How to see the flower by J Krishnamurti

Teacher: Is the denial of which you are speaking different from a denial which is the restriction of sensation?

Krishnamurti: How do you see those flowers, see the beauty of them, be completely sensitive to them so that there is no residue, no memory of them, so that when you see them again an hour later you see a new flower? That is not possible if you see as a sensation and that sensation is associated with flowers, with pleasure. The traditional way is to shut out what is pleasurable because such associations awaken other forms of pleasure and so you discipline yourself not to look. To cut association with a surgical knife is immature. So how is the mind, how are the eyes, to see the tremendous colour and yet have it leave no mark?

I am not asking for a method. How does that state come into being? Otherwise we cannot be sensitive. It is like a photographic plate which receives impressions and is self-renewing. It is exposed, and yet becomes negative for the next impression. So all the time, it is self-cleansing of every pleasure. Is that possible or are we playing with words and not with facts?
The fact which I see clearly is that any residual sensitivity, sensation, dulls the mind. I deny that fact, but I do not know what it is to be so extraordinarily sensitive that experience leaves no mark and yet to see the flower with fullness, with tremendous intensity. I see as an undeniable fact that every sensation, every feeling, every thought, leaves a mark, shapes the mind, and that such marks cannot possibly bring about a new mind. I see that to have a mind with marks is death, so I deny death. But I do not know the other. I also see that a good mind is sensitive without the residue of experience. It experiences, but the experience leaves no mark from which it draws further experiences, further conclusions, further death.

The one I deny and the other I do not know. How is this transition from the denial of the known to the unknown to come into being?

How does one deny? Does one deny the known, not in great dramatic incidents but in little incidents? Do I deny when I am shaving and I remember the lovely time I had in Switzerland? Does one deny the remembrance of a pleasant time? Does one grow aware of it, and deny it? That is not dramatic, it is not spectacular, nobody knows about it. Still this constant denial of little things, the little wipings, the little rubbings off, not just one great big wiping away, is essential. It is essential to deny thought as remembrance, pleasant or unpleasant, every minute of the day as it arises. One is doing it not for any motive, not in order to enter into the extraordinary state of the unknown. You live in Rishi Valley and think of Bombay or Rome. This creates a conflict, makes the mind dull, a divided thing. Can you see this and wipe it away? Can you keep on wiping away not because you want to enter into the unknown? You can never know what the unknown is because the moment you recognise it as the unknown you are back in the known....

- Krishnamurti on education

http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk208.htm .

An Excerpt from Freedom From the Known by J Krishnamurthi

WE HAVE BEEN enquiring into the nature of love and have come to a point, I think, which needs much greater penetration, a much greater awareness of the issue. We have discovered that for most people love means comfort, security, a guarantee for the rest of their lives of continuous emotional satisfaction. Then someone like me comes along and says, `Is that really love?' and questions you and asks you to look inside yourself. And you try not to look because it is very disturbing - you would rather discuss the soul or the political or economic situation - but when you are driven into a corner to look, you realize that what you have always thought of as love is not love at all; it is a mutual gratification, a mutual exploitation.

When I say, `Love has no tomorrow and no yesterday', or, `When there is no centre then there is love', it has reality for me but not for you. You may quote it and make it into a formula but that has no validity. You have to see it for yourself, but to do so there must be freedom to look, freedom from all condemnation, all judgement all agreeing or disagreeing.

Now, to look is one of the most difficult things in life - or to listen - to look and listen are the same. If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset. Most of us have lost touch with nature. Civilization is tending more and more towards large cities; we are becoming more and more an urban people, living in crowded apartments and having very little space even to look at the sky of an evening and morning, and therefore we are losing touch with a great deal of beauty. I don't know if you have noticed how few of us look at a sunrise or a sunset or the moonlight or the reflection of light on water.

Having lost touch with nature we naturally tend to develop intellectual capacities. We read a great many books, go to a great many museums and concerts, watch television and have many other entertainments. We quote endlessly from other people's ideas and think and talk a great deal about art. Why is it that we depend so much upon art? Is it a form of escape, of stimulation? If you are directly in contact with nature; if you watch the movement of a bird on the wing, see the beauty of every movement of the sky, watch the shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another, do you think you will want to go to any museum to look at any picture? Perhaps it is because you do not know how to look at all the things about you that you resort to some form of drug to stimulate you to see better.

There is a story of a religious teacher who used to talk every morning to his disciples. One morning he got on to the platform and was just about to begin when a little bird came and sat on the window sill and began to sing, and sang away with full heart. Then it stopped and flew away and the teacher said, `The sermon for this morning is over'.

