Two principles

A post I liked from my friend Muru:

A traveler through the mountains came upon an elderly gentleman who was busy planting a tiny almond tree. 

Knowing that almond trees take many years to mature, he commented to the man "It seems odd that a man of your advanced age would plant such a slow-growing tree!". 

The man replied "I like to live my life based on two principles. One is that I will live forever. The other is that this is my last day."

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......

contexts

Dr. P.W., a scientist, joins our dialogue group for a couple of dialogues.
He talks to us about the multiple "influences" on the fetus during pregnancy, like the stress of the mother, nutrition, chemicals, etc.....

His words inspire in us the feeling of the tremendous number and multiple forms of the influences we receive while being a fetus and the influence of all these in our future life....

We also get a "feeling" that these "influences" come also from a long evolutionary past......that we are the result of an incredibly long chain of influences during the evolution of the species......and that we are not aware of them, but that they are still "acting" right now.......

This brought about the feeling that we are not aware of this "context", the extent of the context of the past, still "working" today.....

And on the same line, we became aware of how unaware we are of another "context", the context of the present......everything that is happening right now in the whole universe.....an explosion of activity and creativity....millions and millions and millions of things happening at this very moment........our "context" in the present....

Is our awareness very "local", circumscribed to a small radius around us?
If we were to be more aware of the immense context of the past and of the present, would our concept of the "me" change?...........