Tag Archives: stability

words from my treasured teacher 1

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I wanted to write, “words from my perfect master” – recalling the film by that title.  But Krishnamurti would have balked at the “master” moniker, and thrown out the notion of perfection as well.  Still, there’s no arguing that K was a hugely significant mindshifter for me, and that the years spent working at the schools he founded around the world were the highlight of my career as an educator in art and design.  They are also remembered as incomparably rich, in terms of inquiry into the mechanism of thought and the construct of the “self”, in the company of some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.

We have, if we are lucky, more than one great teacher as we dance along the days of our lives.  Krishnamurti was what Buddhists would call my “root” teacher; he meticulously prepared the ground for the understanding that would come later – the eye-popping brain-bending Knowing that would revisit his words, and smile.  Yes.  Just so.

J Krishnamurti at his desk

August 4, 1961

Woke up very early in the morning; it was still dark but dawn would soon come; towards the east there was in the distance a pale light.  The sky was very clear and the shape of the mountains and hills were just visible.  It was very quiet.

Out of this vast silence suddenly, as one sat up in bed, when thought was quiet and far away, when there wasn’t even a whisper of feeling, there came that which was now the solid inexhaustible being.  It was solid, without weight, without measure; it was there and besides it, there existed nothing.  It was there without another.  The words solid, immovable, imperishable do not in any way convey that quality of timeless stability.  None of these or any other word could communicate that which was there.  It was totally itself and nothing else; it was the totality of all things, the essence.

The purity remained, leaving one without thought, without action.  It’s not possible to be one with it; it is not possible to be one with a swiftly flowing river.  You can never be one with that which has no form, no measure, no quality.  It is; that is all.

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti’s Notebook

oh my god, we can finally really relax!

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We have to be alert that we don’t have a subtle definition of Awareness that colors its nakedness.  That means we make Awareness into a state of experience.  That would be like: “Awareness is a clear openness that is spacious and serene”.  We then have defined Awareness and by doing so we have made it possible to lose the “state of Awareness”. When we aren’t feeling that “clear openness that is spacious and serene” we feel we have lost Awareness.

But Awareness has no definition, all experience is the experience of Awareness. Awareness has no form or state of its own.  That then allows Awareness to be every state, every feeling,every emotion,every thought, every perception.

That being so, what is there left to achieve? Every experience, happy, sad or neutral is the appearance of Awareness. We give up completely the notion that Awareness has to have some particular flavor or color. Oh my god, we can finally really relax! Its over!

Every experience is equal in Awareness!  What could you possibly practice?  You are already aware, so you don’t need to become aware.  Everything is already happening however its happening, so there is nothing special to do.  No special “state” to attain!  If you experience a special state, that’s fine, but it will never become stable.  The only stability is your unchanging perceiving of whatever is experienced.  That unchanging perceivingness is Awareness, the heart of the Dharmakaya (Pure Being).

~ Jackson Peterson

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