It seems to me that one of our greatest difficulties is to see for ourselves really clearly, not only outward things but inward life. When we say we see a tree or a flower or a person, do we actually see them? Or do we merely see the image that the word has created? That is, when you look at a tree or at a cloud of an evening full of light and delight, do you actually see it, not only with your eyes and intellectually, but totally, completely?

Have you ever experimented with looking at an objective thing like a tree without any of the associations, any of the knowledge you have acquired about it, without any prejudice, any judgement, any words forming a screen between you and the tree and preventing you from seeing it as it actually is? Try it and see what actually takes place when you observe the tree with all your being, with the totality of your energy. In that intensity you will find that there is no observer at all; there is only attention. It is when there is inattention that there is the observer and the observed. When you are looking at something with complete attention there is no space for a conception, a formula or a memory. This is important to understand because we are going into something which requires very careful investigation.

It is only a mind that looks at a tree or the stars or the sparkling waters of a river with complete self-abandonment that knows what beauty is, and when we are actually seeing we are in a state of love. We generally know beauty through comparison or through what man has put together, which means that we attribute beauty to some object. I see what I consider to be a beautiful building and that beauty I appreciate because of my knowledge of architecture and by comparing it with other buildings I have seen. But now I am asking myself, `Is there a beauty without object?' When there is an observer who is the censor, the experiencer, the thinker, there is no beauty because beauty is something external, something the observer looks at and judges, but when there is no observer - and this demands a great deal of meditation, of enquiry then there is beauty without the object.

Beauty lies in the total abandonment of the observer and the observed and there can be self-abandonment only when there is total austerity - not the austerity of the priest with its harshness, its sanctions, rules and obedience - not austerity in clothes, ideas, food and behaviour - but the austerity of being totally simple which is complete humility. Then there is no achieving, no ladder to climb; there is only the first step and the first step is the everlasting step.

Say you are walking by yourself or with somebody and you have stopped talking. You are surrounded by nature and there is no dog barking, no noise of a car passing or even the flutter of a bird. You are completely silent and nature around you is also wholly silent. In that state of silence both in the observer and the observed - when the observer is not translating what he observes into thought - in that silence there is a different quality of beauty. There is neither nature nor the observer. There is a state of mind wholly, completely, alone; it is alone - not in isolation - alone in stillness and that stillness is beauty. When you love, is there an observer? There is an observer only when love is desire and pleasure. When desire and pleasure are not associated with love, then love is intense. It is, like beauty, something totally new every day. As I have said, it has no today and no tomorrow.

It is only when we see without any preconception, any image, that we are able to be in direct contact with anything in life. All our relationships are really imaginary - that is, based on an image formed by thought. If I have an image about you and you have an image about me, naturally we don't see each other at all as we actually are. What we see is the images we have formed about each other which prevent us from being in contact, and that is why our relationships go wrong.

When I say I know you, I mean I knew you yesterday. I do not know you actually now. All I know is my image of you. That image is put together by what you have said in praise of me or to insult me, what you have done to me - it is put together by all the memories I have of you - and your image of me is put together in the same way, and it is those images which have relationship and which prevent us from really communing with each other.

Two people who have lived together for a long time have an image of each other which prevents them from really being in relationship. If we understand relationship we can co-operate but co-operation cannot possibly exist through images, through symbols, through ideological conceptions. Only when we understand the true relationship between each other is there a possibility of love, and love is denied when we have images. Therefore it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbour, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods - you have nothing but images.

These images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships.

Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. When you give your complete attention - I mean with everything in you - there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact. To find out for yourself you have to go through it.

Every problem is related to every other problem so that if you can solve one problem completely - it does not matter what it is - you will see that you are able to meet all other problems easily and resolve them. We are talking, of course, of psychological problems. We have already seen that a problem exists only in time, that is when we meet the issue incompletely. So not only must we be aware of the nature and structure of the problem and see it completely, but meet it as it arises and resolve it immediately so that it does not take root in the mind. If one allows a problem to endure for a month or a day, or even for a few minutes, it distorts the mind. So is it possible to meet a problem immediately without any distortion and be immediately, completely, free of it and not allow a memory, a scratch on the mind, to remain? These memories are the images we carry about with us and it is these images which meet this extraordinary thing called life and therefore there is a contradiction and hence conflict. Life is very real - life is not an abstraction - and when you meet it with images there are problems.

