The Link #25 - Events and Announcements

February 24–26		Bringing quietness into our lives
March 24–29		Love
April 21–23		Enquiring into the nature of thought
May 20		An introduction to Krishnamurti’s teachings
May 26-28		Open dialogue
June 17		An introduction to Krishnamurti’s teachings
June 23–25		Who am I?
July 28 – August 2		Living Krishnamurti’s teachings in daily life
August 19		An introduction to Krishnamurti’s teachings
September 16		An introduction to Krishnamurti’s teachings
September 22–24		What is true learning?
October 28–30		What is true learning?
November 25–30		The sacred

While the Centre is open for most of the year for individual study, certain periods are set aside as Theme Weekends, Study Retreats, or Introduction Days for those who would like to share and pursue their inquiry with others in an atmosphere of openness and seriousness. These events are open equally to people who are acquainted with the teachings and to those who are new to them.

Theme Weekends and Study Retreats start on Friday at lunchtime and end after lunch on the last day. Introduction Days are one-day events (10.30am–5.00pm including lunch) that serve as a general introduction to the life and teachings of Krishnamurti.

For reservations and inquiries, please contact: The Krishnamurti Centre, Brockwood Park (see pg. 65); online bookings: www.krishnamurticentre.org.uk

Please note that the International Committees, Information Centres and study groups are also invited to inquire about using the Centre.

Annual Saanen Gathering 2006 in Switzerland

The 2006 Saanen Gathering will take place in Schönried from 5th to 19th August. The Parents with Children Week will take place at Alpenblick in Gstaad from 29th July to 5th August. And the Mountain Programme for Young People will take place in Bourg-St.-Pierre from 19th to 27th August.
For more information, please contact: Gisèle Balleys, 7a Chemin Floraire, 1225 Chêne-Bourg, Genève, Switzerland, Tel/Fax: [41] (22) 349 6674, e-mail: giseleballeys@hotmail.com

International Conference on Krishnamurti and Consciousness

This conference will be held at the Jiddu Krishnamurti Centre in Hyderabad, India, 6-8 January 2006. Organised jointly with the University of Hyderabad, it aims to share knowledge of developments in consciousness studies and to explore Krishnamurti’s contribution to this field.

For further information, please go to www.jkcentre.org/ickc2006, or telephone [91] (40) 2335 7889.

Annual Winter Gathering in Thailand 2006

With much improved facilities, the venue for the gathering – to be held 2–5 February – will be the Stream Garden Retreat Centre in Hadyai. The theme will be ‘Why do we have problems in our relationships, and is it possible to be free of them?’
Further information can be found at www.kinfonet.org or www.anveekshana.org

Announcements

Inauguration of the Krishnamurti Centre in Hyderabad, India

Mark Lee is Executive Director of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. He is also a trustee of the Krishnamurti Foundation India.

Governors, ladies and gentlemen of Hyderabad, it is a great honor for me to be here with you today at the opening of a new Krishnamurti Centre. This is only the second time I have visited your city and I am particularly happy this time to be out in the countryside. You have built a particularly fine building with considerable amenities and I hope it will serve the purpose of this dedication for many decades to come.

Krishnamurti said on several occasions, when you build something related to the teachings it must be timeless and built to last for at least 500 years. Will yours? More than the buildings, the grounds, the activities you organize, the longevity of this place will depend on you, on those of you who are responsible for it. Have you asked yourselves why you are here? Have you inquired into whether or not you have an agenda or motive for being here other than the dissemination of the teachings? Do you want something out of an association with Krishnamurti that will give you security, prestige and a purpose in life?

Questions like these should be asked of each of us involved in the work around the teachings of Krishnamurti because if they are not asked, and asked seriously, then an institution will be founded that will be no different from any other. You will spend all your efforts fundraising, managing property, maintaining an institution; worse still, you will develop an institutional mind. Can you from the very beginning, from this the first day, be so clear and passionate about your intent that even if you are here for fifty years you will be clear? How is that possible? How is that done?

I worked with Krishnamurti on the founding of his school in California in the early 1970s. We discussed for months the questions I have just asked you. Krishnamurti usually stopped me from answering the questions, saying: “Stay with the question, don’t be so eager to answer it, let it affect you.” Why was this process so important? First of all, the asking of a serious question affects the quality of your mind and the way you think. If you ask “Why am I here in this centre?” what happens to your mind? Does it formulate an answer or does it open up to many different dimensions, layers of thinking and feeling that perhaps are not obvious to you but are still strong motivators? Letting the mind reveal itself can happen in asking good or right questions. Not answering quickly allows one to ponder and it stops the usual patterns of thinking.

Krishnamurti as a man was the person you hear suggested in the teachings. He was that inquiring, doubting, critically sharp, deeply religious person always probing, alert to subtle things, and watching and listening to everything. His gaze caught everything. I had a clue to this when he spoke once to the children and said: “When you walk into a room, look straight ahead, not to the right or to the left. Take in everything in the room, see the colours, the shapes, and the people, everything without looking at anything directly; see it all. Hear the sounds near and far at the same time.” His was a holistic approach that did not evaluate but was highly discriminating. He was matter-of-fact and related to reality so much it belies critics who say he was intellectual and impractical.

I would hope that the individuals and activities of this centre are dedicated to the awakening of intelligence and not to mere intellectualization of the teachings of Krishnamurti or of his life. Yours is a great responsibility to keep this place alive and real. Please, take it seriously and make it worth the association with the name of Krishnamurti. He did not want institutions founded in his name, and so your challenge is to have the integrity and clear action that will keep the spirit of the teachings.

Thank you and all good wishes.

