomenon, and thus not allow it. It seems to me that painful (including fearful) thoughts take roots in our brain, and influence future behaviour, future reactions, that is, conditions our mind.

The extreme situation is when a thought takes roots and comes and comes again, becoming a kind of obsession. This clearly will influence our lives in a negative way.

This is why to realize this phenomenon, from subtle to extreme, would be important. At least that is what seemed to me today. What is your feeling?......

A chair........

2010-06-01T14:24:00.000+01:00

Something that happenend in last night´s shift around 2:00 AM:

- A (patient, a young man of around 28): I have come because for 3 weeks I feel very depressed, all my symptoms have worsened, the anxiety, I spend the whole day performing "rituals", there are different ones, maybe I open and close a drawer fifty times. I have different obsessions. I am very religious and I do not mind to talk to god aloud on the streets, even if people look at me in a funny way, sometimes I just kneel down on the street and pray. But all this is wearing me down, I feel exhausted, deppressed, I do not want to live anymore. It all started 9 years ago, when my grandfather died, I was very close to him, I did a lot of sports, I was good at them and I was training to be a carpenter, but now I have 6 different medications for these problems, I do not work. Today all came to a point in which I cannot bear it anymore......

- B (practitioner): you have to understand one thing, please. I am working here not to tell you nice things or be complacent with you, but to tell you things that I think are true and maybe you might find difficult or strange....

-A: right....

-B: Look at this chair. If a chair would be conscious of being a chair....would it still be a chair?

-A: I do not think I understand....

-B: Yes, If a chair would become aware that it is a chair, if it would become aware of its existence as a chair, aware that it has 4 legs, that is an object for people to sit on her, aware that she was made and that she is decaying....completely aware of its "chairness".....would it still be a chair?....

-A: I do not know if I understand you, but a chair is normally not aware of being a chair. If it would be aware, then, it would not be anymore a chair as we know it .....

-B: That´s what I mean....it would continue having the shape of a chair....it would look still like a chair....people could still use it to sit, etc....but it would not be a chair anymore.....because chairs are not aware of being chairs...

A: ok....., but.......

-B: In the same way, if YOU would be completely aware of your condition, you would not be the "you" that is now. If you would be completely aware of all your rituals, your obssessions, your fears, the unstable balance you have came to have with all that, and even the nature of your nature.....then you would not be that....
I am not asking you that you change anything, continue with your rituals as they are now....but just be intensely aware as everything happens.....

-A: I am not sure I follow you....but would that help me?

-B: Don't do it for a goal, do it out of desperation, do it because it might be the only way, and a change might or might not happen, it will have a dynamic of its own.....go home now and work on this.....

what moves the world?

2010-05-26T12:16:00.005+01:00

I was trying to get breakfast this morning in the dinning hall of my working place, and when I passed in front of the kitchen door, I saw this youngish woman working in front of a grill there.
The kitchen had no windows and was probably hot. And she was there seriously working grilling some food.....

And I thought "why does she work there?"....and an answer came to my head: "she might have a son and she wants the best for him and she works there for him......she was doing it because of love........"

Then I remember that I thought something similar the other day when I was going in a bus: "what makes this driver come day after day and do this mechanical repetitive job, day after day, year after year?.......and I remember that a similar idea came to my mind: "he might have a daughter or a couple of dauhgters....and he loves them....and so he kind of do this for some kind of love......but love nevertheless......"

And I was still waiting on the line to get breakfast and a weird idea, or rather a question, appeared in my mind: " is it possible that loves moves this world more than we imagined?"....

Suffering

2010-05-03T00:53:00.000+01:00

I had finished last night shift, I had changed my clothes and I was walking out, when I crossed in a corridor a middle age lady on a bed, being pushed. Walking behind, a man, possibly a boyfriend or a husband. On her face there was a lot of suffering and grief.

And a question crossed my mind: what is the origin of all human suffering?.
Then I realized the Buddha had asked that question and answered it....but I did not remember his answer. Can we leave that question open, for as long as it takes, without taking answers from anybody?

wars: big and small ones

2010-04-30T22:01:00.003+01:00

If you ask anybody, most people would be completely against war. They do not understand how they could happen. They would blame some evil people that manipulate other people......