Is it possible to meet every issue without this space-time interval, without the gap between oneself and the thing of which one is afraid? It is possible only when the observer has no continuity, the observer who is the builder of the image, the observer who is a collection of memories and ideas, who is a bundle of abstractions.

When you look at the stars there is you who are looking at the stars in the sky; the sky is flooded with brilliant stars, there is cool air, and there is you, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, you with your aching heart, you, the centre, creating space. You will never understand about the space between yourself and the stars, yourself and your wife or husband, or friend, because you have never looked without the image, and that is why you do not know what beauty is or what love is. You talk about it, you write about it, but you have never known it except perhaps at rare intervals of total self-abandonment. So long as there is a centre creating space around itself there is neither love nor beauty. When there is no centre and no circumference then there is love. And when you love you are beauty.

When you look at a face opposite, you are looking from a centre and the centre creates the space between person and person, and that is why our lives are so empty and callous. You cannot cultivate love or beauty, nor can you invent truth, but if you are all the time aware of what you are doing, you can cultivate awareness and out of that awareness you will begin to see the nature of pleasure, desire and sorrow and the utter loneliness and boredom of man, and then you will begin to come upon that thing called `the space'.

When there is space between you and the object you are observing you will know there is no love, and without love, however hard you try to reform the world or bring about a new social order or however much you talk about improvements, you will only create agony. So it is up to you. There is no leader, there is no teacher, there is nobody to tell you what to do. You are alone in this mad brutal world.

http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=48&chid=56794

J. Krishnamurti on Sensations

J. Krishnamurti on Sensations

'' Why do we suffer? There is suffering around you - there is immense suffering. There are so many ways of suffering. Desire in its movement, in its action is a process of fulfillment or denial. There are various forms of fulfillment and various forms of denial, likewise each bringing about different kinds of sorrow. Without understanding sorrow there is no wisdom....and is there an end to sorrow?

So what is the origin of desire? We live by sensation Right? We live by sensation. If I observe the whole process of desire in myself I see there is always an object towards which my mind is directed for further sensation. There is perception, contact, sensation and desire and the mind becomes the mechanical instrument of all this process. So sensation becomes monstrously important and its problems overwhelming and if we do not penetrate deeply and comprehend its processes our life will be shallow and utterly vain and miserable ...and the habit of seeking further sensation....and is there an end to sorrow?

What is sensation? If one may go into it now. The actual meaning of that word is ''the activity of the senses'' Right? - touching, tasting, seeing, smelling, hearing, mind is part of the senses. Sensation like....pain....tears, laughter, having humor, it's all part of sensation. Intellectual, theoretical, philosophical sensation. Art or music....sensation. Good taste, bad taste and so on. Fear is a sensation. The sensation of drugs, alcohol....the sensation of sexuality. The sensation of achieving something. We live by sensation. Be clear on that.

Sensations are going on - inside …..

If there was no sensation both biologically and psychologically we would be dead human beings. Right? we live by sensation. That crow calling that is acting on the ear drum-nerves-and translating the noise into the cry of a crow. That is a sensation. You see a nice sari and shirt. You see it, touch it and there is the sensation of touching it, you say ''By Jove, what a lovely material that is''. There is perception, contact, sensation and desire. My mind is always experiencing in term of sensation. It is the instrument of sensation. Being bored with a particular sensation, I seek a new sensation, which may be what I call the realization of God but it is still a sensation. As you know and as I know every sensation comes to an end and so we proceed from one sensation to another and every sensation strengthens the habit of seeking further sensation....sensations are going on-inside....

You want more and more and more and more and ''the more'' means that the past sensation has not been sufficient .... sensations - I like it or dislike it.....Our sensations are limited and you take drugs and all the rest of it to have higher sensation....the sensation of sexuality....It is not to the experience that we cling but to the sensation of that experience which we had at the moment of experiencing.

Keep it very simple, don't intellectualize it for the moment-we'll do it later. Sir, sensation is ever a reaction and it wanders from one reaction to another. The wanderer is the mind, the mind is sensation. The mind is the storehouse of sensation, pleasant and unpleasant and all experience is reaction. The mind is memory which alter all in reaction. Reaction or sensation can never be satisfied. Sensation, reaction must always breed conflict, and the very conflict is further sensation.

Thought gives pleasure, sensation is turned into pleasure! When there is no identification the senses are senses. Why does thought identify with sensation? Why does thought identify with senses-is that it? Now wait a minute Sir. Why, because of pleasure, ....sensations-I like it or dislike it...If it is pleasurable when the senses begin to enjoy-say ''how nice'' - then thought begins to identify itself with it. Why because of pleasure....the mind is the storehouse of sensation, pleasant and unpleasant and all experience is reaction..... The mind is memory which alter all in reaction. So unless one understands this activity of sensation fear and pleasure will go on. Sensations are ever seeking gratification. If it is pleasurable I want more of it, if it is painful I resist it. So the resistance to pain or the pursuit of pleasure-both give continuity to desire.

