Sorrow Is Time As Thought

I thought that title would grab your attention.   

I was introduced to Krishnamurti  while staying with Ajahn Piyatassi Bhikkhu just outside of Chiang Mai.   Juliann and I had just arrived somewhat exhausted by the journey which was not a journey to Wat Tham Doi Tone,  but the journey to the "perfect place to practice."  Well if there were such a place, this would have been it.   So we sat under some trees and the Ajahn pulled out some transcribed talks of Krishnamurti and suggested we read them aloud together. 

It is somewhat ironic that we found Krishnamurti in the hills of Thailand, since we were staying just a stone's throw away from the Krishnamurti Center in Varansi for week, but that's just how it goes.   Isn't it funny how we can spend our lives walking by great treasures because we're looking for something else, some other kind of treasure?  

I picked up a copy of "The Awakening of Intelligence" at Field's bookstore on Polk Street recently which is full of gems.   

Here's one (that actually came from the Krishnamurti Foundation blog) that not only rings true to me, but most importantly inspires me to realize its meaning.   As far as I can understand it,  Krishnamurthi was saying what many others are saying and have said:  to awaken to life means to look closely at the only place life is actually lived: the here and now.  

See what you think.  Maybe it will stir something in you.   By the way,  there's also a youtube channel devoted to Krishnamurti talks so now you can watch the now dead sage on TV:

Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death if you don't die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love—it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought. So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die. But we have a limited death to the physical. We know very well logically, sanely, that the organism is going to come to an end. So we invent a life which we have lived of daily agony, daily insensitivity, the increase of problems, and its stupidity; that life we want to carry over, which we call the "soul"—which we say is the most sacred thing, a part of the divine, but it is still part of your thought and therefore it has nothing to do with divinity. It is your life! So one has to live every day dying—dying because you are then in contact with life. To Die Without Argument - The Book of Life (November 15)

Comments

[David]

Thanks Danny, I think I'll go die a little right now.