Please post messages here that address meditation and awareness.

What is it? Could we comprehend it if we came into contact with it somehow? Why do we seek it?

To me, meditation is reflection on questions about life that bother me. For example, "How come we are ashamed of our nakedness and wear clothes?"
or "Why are we so much like animals (having eyes and ears, arms and legs,
heart and lungs) and yet see ourselves as human beings?" Just the other day, I was at the riding club and saw Mrs. Schoon on her horse. Suddenly, it occured to me that it was one animal riding atop another. It was quite funny.

i think our entire lives are meditation, from first to last breath (and beyond). and just like in a formal meditation sitting, one moves during the course of one's life from less to more to less to more awareness and clarity. so instead of asking someone 'are you meditating?' i'd ask 'how is your meditation going these days?' :-)

I come from an era where meditation was all about controlling thought.
Big surprise when I started to read K, is view seem to be quiet the opposite.
Not been very successful in controlling my thought, K view made a lot of sense
because if you can not fight them, better join then.. lol

I recall K saying meditation every minute, every second of our life, it seem to me at the time, like a lot of meditation. What hit me the most, was that meditation was to let thought happen and to follow them, to let it tell it story, going to the end of it, which is a big subject by it self? I have notice that in meditation as soon as I focus
on a particular thought, to ear it story, it stop, I often came to the conclusion that it was a short thought, but I also came to understand that, to be able to let thought reveal it self , we need to be friendly whit it.

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

jean-m girard wrote:

I come from an era where meditation was all about controlling thought. Big surprise when I started to read K, is view seem to be quiet the opposite. ... made a lot of sense because if you can not fight them, better join then.. lol

the path of least resistance. ;-)

jean-m girard wrote:
What hit me the most, was that meditation was to let thought happen and to follow them, to let it tell it story, going to the end of it, which is a big subject

i refer u 2 the discourse on the difference between Thought & Thinking...

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

Does meditation have any practical value? Working for a living has practical value because we need food, clothing and shelter. Breathing has a practical value for if we don't breathe, we die. If we don't meditate, will we also die?

rachMiel ... wrote:
the path of least resistance. ;-)

I am not sure that you have understood me here, maybe I am mistaking?

Join then, meaning that if we stop resisting them, learn to live with them, we might
understand them better. Fighting them is what we have been doing all of our life.
It was a bit of a joke.

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

Yiming Zhang wrote:
If we don't meditate, will we also die?

K has spend a life time to teach us , to stimulate us, to show us a better way of living, through better undersantding of who we are. I know he talk about dieing but he is referring to part of our self which we no longer need to live. How did this idea of
(Dieing if we don?t medidated) came to you?

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

Yiming Zhang wrote:
Does meditation have any practical value?

Is it lucrative? no

Is it healthy? yes

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

Therese Okamoto wrote:
i refer u 2 the discourse on the difference between Thought & Thinking

What make you think that i would be bettre there?

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

the way i understand it, thinking doesnt happen to us, we set our minds to thinking on purpose, i think the distinction is crucial in defining meditation as allowing thoughts to happen because it makes all the difference, in The Secret of the Golden Flower it says a hairsbreadth apart might as well be an abyss

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

Therese Okamoto wrote:
we set our minds to thinking on purpose

After work I came and read my post on meditation and I don?t think that I was very clear, some time I try to put to much in and the result
is not that great.
Are you saying by (we set our mind
to thinking on purpose) that you choose a topic which you want
a better understanding and then go into a state of meditation?
You probably came across in K book how he explain meditation, (again he is not saying
to allow thought to happen) but rather to be in state observation in from of our thought
so that we become more aware of the real nature of our thought. When K talks about meditation he is talking about a better understanding through observation. This is where
the idea of allowing then come, we can not be in observation if we don?t allow then.

