A Light Unto Yourself
I was watching a special on the life of Jiddu Krishnamurti tonight and thought I would share one of my favorite passages of his.
To be aware is to watch your bodily activity, the way you walk, the way you sit, the movements of your hands: it is to hear the words you use, to observe all your thoughts, all your emotions, all your reactions. It includes awareness of the unconscious,with its traditions,its instinctual knowledge,and the immense sorrow it has accumulated—not only personal sorrow,but the sorrow of man. You have to be aware of all that; and you cannot be aware of it if you are merely judging, evaluating, saying, "This is good and that is bad, this I will keep and that I will reject," all of which only makes the mind dull, insensitive.
From awareness comes attention. Attention flows from awareness when in that awareness there is no choice,no personal choosing, no experiencing... but merely observing. And, to observe, you must have in the mind a great deal of space. A mind that is caught in ambition, greed, envy, in the pursuit of pleasure and self-fulfillment, with its inevitable sorrow, pain, despair, anguish—such a mind has no space in which to observe, to attend. It is crowded with its own desires, going round and round in its own backwaters of reaction. You cannot attend if your mind is not highly sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy,without the slightest shadow of neuroticism. The mind has to explore every corner of itself, leaving no spot uncovered, because if there is a single dark corner of one's mind which one is afraid to explore, from that springs illusion...
It is only in the state of attention that you can be a light unto yourself, and then every action of your daily life springs from that light— every action—whether you are doing your job, cooking, going for a walk, mending clothes, or what you will. This whole process is meditation...
J. Krishnamurti
To be aware is to watch your bodily activity, the way you walk, the way you sit, the movements of your hands: it is to hear the words you use, to observe all your thoughts, all your emotions, all your reactions. It includes awareness of the unconscious,with its traditions,its instinctual knowledge,and the immense sorrow it has accumulated—not only personal sorrow,but the sorrow of man. You have to be aware of all that; and you cannot be aware of it if you are merely judging, evaluating, saying, "This is good and that is bad, this I will keep and that I will reject," all of which only makes the mind dull, insensitive.
From awareness comes attention. Attention flows from awareness when in that awareness there is no choice,no personal choosing, no experiencing... but merely observing. And, to observe, you must have in the mind a great deal of space. A mind that is caught in ambition, greed, envy, in the pursuit of pleasure and self-fulfillment, with its inevitable sorrow, pain, despair, anguish—such a mind has no space in which to observe, to attend. It is crowded with its own desires, going round and round in its own backwaters of reaction. You cannot attend if your mind is not highly sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy,without the slightest shadow of neuroticism. The mind has to explore every corner of itself, leaving no spot uncovered, because if there is a single dark corner of one's mind which one is afraid to explore, from that springs illusion...
It is only in the state of attention that you can be a light unto yourself, and then every action of your daily life springs from that light— every action—whether you are doing your job, cooking, going for a walk, mending clothes, or what you will. This whole process is meditation...
J. Krishnamurti
Labels: Krishnamurti
posted by Wonji Dharma at
December 05, 2008
2 Comments:
I've been training with a direct student of Krishnamurti.
This process of continually watching the mind and body, and then bringing the fruit of this watching forward into the world, is demanding and genuine.
Opinion and analysis has nothing to do with it.
When we live fully in the truth of our experience, when we unfold ourselves in this way, then we can fully love this world.
Adyashanti and Eckhart Tolle along with many others are initial have been important influences on my process. Currently I am exploring the various modalities that ppl are using to work with what appears to me to be the roots of the who separate Self experience~the emotional core parts of who we are that seem to so often be resisted and kept in the proverbial cellar or under the rug. This is such intense material from J.K. though, that it is not easy to be with it without some kind of structure, and disaplint. But this is the only place to begin and end, or so it seems to me now, and back then I was totally identified with what Tolle calls the "mind-made self." This seems to me a very good term for the collection of ideas and concepts that we have about ourselves; who we are and what we are like.
Namaste
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