Book Review

On Krishnamurti
by Raymond Martin
Thomson Wadsworth (www.philosophy.wadsworth.com), 2003
ISBN: 0-534-25226-5, paperback, 71 pages

In an article published in issue 15 (Autumn/Winter 1998), Raymond Martin, professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, posed the question whether K would ever be accepted at the university. He considered that the main obstacle to this acceptance was that academicians are primarily concerned with theories, whereas K is concerned with meditation, i.e. seeing things directly for oneself. So one way to incorporate K into the university would be for academicians to start meditating. But Martin acknowledged that the chance of academics turning to meditation was slim. The only avenue open, therefore, was to take up K’s body of insights and, as purported statements of truth, make them the object of theoretical study. The problem was that K never argued for the truth of his insights but left it to each one to verify them for himself by a similar act of perception. So the integration of K into the university, as Professor Martin saw it, would require that someone argue for K’s views and that these arguments then be taken seriously by other academics, who would in turn study K’s work. Martin was not sure of the likelihood of such a thing happening. To begin with, K’s concerns would seem to be far removed from the ongoing philosophic discussion. He saw, however, a close link between K and academic philosophy in their common concern with the nature of the self. He observed that philosophers who addressed this question, notably David Hume, are routinely studied at the university, so there is no reason why K should not also be studied, especially since K has important things to add on the subject. This has been Professor Martin’s specific approach to introducing K into the university, notably in his previous book Self-Concern: An Experiential Approach to What Matters in Survival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). In this new book, written for the Wadsworth philosophers series, Martin basically traces the central theme of K’s insights into the nature of the self and its implications for the transformation of the individual and society.

The dilemma posed by Professor Martin regarding the relation of K’s teachings and the academic world reminded me of David Bohm’s statement that logic is to truth as fire is to gold, meaning that though logic is not necessarily true, truth must necessarily be logical. In this sense, it would seem that an obvious task of academic philosophy would be to put to the test of logic the truth of K’s teachings. The problem, however, still remains, as in this context truth is not just a matter of logic but of direct perception. This is perhaps a broader issue, not dissimilar to the traditional split in religion between mystics and theologians, i.e. between the proponents of thought as the essential instrument of knowing and those for whom truth is unknown and unknowable. K’s avowed intention was not to contribute to a new philosophy in the intellectual, speculative sense, but to bring about a radical transformation in the psyche. Nonetheless, he did have a dialogical approach to inquiry that encouraged skepticism and doubt and which took the immediate givens of one’s own existence as the factual point of departure. In this sense, both K’s content and approach are consistent with philosophy as a whole.

The topic chosen by Professor Martin for this book is certainly central to K’s teachings and an important issue in the philosophy of mind. He draws on the parallels between David Hume, William James and K to bring out the illusory nature of the self, adding that K’s views are further supported by Buddhist teaching. Martin makes a careful and revealing exploration of the illusory nature of the self as expressed by K. The self, he maintains, is essentially composed of ‘images’, i.e. conceptualized mental elements which constitute experience. This body of images is the observer, which then looks at other images as the observed. There is nothing permanent about this self-image nor any space between the observer and the observed, as they are only aspects of the same image-making process, which is in constant flux. Naming creates the experience and then we react to that which we name, which strengthens the self. For K, in contrast to all modern philosophy, it is possible to see without conceptualization, as naming comes after perception. Such observation is possible when there is no motive, choice or self-interest in it. This would indicate that there is a vast perceptual field of awareness in which experience, memory and thought have no place.

Martin notes that K sees the identification process as the essence of the self. So it would follow that where there is no identification, there is no self. But he also observes that K said little about what identification is, and so he embarks on his own exploration of the nature of identification and suggests that ‘appropriation’ for the sake of permanence and security underlies self-constitution. This appropriation is essentially a form of becoming which is fueled by ambition and comparative discontent. This process is driven by achievement and results and not by the love of the thing itself. Martin illustrates the psychological structure of the self by examining the aspects of pride, anger and guilt. These aspects are produced by thought which, in turn, keeps itself occupied with them out of fear of its own nothingness. Thought is at the heart of the problem, as it introduces the past into the present. Thought is always old and life is always new. Life is the truth that thought cannot capture. The attempt to do so is the essential cause of division and conflict in life at every level. Martin then poses the question as to whether thought can find its right place and answers that this happens naturally when there is total attention to the active present, now. This direct perception is the truth that liberates.

Martin’s analysis of K’s understanding of the nature of the self and its implications for the art of living is much subtler and revealing than what I have just tried to describe. His language is quite crisp and clear, though at times a bit too analytical. This specific presentation that Martin makes of K’s teachings serves its general introductory purpose well in relation to the specialized field of philosophy of mind, which seems to be Martin’s own area of interest. Naturally, this specialized approach leaves out many aspects of K’s ‘philosophy’, aspects that Martin and his colleagues at the university might bring out in due course. At the end of it one is still left with the question as to why the university finds it so hard to take K’s teachings on board wholesale or even piecemeal. Is it because of the theoretical and intellectual bent? Is it because a holistic approach like K’s cannot be readily adapted to any specialized department? Is it that in this cognitive age we are so pleased with the achievements of thought that we can’t even contemplate its intrinsic limitations? I find that none of these things really answers the question, because K’s teachings are philosophy in its deepest and original sense. One only has to read Plato to realize it. And even if one takes a look at the modern Academy, one sees the tremendous connectedness, the profound dialogue that exists between it and K’s teachings, particularly in the area of the humanities. So maybe it’s not a question of adapting K’s teachings to the university but rather of the university taking its name seriously and endeavouring to recover its truly universal and holistic dimension. Such studies as Professor Martin’s, though necessarily limited in scope, are a significant and promising beginning.

Javier Gómez Rodríguez, October 2005