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Saanen 1980 – Question #1 from Question & Answer Meeting #4
‘Is our sitting quietly every day to observe the movement of thought by your definition a practice, a method and therefore without value?’
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I have seen a lot of people talk about the depths of the ocean merely sitting at the shore! This only adds up to the confusion for some innocents who are trying to make their way in the right direction!
So also like one blind man explaining beauty of the rising sun to another blind man.
I think this is the first time in the world people focus more on their inner fightings, what is going on inside rather than out. A great evolution, I hope comming years will give us profound wisdom to mankind..
for me what I hear from him is that he donth understand properly what is Tm practices and also not understand what is Vedic chanting and using the Vedic Mantras ,actually with out the Guru(what he refuse to be) or tradition behind you,You cant make any step and progress to your self
What if say one evening I sat quietly and in a matter of minutes had a thought that I thought was so stupid until it happend to me , I went completely mental, and the only reson I am alive today is the thought of me dead while my mom dies evryday till her body gives in , I realized the truth and the way to separate my thoughts and my emotion..! It is true that what doesnt kills u makes u stronger.
As a self-confessed (/ -convinced) contrarian though (;
To reflect upon independently, to one's mind, what obviously he implies is that- simply observing 'thought' , without caring to strive to, react and translate it into a positive action – or pro-action – that is honestly and truthfully intended to serve the purpose of life on earth-being useful in some way to the fellow hunman beings and the other creations of the invisible SUPER POWER ! – Any thoughts to spare and share in the same vein or otherwise, with a view to adding some 'value' to the humanity / life on earth?
In short: Stop wanting nothing, and just BE.
Now that's a double bind if taken wrongly. You trying to stop You wanting nothing. So must be very very careful. The truth is so subtle.
The mind is constantly chattering…so quietness is essential……because the world is completely insane and continuously producing noise that consumes your brain….UNLESS IT IS FULLY AWAKE !!!
Excellent. His talks has such depth that our souls starts vibrating.
a real insight….a real seeking….
yes we should look for motive and the motive is to gain
its like business how finely he said everything every fact of the matter??
meditation relaxes me.
I guess one of the basics of meditation is also to learn to experience time "as it is"..just a "timeless" and unconditional state of being, not a committed process or cycle, which is intrinsically tied to specific constructs of mind and senses (and therefore also constantly associated with illusory mindsets of past and future..)..the more you accomplish to "get outside" of this daily cycles the more you will gain access to your natural und pure life energies
In the very process of investigaion, it becomes quiet
So wise.
Struggle is spritual progress……
observation as sharp as a Japanese sword blade.
Krishnamirti clearly did not understand the dynamics of skillful mantra meditation. There should never be any forcing. Properly done, it is virtually effortless. Neither should it result dullness or entanglement in fantasies. Done right, it puts one into contact with the “natural state.”
Unfortunalty, krishnamurti denigrated other methods of stilling the mind in favor of his personal preferenc for inquiry. Not a suitable method for all people.
K is right and just calling out the motivation of all these people practicing meditation in hopes of reaching some transcended state. And then they can brag about it to their friends. It's stupid and silly. And even stupider to pay someone thousands of dollars for a technique or method. These are people who have everything, including money to burn and they're still not satisfied and want more, more, more. While at the same time, there's people in the world that are starving and who just wish they could feed their children. It's totally stupid and instead of putting K down, they should be thankful he's attempting to talk sense into them.
I love this guy!
we spend most of our attention to the external world and relatively little to the body,thoughts and feelings imho 40 minutes/day is too little
if in practice I dont "get" anywhere without mantra meditation but I understand what he says about it and that theres no path what do I even do. what he says reaches me now but only because im in a phase where im doing the 20 min sit everyday
Normally I like his commentaries. He seems deluded about meditation. I am surprised. Did he ever meet Ramana Maharshi? This talk is nonsense.
I think he has misinterpreted because many saints are charging huge fee in the name of meditation and they just instruct their follower to sit quitely.
let me answer sir ::Motive — Being quite is a quality,Sitting quite is not an easy task it is very much similar to getting the skill and quality that you achieved through various practice. So sitting quitely is a kind of practice that enhance the quality of being quite.
