Mindfulness...: Real intelligence...

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Real intelligence ...

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"You see, very few of us really know how to think. Most of us merely repeat what we have read in a book, or what somebody has told us, or our thinking is the outcome of our own very limited experience. Even if we travel all over the world and have innumerable experiences, meet many different people and hear what they have to say, observe their customs, their religions, their manners, we retain the remembrance of all that, from which there is what we call thinking. We compare, judge, choose, and through this process we hope to find some reasonable attitude towards life. But that kind of thinking is very limited, it is con- fined to a very small area. We have an experience like seeing the boat on the river, or a corpse being carried to the burning ghats, or a village woman carrying a heavy burden - all these impressions are there, but we are so insensitive that they don't sink into us and ripen; and it is only through sensitivity to everything around us that there is the beginning of a different kind of thinking which is not limited by our conditioning.

If you hold firmly to some set of beliefs or other, you look at everything through that particular prejudice or tradition; you don't have any contact with reality. Have you ever noticed the village women carrying heavy burdens to the town? When you do notice it, what happens to you, what do you feel? Or is it that you have seen these women going by so often that you have no feeling at all because you have become used to it and, so, hardly notice them? And even when you observe something for the first time, what happens? You automatically translate what you see according to your prejudices, don't you? You experience it according to your conditioning as a communist, a socialist, a capitalist, or some other `ist'. Whereas, if you are none of these things and therefore do not look through the screen of any idea or belief, but actually have the direct contact, then you will notice what an extraordinary relationship there is between you and what you observe. If you have no prejudice, no bias, if you are open, then everything around you becomes extraordinarily interesting, tremendously alive.

That is why it is very important, while you are young, to notice all these things. Be aware of the boat on the river, watch the train go by, see the peasant carrying a heavy burden, observe the insolence of the rich, the pride of the ministers, of the big people, of those who think they know a lot - just watch them, don't criticize. The moment you criticize, you are not in relationship, you already have a barrier between yourself and them, but if you merely observe, then you will have a direct relationship with people and with things. If you can observe alertly, keenly, but without judging, without concluding, you will find that your thinking becomes astonishingly acute. Then you are learning all the time.

Everywhere around you there is birth and death, the struggle for money, position, power, the unending process of what we call life; and don't you sometimes wonder, even while you are very young, what it is all about? You see, most of us want an answer, we want to be told what it is all about, so we pick up a political or religious book, or we ask somebody to tell us; but no one can tell us, because life is not something which can be understood from a book, nor can its significance be gathered by following another, or through some form of prayer. You and I must understand it for ourselves - which we can do only when we are fully alive, very alert, watchful, observant, taking interest in everything around us; and then we shall discover what it is to be really happy."

Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Think in these things"

"Tenta fazer esta experiência, construindo um palácio.

Equipa-o com mármore, quadros, ouro, pássaros do paraíso, jardins suspensos, todo o tipo de coisas... e entra lá para dentro. Bem, pode ser que nunca mais desejasses sair daí. Talvez, de facto, nunca mais saísses de lá. Está lá tudo! "Estou muito bem aqui sozinho!". Mas, de repente - uma ninharia!

O teu castelo é rodeado por muros, e é-te dito: 'Tudo isto é teu! Desfruta-o! Apenas não podes sair daqui!".

Então, acredita-me, nesse mesmo instante quererás deixar esse teu paraíso e pular por cima do muro.

Mais!

Tudo esse luxo, toda essa plenitude, aumentará o teu sofrimento. Sentir-te-ás insultado como resultado de todo esse luxo... Sim, apenas uma coisa te falta... um pouco de liberdade."

Fiodor Dostoievski

"O Movimento de Libertação"

To be free you must love,

without love there is no freedom...

"Perhaps some of you do not wholly understand all that I have been saying about freedom; but, as I have pointed out, it is very important to be exposed to new ideas, to something to which you may not be accustomed. It is good to see what is beautiful, but you must also observe the ugly things of life, you must be awake to everything. Similarly, you must be exposed to things which you perhaps don't quite understand, for the more you think and ponder over these matters which may be somewhat difficult for you, the greater will be your capacity to live richly.