This morning at work, some of my colleagues were talking about another one in a really bad way, and gathering signatures against her, planning a meeting to discuss ways to remove her, etc......there was a lot of violence, disrespect and ill feelings.

I think I remember Krishnamurti saying that war was not only the one between countries, but the war with our neighbours, our wives, our co-workers, even ourselves. The big wars "mirror" the small ones......

(Picture above: Phan Thi Kim Phúc, center left, running naked down a road near Trang Bang after a napalm attack in Vietnam on 8th June 1972. In an interview many years later, she recalled she was yelling "Nóng quá, nóng quá" ("too hot, too hot") in the picture. After a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, however, she was able to return home.)

Hari Om Tat Sat

2010-04-21T23:03:00.003+01:00

I was sitting at a table and somebody asked "what does it mean Hari Om Tat Sat?"

I had never heard that expression.

My friend answered: "I think it means: what is now is all there is"

Nature and technology

2010-04-17T12:03:00.006+01:00

It has some kind of beauty to see that a volcano can stop quite a "solid" and sophisticated human activity, as flying.

The eruption of Eyjafjall volcano on Iceland on 14 April 2010 threw volcanic ash several kilometres up in the atmosphere which led to air travel disruptions in Northwest Europe on April 15-17, including the closure of airspace over most of Europe.Only on friday the 16th, 17,000 flights, more than half of Europe's average 28,000 daily flights, had to be cancelled.

28,000 daily flights, just in Europe?.....that was the news.....but how many flights are there daily in the whole world?

This has been difficult to research on the net. According to NATCA, the US National Air Traffic Controllers Association, only in the US, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies on any given day. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights.

I could not find a good source in Internet that would tell me the total flight number in the world per day. But if there are 87,000 in the USA and 28,000 just in Europe, let's guess another 30,000 for the rest of the world......that sums around 150,000 for the whole world...in a single day !! (isn't that a bit too much?...)

While researching the above figures, I found a study by scientists in the Zurich School of Applied Sciences. They traced every flight in the world over a 24-hour period and plotted them onto an impressive video map. (Each yellow dot represents a flight. A moving haze was then added to resemble the shifting darkness of night)
See the video here

Where is all this people going? to do what?
What moves us?

"They desired to help but were themselves helpless"

2010-04-09T19:31:00.006+01:00

"When I went to Europe for the first time I lived among people who were wealthy and well educated, who held positions of social authority; but whatever their dignities or distinctions, they could not satisfy me. I was in revolt also against theosophists with all their jargon, their theories, their meetings, and their explanations of life. When I went to a meeting, the lecturers repeated the same ideas which did not satisfy me or make me happy. I went to fewer and fewer meetings, I saw less and less of the people who merely repeated the ideas of Theosophy. I questioned everything because I wanted to find out for myself.

I walked about the streets, watching the faces of people who perhaps watched me with even greater interest. I went to theatres; I saw how people amused themselves, trying to forget their unhappiness, thinking that they were solving their problems by drugging their hearts and minds with superficial excitement.

I saw people with political, social or religious power - and yet they did not have that one essential thing in their lives, which is happiness.

I attended labour meetings, communist meetings, and listened to what their leaders had to say. They were generally protesting against something. I was interested, but they did not give me satisfaction.

By observation of one type and another I gathered experience vicariously. Within everyone there was a latent volcano of unhappiness and discontentment. I passed from one pleasure to another, from one amusement to another, in search of happiness and found it not. I watched the amusements of the young people, their dances, their dresses, their extravagances, and I saw that they were not happy with the happiness which I was seeking. I watched people who had very little in life, who wanted to tear down those things which others had built up. They thought that they were solving life by destroying and building differently and yet they were unhappy.

I saw people who desired to serve going into those quarters where the poor and the degraded live. They desired to help but were themselves helpless. How can you cure another of disease if you are yourself a victim of that disease?

I saw people satisfied with the stagnation which is unproductive, uncreative - the bourgeois type which never struggles to be above the surface or falls below it and so feels its weight.