What is wrong in watching the beautiful motion of a bird on the wing? What is wrong in looking at a new car....? .....in seeing a nice....face? But desire does not stop here. Your perception is not just perception, but with it comes sensation. With the arising of sensation....comes the urge to possess. You say ''This is beautiful, I must have it'' and so begins the turmoil of desire.

So I am saying when there is time in between sensation and thought....an interval, you understand the nature of desire, the way desire begins-then you know what to do with it. This identification through recognition sets going a process of thinking like a vibration or a wave which has its own continuity. Thought continues as a vibration which may manifest itself afterwards. The vibration of the word takes time to reach your ear and the nervous response as well as the brain response have a split second.

Face the fact, don't move away from the fact. Thought identifies itself with that sensation and through identification the 'I' is built up, the ego and the ego then says ''I must'' or ''I will not''. Thought has given shape to sensation. Desire is born when thought gives shape to sensation, gives an image to sensation. If there is no identification is there a self ? You understand, Sir ?. So you examine this very carefully not to identify yourself with anything.....with sensation...with an experience. Thought tries to take over, to make it permanent. Permanent ?. That's right, which means memory, a remembrance. It is now conditioned. Why it cannot give it up. That's our whole problem. Thought wants to hold on to memories which have created the image. Why has it made the image so valuable ? The whole process of identification - my house, my name, my possessions, what I will be, the success, the power, the position, the prestige - the identification process is the essence of the self.

So if ideas are the result of sensation which they are, if the mind is filled with ideas......then there is a continuance of the mind as a bundle of ideas. As long as we cling to ideas we are in a state in which there can be no experiencing at all. Then we are merely living in the field of time-in the past which gives further sensation or in the future which is another form of sensation.

Thought creates the thinker. Thought is always seeking a permanent state, seeing its own state of transition or flux or impermanence, thought creates an entity which it calls the thinker, the atman,Paramatman, the soul-a higher and higher security. That is, thought creates an entity which it calls the observer, the experiencer, the permanent thinker, as distinct from the impermanent thought and the wide distance between two creates the conflict in time.

Your reactions are there and as long as you have these reactions you are going to pay heavily, you are going to suffer. So that is all. So now how am I an ordinary human being, knowing all my reactions, ugly, pleasant, hateful, all the reactions one has, to bring about an observation in which there is no motive to restrain or to expand reaction? How am I to observe myself without a cause ?.

Sensation is ever a reaction and it wanders from one reaction to another. The mind is memory which alters all in reaction.... As you know and as I know every sensation comes to an end and so we proceed from one sensation to another and every sensation strengthens the habit of seeking further sensation....cause and effect are inseparable ; in the cause is the effect. To be aware of the cause-effect of a problem needs certain swift pliability of mind-heart for the cause-effect is constantly being modified, undergoing continual change....ever changing cause-effect..... Karma is this bondage to cause-effect. Karma is not an ever enduring chain..... there's no permanent continuance of anything.... conditioning itself is impermanent....

So what is the correct action in which there is no will, no choice, no desire - Now is it possible to see, to observe, to be aware of the beautiful and the ugly things of life and not say 

''I must have'' or ''I must not have''?. Have you ever just observed anything ? Is there an action in which there is no motive no cause-the self does not enter into it at all? Of course there is. There is, when the self is not, which means no identifying process takes place.....Effortless observation....choiceless observation.....There is the perceiving of a beautiful lake with all the colour and the glory and the beauty of it, that's enough. Not the cultivating of memory, which is developed through the identification process. Right ?

That means I must put everything in its right place. Right ? But there are all the bodily demands....sex...food put it in the right place. Who will tell me to put it in the right place ?. You understand, Sir ? So I want to find out what is the right place. How shall I find out ? I have got the key to it. Right ? Which is non identification with sensations, that is the key of it. Right, Sir ? So non identification with sensation. Identification with sensation makes the self. So is it possible not to identify with Sensation ? .Yes, sensation.

You want more and more and more and more, and ''the more'' means that the past sensation has not been sufficient.....A mind which is seeking the 'more' is never conscious of 'what is' because it is always living in the 'more'-in what it would like to be, never in 'what is'. ....meditation is actually seeing 'what is'...when no identification....not identified by thought.....There are only sensation.