Question: You seem to object even to our sitting quietly everyday to observe the movement of thought. Is this, by your definition, a practice, a method and therefore without value?
Now the questioner asks: What is wrong with sitting quietly every morning for twenty minutes, in the afternoon another twenty minutes and perhaps another twenty minutes in the evening or longer – what is wrong with it? By sitting quietly you can relax, you can observe your thinking, your reactions, your responses and your reflexes. What is the motive of those who sit quietly by themselves, or together in a group? What is the motive behind the desire to sit quietly for half an hour every day? Is it not important to find out why you want to do this? Is it because somebody has told you that if you sit quietly you will have parapsychological experiences, that you will attain some kind of peace, some kind of understanding, some kind of enlightenment, or some kind of power? And, being rather gullible, you pay thousands of dollars to receive instructions and a mantra which you can repeat. Some people have paid thousands of dollars to a man who will give them something in return – specially a Sanskrit word – and they repeat it. You pay something and you receive something in return; what is the motive behind it? Why are you doing this? Is it for a psychological reward? Is it that by sitting quietly you attain some kind of super-consciousness? Or is it that you want that which has been promised by your instructor?
So it is important – before we plunge into all this – to find out what is your motive, what it is that you want. But you do not do that. You are so eager and gullible; somebody promises something and you want it. If you examine the motive, you see that it is a desire to achieve something – like a businessman's desire to earn a lot of money. That is his urge. Here the psychological urge is to have something that a guru, or an instructor, promises. You do not question what he promises, you do not doubt what he promises. But if you ask the man who is offering you something: Is it worthwhile? Is it true? Who are you to tell me what to do? then you will find that sitting quietly, without understanding your motive, leads to all kinds of illusory psychological trouble. If that is the intention of sitting quietly, it is not worth it. But if while sitting quietly without any motive, or walking quietly by yourself or with somebody, you watch the trees, the birds, the rivers and the sunshine on the leaves, in that very watching you are also watching yourself. You are not striving, not making tremendous efforts to achieve something. Those who are committed to a certain kind of meditation find it very hard to throw that off because the mind is already conditioned; they have practised this thing for several years and there they are stuck. And if somebody comes along and says: "What nonsense all this is" they may, at a rare moment, become rational and say: "Yes, perhaps this is wrong; then begins the trouble, the conflict, between what they have found rationally for themselves and that which they have been practising for the last ten years – a struggle that is called progress, spiritual progress!
The mind is always chattering, always pursuing one thought or another, one set of sensory responses after another set of responses. In order to stop that chattering you try to learn concentration, forcing the mind to stop chattering and so the conflict begins again. This is what you are doing; chattering, chattering, talking endlessly about nothing. Now, if you want to observe something, a tree, a flower, the lines of the mountains, you have to look, you have to be quiet. But you are not interested in the mountains, or the beauty of the hills and the valleys and the waters; you want to get somewhere, achieve something, spiritually.
Is it not possible to be quiet, naturally – to look at a person, or to listen to a song, or to listen to what somebody is saying quietly, without resistance, without saying, "I must change, I must do this, I must do that", just to be quiet? Apparently that is most difficult. So you practise systems to be quiet. Do you see the fallacy of it? To practise a method, a system, a regular everyday routine, as a result of which you think the mind will at last be quiet; but it will never be quiet; it is mechanical, it has become set in a pattern, dull and insensitive. You do not see all that; you want to get something – an initiation! Oh, it is all so childish.
If you listen quietly, not saying the speaker is right or wrong, or saying, I am committed to this, I have promised not to give it up; I am this, that, the other thing", but listen to what is being said without resistance, then what you are doing is your own discovery, then your mind in the very process of investigation becomes quiet.
So can we, ordinary people, with all our troubles and turmoils, be quiet and listen to all the prattlings of our own movements of thought? Is it possible to sit, or stand, or walk quietly, without any promptings from another, without any reward or desire for extraordinary super-physical sensory experiences? Begin at the most rational level; then one can go very far.