Beyond Rivalry

I read Barbara Bash's True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude (2004) today while sitting in the sun with the dog. It's a simple, lavishly watercolour-illustrated journal of a retreat in the woods, taken during seven days in Summer, seven in Spring, seven in Fall, and ending with seven days in Winter. She's a Buddhist (Chögyam Trungpa is her meditation teacher) who is struggling with fatigue, fear of the dark, a need to do, a certain restlessness, loneliness, self-doubt.

This first journal entry reminds me of the 'grief' I wrote about yesterday:

"My insides are heavy. There are voices tisking and shuddering at such laziness, but I am listening to deeper voices."

That's how I feel. I can hear the voices that tisk and shudder, and, I can hear voices from a deeper place, and I am listening to them.

In Winter, she says something that seemed to me to reframe the dilemma a friend expressed earlier in the day:

"Here in this cabin for six days these demons of pressure and critique can be -- what? Loved? Banished? Teased? Ignored? Put down for a nap? ... It has been a day of doubt. The wind of my mind blew me around. Here's the dilemma -- to articulate the confusion, describe it, know it -- or to label it 'thinking,' let it go and return to the breath. I walk both paths."

It seems it's often a question of whether to engage with the confusion -- to work with the pain, resentment, desire for connection, longing for affinity, fear of disappointment, hope, lack of trust -- or to recognise that those feelings, opinions, beliefs, reactions, and thoughts are just 'thinking' -- they're transitory, they're a fantasy our mind weaves, they can be released. Yes. We do both.   

Thinking about Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1996) today after coming across a short quote by him: 

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

I don't know that much about him -- his writings are voluminous and some are still being discovered, edited and published. He was Indian, traveled extensively, was involved for a while with the Theosophical Society but broke from them around 1922, during which he experienced several mystical encounters (which he termed "the process") in which he felt a mystical union and immense peace: "Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated."

By 1929, he had renounced any path as a way to Truth:

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it.'

 

"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path." (in Krishamurti: The Years of Awakening, 1975, by Mary Lutyens)

Schools that he and his followers (though he said he didn't want followers) founded in India, England and the U.S. emphasise a holistic vision, concern for humans and the environment, and a religious spirit.  He was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal in 1984. Of course, he's on YouTube (I haven't watched these yet.)

Krishnamurti's thoughts on meditation speak to me:

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life -- perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy -- if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. ...

 

"Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness."