Tag: Greed

Food For Thought

January 22, 2012

It’s time for some Food For Thought once again… from the great master J. Krishnamurti:

What are you?

So what are you? Apart from a name, a form, perhaps if you are lucky a bank account, perhaps a skill, apart from all that what are you? Are we not suffering? Or suffering doesn’t exist in your life. Is there fear? Is there anxiety? Greed? Envy? Worshipping some image which thought has created? Frightened of death? Clinging to some concept? A contradiction, saying one thing and doing another. So we are all that. Our habits, our inanities, the endless chatter that goes on in the mind, all that is what we are. And the content of consciousness makes consciousness, and that consciousness has been evolving through time, through tremendous experiences, pains, sorrow, anxiety, all that. Now we are asking: can one be free of all that? Free from all sense of fear. Because where there is fear there is no love.

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Food For Thought: Going Beyond Words

June 2, 2011

J. Krishnamurti…

To understand each other, I think it is necessary that we should not be caught in words; because, a word like God, for example, may have a particular meaning for you, while for me it may represent a totally different formulation, or no formulation at all. So it is almost impossible to communicate with each other unless both of us have the intention of understanding and going beyond mere words. The word freedom generally implies being free from something, does it not? It ordinarily means being free from greed, from envy, from nationalism, from anger, from this or that. Whereas, freedom may have quite another meaning, which is a sense of being free; and I think it is very important to understand this meaning. After all, the mind is made up of words, amongst other things. Now, can the mind be free of the word envy? Experiment with this and you will see that words like God, truth, hate, envy, have a profound effect on the mind. And can the mind be both neurologically and psychologically free of these words? If it is not free of them, it is incapable of facing the fact of envy. When the mind can look directly at the fact which it calls ‘envy,’ then the fact itself acts much more swiftly than the mind’s endeavor to do something about the fact. As long as the mind is thinking of getting rid of envy through the ideal of non-envy, and so on, it is distracted, it is not facing the fact; and the very word envy is a distraction from the fact. The process of recognition is through the word; and the moment I recognize the feeling through the word, I give continuity to that feeling. ~~ The Book of Life

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Food For Thought: Subtle Truth

May 31, 2011

I was reminded yesterday of the great wisdom of J. Krishnamurti:

You have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So, the understanding of anything -of a modern picture, of a child, of your wife, of your neighbor, or the understanding of truth, which is in all things- can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness cannot be cultivated because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind.

The more you are interested in something, the more your intention to understand, the more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then verbalization ceases. After all, thought is word, and it is the word that interferes. It is the screen of words, which is memory, that intervenes between the challenge and the response. It is the word that is responding to the challenge, which we call intellection. So, the mind that is chattering, that is verbalizing, cannot understand truth -truth in relationship, not an abstract truth. There is no abstract truth. But truth is very subtle. It is the subtle that is difficult to follow. It is not abstract. It comes so swiftly, so darkly, it cannot be held by the mind. Like a thief in the night, it comes darkly, not when you are prepared to receive it. Your reception is merely an invitation of greed. So a mind that is caught in the net of words cannot understand truth. ~~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life.

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The Dalai Lama Stresses Ethics and Values at MIT

May 4, 2009

Last week, I drove down to Massachusetts so that I could attend the inaugural event at MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values.

My interest in attending the event was two fold:

First — To hear the Dalai Lama speak because I feel he is one of the great spiritual leaders of our times.
Second — Because I feel strongly about the objective and mission of the Center, which is to “inspire a new generation of 21st century leaders with compassionate responsibility for the global and long-term social, economic, and environmental impacts of their decisions.”

The Center’s inaugural event at MIT was quite different from the large event at Gillette Stadium on Saturday that drew a diverse crowd of nearly 16,000.

Peppering his talk on promoting ethics and compassion, with his wonderful sense of humor, my first impression of His Holiness, was that he possesses a quality of pure happiness and joy, that I would liken to the happiness that is reflected in a small child. When we are young we are far more open and joyful than we are as adults, because we are not burdened and encumbered with the problems that age and responsibility set upon us. (more…)

Pamela Leavey

Food For Thought

What are you?

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Food For Thought: Going Beyond Words

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Food For Thought: Subtle Truth

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The Dalai Lama Stresses Ethics and Values at MIT

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