I read books on philosophy, on religion, biographies of great people and yet they could not give me what I wanted. I wanted to be so certain, so positive, in my attitude towards life that nothing could disturb me.

Then I came to India and I saw that the people there were deluding themselves equally, carrying on the same old traditions treating women cruelly. At the same time they called themselves very religious and painted their faces with ashes. In India they may have the most sacred books in the world, they may have the greatest philosophies, they may have constructed wonderful temples in the past, but none of these was able to give me what I wanted. Neither in Europe nor in India could I find happiness."

(J. Krishnamurti. "Life in Freedom". 1928)

Pattern recognition

2010-03-28T17:14:00.005+01:00

"Erfahrung ist eben zentral. Mit das Bedeutendste im Schach ist die Mustererkennung - die Fähigkeit, auf dem Brett typische Motive und Bilder zu erkennen, Stellungsmerkmale und ihre Konsequenzen."
(Der Spiegel, march 2010, interview with Magnus Carlsen, a 19 year old top chess player)

One could translate it for:
"Experience is essential. The most significant in chess is pattern recognition - the ability to recognize typical motifs and images on the chess board, position characteristics and their consequences."

I find this sentence remarkable, because it seemed to me that it contains a description of how our brain works, essentially. If we slightly change the phrase for "Experience is essential. The most significant in perception is pattern recognition, the ability to recognize typical motifs and shapes in the environment, their position and their significance"

This sentence, it seems to me, contains the basic mechanism of our brain, how it works and how it is conditioned, both part of this mechanism..........

Gas bottle

2010-03-25T11:12:00.002Z

I was dealing with some paperwork in an office and I was kind of complaining about how complex society has become, how dehumanized and commercial the relationship between humans has become in this complex transactions.

And then, next day, I ordered a gas bottle. The truck came, delivered it, I paid for it. And then I realized how complex the structure has to be for me to be able to get that gas bottle. Somebody had found the gas deposits, other people extracted it, transported it, somebody welded the gas bottle, the paint was produced and transported and applied to it, there was the fuel to transport the gas and the bottle, the truck driver that brought here, somebody has made the money, etc, etc.......mind boggling......if society would not have become so complex, that bottle would not have arrived here....

Brugada Syndrome

2010-03-23T13:53:00.007Z

The Brugada syndrome is a genetic disease that is characterised by abnormal electrocardiogram (ECG) findings and an increased risk of sudden cardiac death or Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome, the most common cause of sudden death in young men without known underlying cardiac disease.
Although the ECG findings of Brugada syndrome were first reported among south east asian young people who had died suddenly, it is now recognized that it happens in all races.

This phenomenon is well known among the Hmong people of Laos, who ascribe these deaths to a malign spirit, dab tsuam, said to take the form of a jealous woman. Hmong men may even go to sleep dressed as women so as to avoid the attentions of this spirit.

In the Philippines this sudden death in young people is despicted as a mythological creature called batibat. This hag-like creature sits on the victim's face so as to immobilize and suffocate him.

While reading about Brugada's syndrome, I was thinking I might be one of these cases, why not?, and if diagnosed, I would go to bed and not know if I would wake up next morning. That there might not be a next morning.

What is our attitude to death?. Could we have this feeling present in our lives? would that be horrible or could it have some quality?

(In the picture above, column A represents normal ECG waves, and column B the different QRS waves of Brugada's syndrome ECG. Note the "hump" or the "saddle" morphology)

responsible for making changes

2010-03-23T00:21:00.010Z

"Everyone knows what I've gone through. I'm human, I make mistakes, but I've come clean on them all. I don't deny them. I've taken the heat and felt highly embarrassed by a lot of them. I'm not proud of the things I've done and the incidents that have happened in my life, and I would never say I was. But I did something about it. I'm not above learning lessons.