In the book ( la première et dernière liberté) I am translating.
K say: (meditation is understanding, meditation of the heart is comprehension.
And how can I understand if I exclude? How can I understand if there is petition and supplication? In comprehension there is peace and freedom.)

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

jean-m girard wrote:

rachMiel ... wrote:
the path of least resistance. ;-)

I am not sure that you have understood me here, maybe I am mistaking?

Join then, meaning that if we stop resisting them, learn to live with them, we might
understand them better. Fighting them is what we have been doing all of our life.
It was a bit of a joke.

i don't think i misunderstood your joke. when i said "the path of least resistance" i meant exactly what you said: to "stop resisting them." :-)

jean-m girard wrote:
Are you saying by (we set our mind to thinking on purpose) that you choose a topic which you want a better understanding and then go into a state of meditation?

no, i would call that contemplation, thinking, i dont think i know how to not "allow" thoughts, i think its important to distinguish between thinking as active and thought arising passively, as it is to distinguish between meditate as a doing verb and a noun, which is to my mind, being in a state of meditation, i read the collection Meditations by JK and he writes of it as dynamic in a way which makes me believe one couldnt mistake it for anything else, i dont know which book it was from either but the most useful suggestion JK made, to me, on meditating was to begin by listening

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

Therese Okamoto wrote:
i dont know which book it was from either but the most useful suggestion JK made, to me, on meditating was to begin by listening

Listening is such a wonderful concept because you can't really be listening (either to your own thoughts or the words of somebody else) without being anchored to the present. Listening is all about paying attention. So, even if the thought we are listening to is about the past or the future . . . through listening to it RIGHT NOW, we are aware of what is going on in the present.

I'm also thinking that maybe listeing doesn't have to be confined to the sense of sound. Maybe we can listen with our eyes, nose, taste buds, flesh, and even expand listening to senses which don't have concrete body parts associated with them.

Yep . . . listening is a VERY USEFUL suggestion, Therese. Thanks for the reminder.

Hi Therese,
In meditation when JK is talking about perception of each movement
of thought, how do you applied this in your daily meditation?

I used to lay down in a comfortable position, about the same time
every day, and let myself go into a haft asleep state. But JK
is talking about observing each movement of the mind
in our daily activity. I began to see meditation more like a constant
observation, no more as a one day rendez-vous with myself.

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

jean-m girard wrote:
How did this idea of (Dieing if we don?t medidated) came to you?

I just don't want to waste my life committed to some hobby or pastime or, worse still, unwholesome cult-like pre-occupation. Animals don't meditate or need to be taught a better way to live through better understanding of what they are. And they do fine.

I am not saying that we don't need to learn. I am just wondering if this learning that K talked about is critical to my survival as a human being. What do you think.

Yiming Zhang wrote:
I am just wondering if this learning that K talked about is critical to my survival as a human being.

Learning is, of course, critical to survival of the animal called "mankind", as it is to all animal life. In fact it is probably the premier factor in survival for all animals. What of the "human being"?

Is a "human being" - emphasis on the being - just surviving for the short term gain, or seeing the limits of learning, seeing the learning of which K spoke (perceiving) as the only way for the human race to survive in an ultimate sense before "mankind" destroys itself and the planet?

This post was last updated by Richard Kover Thu, 18 Jun 2009.

Richard Kover wrote:
Is a "human being" - emphasis on the being - just surviving for the short term gain, or seeing the limits of learning, seeing the learning of which K spoke (perceiving) as the only way for the human race to survive in an ultimate sense before "mankind" destroys itself and the planet?

I see your point. Of course, it is sensible to care not only about planetary survival but also to live in a non-polluting, self-sustaining way. It is not just Krishnamurti who cares about this, every mother's son does too not to mention Greenpeace. I do my part also just as you must be doing too.

But what is so critical about learning the K way? Cab I devote my life to learning the Rudolf Steiner way?

Yiming Zhang wrote:
But what is so critical about learning the K way? Cab I devote my life to learning the Rudolf Steiner way?