I don't know if any of you have noticed, early in the morning, the sunlight on the waters. How extraordinarily soft is the light, and how the dark waters dance, with the morning star over the trees, the only star in the sky. Do you ever notice any of that? Or are you so busy, so occupied with the daily routine, that you forget or have never known the rich beauty of this earth - this earth on which all of us have to live? Whether we call ourselves communists or capitalists, Hindus or Buddhists, Moslems or Christians, whether we are blind, lame, or well and happy, this earth is ours. Do you understand? It is our earth, not somebody else's; it is not only the rich man's earth, it does not belong exclusively to the powerful rulers, to the nobles of the land, but it is our earth, yours and mine. We are nobodies, yet we also live on this earth, and we all have to live together. It is the world of the poor as well as of the rich, of the unlettered as well as of the learned; it is our world, and I think it is very important to feel this and to love the earth, not just occasionally on a peaceful morning, but all the time. We can feel that it is our world and love it only when we understand what freedom is.

There is no such thing as freedom at the present time, we don't know what it means. We would like to be free but, if you notice, everybody - the teacher, the parent, the lawyer, the policeman, the soldier, the politician, the business man - is doing something in his own little corner to prevent that freedom. To be free is not merely to do what you like, or to break away from outward circumstances which bind you, but to understand the whole problem of dependence. Do you know what dependence is? You depend on your parent, don't you? You depend on your teachers, you depend on the cook, on the postman, on the man who brings you milk, and so on. That kind of dependence one can understand fairly easily. But there is a far deeper kind of dependence which one must understand before one can be free: the dependence on another for one's happiness. do you know what it means to depend on somebody for your happiness? It is not the mere physical dependence on another which is so binding, but the inward, psychological dependence from which you derive so-called happiness; for when you depend on somebody in that way, you become a slave. If, as you grow older, you depend emotionally on your parents, on your wife or husband, on a guru, or on some idea, there is already the beginning of bondage. We don't understand this - although most of us, especially when we are young, want to be free.

To be free we have to revolt against all inward dependence, and we cannot revolt if we don't understand why we are dependent. Until we understand and really break away from all inward dependence we can never be free, for only in that understanding can there be freedom. But freedom is not a mere reaction. Do you know what a reaction is? If I say something that hurts you, if I call you an ugly name and you get angry with me, that is a reaction - a reaction born of dependence; and independence is a further reaction. But freedom is not a reaction, and until we understand reaction and go beyond it, we are never free.

Do you know what it means to love somebody? Do you know what it means to love a tree, or a bird, or a pet animal, so that you take care of it, feed it, cherish it, though it may give you nothing in return though it may not offer you shade, or follow you, or depend on you? Most of us don't love in that way, we don't know what that means at all because our love is always hedged about with anxiety, jealousy, fear - which implies that we depend inwardly on another, we want to be loved. We don't just love and leave it there, but we ask something in return; and in that very asking we become dependent.

So freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something - and it is only such love that can know freedom. But, you see, you are not educated for this. You are educated in mathematics, in chemistry, geography, history, and there it ends, because your parents' only concern is to help you get a good job and be successful in life. If they have money they may send you abroad, but like the rest of the world their whole purpose is that you should be rich and have a respectable position in society; and the higher you climb the more misery you cause for others, because to get there you have to compete, be ruthless. So parents send their children to schools where there is ambition, competition, where there is no love at all, and that is why a society such as ours is continually decaying, in constant strife; and though the politicians, the judges, the so-called nobles of the land talk about peace, it does not mean a thing.

Now, you and I have to understand this whole problem of freedom. We must find out for ourselves what it means to love; because if we don't love we can never be thoughtful, attentive; we can never be considerate. Do you know what it means to be considerate? When you see a sharp stone on a path trodden by many bare feet, you remove it, not because you have been asked, but because you feel for another - it does not matter who he is, and you may never meet him. To plant a tree and cherish it, to look at the river and enjoy the fullness of the earth, to observe a bird on the wing and see the beauty of its flight, to have sensitivity and be open to this extraordinary movement called life - for all this there must be freedom; and to be free you must love. Without love there is no freedom; without love, freedom is merely an idea which has no value at all. So it is only for those who understand and break away from inner dependence, and who therefore know what love is, that there can be freedom; and it is they alone who will bring about a new civilization, a different world."

Jiddu Krishnamurti