'I'm not shirking blame for any of the things I did. I'm responsible for my actions. But I'm also responsible for making changes'

Naomi Campbell, on Mail on Sunday 22nd March 2010

contradictions

2010-03-18T13:07:00.001Z

She was a young lady, in her thirties, and belonged to a generation theoretically interested in the environment......She was quite articulate and could speak very well about environmental problems, and its solutions.....If you wouldn't live with her, you would think she was quite concerned about the environment......but at home she would not switch a single light off........no matter how many times she was told......

Are contradictions a common phenomenon in us?, are they easy to spot on other people and very difficult to see on ourselves?
Can we see our contradictions?

Complaining about others

2010-03-12T20:33:00.008Z

To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said,
"If it is peace you want,
seek to change yourself, not other people.
It is easier to protect your feet with slippers
than to carpet the whole of the earth."

(Anthony de Mello)

Anthony de Mello (4 September 1931, Bombay, India 2 June 1987, New York) was a Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, public speaker and writer who wrote books on spirituality. He traveled to many countries to study and later to teach, most notably Spain and the United States. The Vatican condemned many of his writings and ideas in 1998.
See what you think here

Francis Bacon

2010-03-07T01:07:00.002Z

"Reade not to Contradict, and Confute;Nor to Beleeve and Take for granted; Nor to Finde Talke and Disourse; But to weigh and Consider."
Francis Bacon “The Essays: Of Studies”

"A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion."
Francis Bacon “Essays: Of Atheism”

1 + 2 = mistery

2010-03-03T23:33:00.003Z

Does everything have an influence on everything else, no matter how small influence it could be?......does that imply that all is inter-related?

+

"Emergence" is the way complex systems and patterns arise out (emerge) of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Nothing commands the system to form a pattern or even intends it.

=

.....and the mistery deepens......

Emergence

2010-03-03T22:18:00.008Z

"Emergence" is the way complex systems and patterns arise out (emerge) of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

Emergent structures are very common in Nature. They are patterns not created by a single event or rule. Nothing commands the system to form a pattern or even intends it. Instead, the interaction of several simple parts with each other and with its immediate surroundings causes a chain of processes leading to the emergence of a very complex structure.

Ripple patterns in the sand created by wind or water is an example of an emergent structure in nature. The interaction of very simple elements create a complex structure, without anyone of them intending it.

Water crystals forming on glass demonstrate an emergent natural process, where a high level of organizational structure is crafted directly by the random interaction of water molecules between themselves and particular surrounding conditions.

Is DNA, the central molecule in which life is based, an "emergent" structure?, created by the interaction of very simple molecules interacting between themselves and its environment? and these interactions just driven by simple affinities?, creating, without intending it, an incredible structure that is able to hold a memory and transmit it, unfolding what we call life?....
And now a logical question: is life an "emergent" structure, created by the interaction of many simple elements and their environment....without nothing intending it?

Can something which is not intended have a goal? in an unintended system could there be an intelligence?....

Listen to the music of an incredible group....called "Emergence", probably created by the unintended interaction of some people playing with sounds. By the way the singer is a good friend, Krishna (Duncan), and one of the people that demonstrated that friendship could be life long........by the way, is friendship an "emergent structure"?, coming out of the unintended interaction of many small factors, leading to a much more complex and amazing structure?

Listen to Emergence

interrelationship of influences

2010-03-03T15:02:00.006Z

The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shifted Earth's axis. It is calculated that the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters). Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters.

This has shortened the length of each Earth day: Jet Propulsion Laboratory research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the quake. He and fellow scientists came up with a calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

By comparison, Gross said the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake that created the huge tsunami should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds.

To make a comparison about the mass that was shifted as a result of the earthquake, and how it affected the Earth, he compares it to the great Three-Gorge reservoir of China. If filled, the gorge would hold 40 cubic kilometers (10 trillion gallons) of water. That shift of mass would increase the length of day by only 0.06 microseconds and make the Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and flat on the top. It would shift the pole position by about two centimeters (0.8 inch)

"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth's rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car," one of Gross's colaborators said.

(Data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

I look in the dictionary the word interrelationship:
"mutual or reciprocal relation or relatedness"

Does everything have an influence on everything else, no matter how small influence it could be?......does that imply that all is inter-related?......what is the relationship of interrelation with "oneness"?.....