K did not have a way. He used the term learning as "listening, observing, perceiving" for yourself to see the limitations of knowledge. Anyone is free to "devote" their life to anything they wish, but there is always the chance that "devotion to a way" contributes to the problems of humanity.

"K: Perception seeing itself perceiving - then it is not perception." J. Krishnamurti The Way of Intelligence Chapter 6 Part 4 Seminar Madras 31st December 1982

Linda Thorlakson wrote:
without being anchored to the present.

Reading your post I started to wander about how do I listen?

I can see now that I am very focus when I listen. Mostly on the word that I perceive hoping to go to the end of that thought,witch always sleep between my finger anyway.

(Without being anchored to the present.)

You are saying that when we listen what ever we listen this
action is alway in the present?

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

Yiming Zhang wrote:
What do you think.

Well , to me if you would not have any interest in all of that
you probably wouldn?t be here. At this time you may be curious
and need a bit more info to be able to decide if you want to get into it.
I don?t think that you are in front of a decision here, you may be curious.
We all are a click away from being all erase from your mind.

I can guaranty you that you will not be dealing here with puss over
type of sheep, JK as always come up with fact to support every thing he wrote
and the people here will not settle for any thing less. Keep us in your
favorites and come and say I ones in a while. To better understand life
and the society that will live in could not be bad.

There are many forum of JK on the web, this one is new, I have been here
for a few week, I like it very much, I am slowly getting to know some people, they have similar concern as you and me.

True experimenting consists in understanding through our own alert watchfulness,

gp garden wrote:

K did not have a way.

what about his exhortation to be here/now via choiceless awareness: isn't that a way?

rachMiel ... wrote:
what about his exhortation to be here/now via choiceless awareness: isn't that a way?

Please provide a citation of such "exhortation".

The very word choiceless implies awereness without preconception or method, doesn't it?

Richard Kover wrote:

rachMiel ... wrote:
what about his exhortation to be here/now via choiceless awareness: isn't that a way?

Please provide a citation of such "exhortation".

a great deal of krishnamurti's teachings address the ending of time (being fully here/now rather than living in memory or projection). and one of his main forms of meditations was a very close variant of the vipassana practices called (in english) 'choiceless awareness.'

here's a quote from The Urgency of Change:

"To be religious is to be so choicelessly aware that there is freedom from the known even whilst the known acts wherever it has to."

there are several other quotes where he specifically mentions 'choiceless awareness' and the key role it plays in realization.

my sense is that krishnamurti did eventually live in Truth effortlessly and pathlessly. but that was after he spent several decades being on a very intense and structured path. it's as if he 'forgot' about the importance of his own path once he didn't need it anymore.

people should be way beyond survival by now, the entire population of the world could fit into Rhode Island, there are more than enough resources to sustain us all generously and allow us to direct our energies to beauty, truth and goodness, the way i look at it, anything that makes people good, or is good for others, is good

Health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. We must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work - all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities.

rachMiel ... wrote:
rachMiel ... wrote:
what about his exhortation to be here/now via choiceless awareness: isn't that a way?

Exhortaton means encouraging, inciting, preaching, councelling, advising and persuading, all of which K said interferes with choicless awareness. If he advised anything it was to see any path as the opposite of choiceless awareness.

Quotes about choiceless awareness do not amount to exhortation to follow. One either is choicelessly aware in a given moment or one is not, and it is unrelated to any practice. To make a case for some other interpretation of K is to try to defeat his sixty years of saying "be a light unto yourself".

This post was last updated by Richard Kover Sun, 21 Jun 2009.

Richard Kover wrote:

Quotes about choiceless awareness do not amount to exhortation to follow. One either is choicelessly aware in a given moment or one is not, and it is unrelated to any practice. To make a case for some other interpretation of K is to try to defeat his sixty years of saying "be a light unto yourself".

not trying to defeat; rather: questioning his methodology.