The accidental and the fundamental III, Impermanence III

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

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

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

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

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

The accidental and the fundamental II

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

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

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

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

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

Education XXII: How to educate to be compassionate?

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

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

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

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

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

Perspective

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

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

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

The accidental and the fundamental

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what is, then, the fundamental?

To discover

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

Education XXI, Socrates

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

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

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

Education XX: rewards

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

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

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

What are the origins of the "ego"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We see everything with the mind

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

Is there a seeing not with the mind?

(photograph by Jude McConkey)

how many times have we died?

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

Following two birds

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

(video by WB8BCO)

Freedom, problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The obsolete consciousness VIII

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

denying time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unhappiness

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

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

Education XVIII: Where do speak, act FROM?

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

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

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

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

Awareness and existence

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

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

("Maharshi´s Gospel", page 94)

Education XVII: what we bring from our evolutionary past

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

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

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

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