So we are asking, is there a holistic awareness of all the senses, therefore, there is never asking for the 'more'. I wonder if you follow all this ?. Are we together in this even partially?. and where there is this total-fully aware-of all the senses, awareness of it-not you are aware of it....the awareness of the senses in themselves-then there is no center-in which there is awareness of the wholeness. If you consider it, you will see that to suppress the senses...is contradictory, conflicting, sorrowful....To understand the truth you must have complete sensitivity. Do you understand Sirs? Reality demands your whole being ; you must come to it with your body, mind, and heart as a total human being.........Insight is complete total attention....

When this is a fact not an idea, then dualism and division between observer and observed comes to an end. The observer is the observed-they are not separate states. The observer and the observed are a joint phenomenon and when you experience that directly, then you will find that the thing which you have dreaded as emptiness which makes you seek escape into various forms of sensation including religion-ceases and you are able to face it and be it.

Now is there a living with the sensation fully awakened-they are awakened, they are alive, but the non identifying with sensation deprives, wipes away the self. We said that. Now what is death ? Is it possible to live a daily life with death, which is the ending of the self ?

I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware....just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgement.......

Just be aware, that is all what you have to do, without condemning, without forcing, without trying to change what you are aware of......if you are aware choicelessly, the whole field of consciousness beings to unfold.....So you begin with the outer and more inwardly. Then you will find, when you move inwardly that the inward and the outward are not two different things, that the outward awareness is not different from the inward awareness, and that they are both the same.

Everything about us, within as well as without-our relationships, our thoughts, our feelings-is impermanent, in a constant state of flux. But is there anything which is permanent ? Is there ? Our constant desire is to make sensation permanent, is it not ? Sensation can be found again and again, for it is ever being lost......Being bored with a particular sensation, I seek new sensation....every sensation comes to an end and so we proceed from one sensation to another and every sensation strengthens the habit of seeking further sensation. My mind is always experiencing in terms of sensation. There is perception, contact, sensation and desire and the mind becomes the mechanical instrument of all this process. With the arising of sensation comes the urge to possess....and so begins the turmoil of desire....and the habit of seeking further sensation....and is there an end to sorrow ? Is it possible to live a daily life with death, which is the ending of the self ?.... There is only one fact impermanence....every sensation comes to an end....Can the mind, the brain remain absolutely with that feeling of suffering and nothing else....there is no movement away from that moment, that thing called suffering.....Is there an action in which there is no motive; no cause-the self does not enter into it at all ?. Thought identifies itself with that sensation and through identification the 'I' is built up....identification with sensation makes the self. If there is no identification; is there a self ?

So is it possible not to identify with sensation ?

So we are asking is there a holistic awareness of all the senses....? Just be aware....effortless observation....choiceless observation....and to learn, to find out whether it is possible to allow sensation to flower and not let thought interfere with it-to keep them apart. Will you do it ?

Thy life is a death; death is a rebirth.
Happy is the man
That is beyond the clutches
of their limitations.

And when you understand the nature of desire there is no conflict about it. Once you understand all of what is being said, there is complete break from the past. Consider a mill pond which is absolutely quiet and you drop a stone into it. There are waves...it is an outside action....but when the waves are over it is completely quiet again.

Now I realize the state of my own mind. I see that-it is instrument of sensation and desire and that it is mechanically caught up in routine. Such a mind is incapable of ever receiving or feeling the new for the new must obviously be something beyond sensation-which is always the old. So this mechanical process with it's sensations has to come to an end, has it not? Karma is not an ever-enduring chain ; it is a chain that can be broken at any time. What was done yesterday can be undone today ; there's no permanent continuance of anything. Continuance can and must be dissipated through the understanding of its process. So when you SEE this process, when you are really aware of it without opposition, without a sense of temptation, without resistance, without justifying or judging it, then you will discover that the mind is capable of receiving the new and that the new is never a sensation therefore it can never be recognized, re-experienced. It is a state of being in which creativeness comes without invitation, without memory and that is reality. That which is unnamable cannot be recognized. It is not a sensation.

Then you will find there comes love - that is not sensation, intelligence - that is not of time or of thought process and it is only that, that can resolve this immense and complex problem of sorrow....and to have the capacity of freedom that can come upon that thing that is sacred and from there move to something that may be timeless.

.....It's compassion and there is no illusion in it. You want to know the truth in one minute, Sir ? It's compassion and there is no illusion in it...........''

- J. KRISHNAMURTI

http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk001b.htm