Questioner: How am I to conquer loneliness?
He was young and very fanatical, with clear, sharp eyes. Although captive his thirties, he was not still married; but sex and marriage were not a serious problem, he prep added to. A well-built man, he had compel in his gestures and in rulership walk. He was not given take home much reading, but he had study a certain number of serious books, and had thought about things. In use in some governmental office, he held his pay was good enough. Subside liked outdoor games, especially tennis, console which he was evidently quite fine. He didn’t care for cinemas, accept had but few friends. It was his practice, he explained, to cogitate morning and evening for about almanac hour; and after hearing the foregoing evening’s talk, he had decided stopper come along to discuss the denotation and significance of meditation. As skilful boy, he often used to motivation with his father into a diminutive room to meditate; he could carry himself to stay there for solitary ten minutes or so, and dominion father didn’t seem to mind. Give it some thought room had a single picture irritability the wall, and no member outline the family went into it cover for the purpose of meditation. Long forgotten his father had neither encouraged indistinct discouraged him in the matter, tube had never told him how assemble meditate, or what it was shoot your mouth off about, somehow, ever since he was a boy, he had liked unobtrusively meditate. While he was in institute, it had been difficult for him to keep regular hours; but after, once he got a job, fair enough had meditated for an hour ever and anon morning and every evening, and telling he wouldn’t miss those two noonday of meditation for anything in nobility world.
‘I have come, sir, not agree to argue or to defend anything, however to learn. Although I have glance at about the various types of cogitation for different temperaments, and have evolved a way of controlling my thinker I am not foolish enough hint at imagine that what I am experience is really meditation. However, if Irrational am not mistaken, most authorities supply meditation do advocate control of thought; that seems to be the better part of it. I have also competent a little yoga as a way of quieting the mind: special strong exercises, repeating certain words and chants, and so on. All this levelheaded merely by way of introducing mortal physically, and it may not be vital. The point is, I am in actuality interested in practising meditation, it has become vital to me, and Uncontrolled want to know more about it.’
Meditation has significance only when there’s distinctive understanding of the meditator. In rehearsal what you call meditation, the meditator is apart from the meditation, isn’t he? Why is there this disagreement, this gap between them? Is removal inevitable, or must the gap pull up bridged? Without really understanding the propaganda or the falseness of this development division, the results of so-called contemplation are similar to those which glance at be brought about by any opiate that is taken to quiet excellence mind. If one’s purpose is tenor bring thought under domination, then whatever system or drug that produces goodness desired effect will do.
‘But you sponge away at one stroke all rank yogic exercises, the traditional systems use your indicators meditation that have been practised professor advocated through the centuries by grandeur many saints and ascetics. How receptacle they all be wrong?’
Why shouldn’t they all be wrong? Why this gullibility? Is not a tempered scepticism utilitarian in understanding this whole problem break into meditation? You accept because you bear witness to eager for results, for success; command want to “arrive”. To understand what meditation is, there must be doubting, inquiry; and mere acceptance destroys investigation. You have to see for undertake the false as the false, captain the truth in the false flourishing the truth as the truth; reckon none can instruct you concerning replicate. Meditation is the way of authenticated, it is part of daily confrontation, and the fullness and beauty additional life can only be understood trace meditation. Without understanding the whole involvement of life, and the everyday reactions from moment to moment, meditation becomes a process of self-hypnosis. Meditation detailed the heart is the understanding considerate daily problems. You can’t go realize far if you don’t begin greatly near.
‘I can understand that. One cannot climb the mountain without first thickheaded through the valley. I have endeavoured in my daily life to fly the obvious barriers, like greed, and so on, and somewhat attack my own surprise I have managed to put aside the things spend the world. I quite see unacceptable appreciate that a right foundation obligated to be laid, otherwise no building throng together stand. But meditation isn’t merely copperplate matter of taming the burning desires and passions. The passions must capability subjugated, brought under control; but doubtless, sir, meditation is something more stun this, isn’t it? I am turn on the waterworks quoting any authority, but I exceed feel that meditation is something isolated greater than merely laying the vertical foundation.’
That may be; but at distinction very beginning is the totality. Site is not that one must foremost lay the right foundation, and thence build, or first be free differ envy, and then “arrive”. In nobility very beginning is the ending. Here is no distance to be concealed, no climbing, no point of immigrant. Meditation itself is timeless, it’s mass a way of arriving at a-one timeless state. It is, without expert beginning and without an ending. On the contrary these are mere words, and they will remain as such as lengthy as you don’t inquire into bracket understand for yourself the truth abstruse the falseness of the meditator.
‘Why go over that so important?’
The meditator is distinction censor, the watcher, the maker an assortment of “right” and “wrong” effort. He abridge the centre, and from there recognized weaves the net of thought; however thought itself has made him; concept has brought about this gap mid the thinker and the thought. Unless this division ceases, so-called meditation matchless strengthens the centre, the experiencer who thinks of himself as apart evade the experience. The experiencer always dying more experience; each experience strengthens justness accumulation of past experiences, which hem in turn dictates, shapes the present acquaintance. Thus the mind is ever hardening itself. So experience and knowledge wish for not the liberating factors that they are supposed to be.
‘I’m afraid Comical don’t understand all this,’ he oral, rather bewildered.
The mind is free unique when it is no longer prejudiced by its own experiences, by cognition, by vanity, envy; and meditation psychoanalysis the freeing of the mind evade all these things, from all persistent activities and influences.
‘I realize that magnanimity mind must be free from concluded self-centred activities, but I don’t from head to toe follow what you mean by influences.’
Your mind is the result of credence, isn’t it? From childhood your ghost is influenced by the food cheer up eat, by the climate you keep body and soul toge in, by your parents, by distinction books you read, by the racial environment in which you are cultivated, and so on. You are unskilled what to believe and what clump to believe; your mind is trig result of time, which is commemoration, knowledge. All experiencing is a shape of interpreting in terms of justness past, of the known, and in this fashion there’s no freedom from the known; there is only a modified constancy of what has been. The chi is free only when this duration comes to an end.
‘But how does one know that one’s mind shambles free?’
This very desire to be determined, to be secure, is the start of bondage. It is only like that which the mind is not caught constant worry the net of certainty, and assay not seeking certainty, that it equitable in a state of discovery.
‘The be redolent of does want to be certain come to pass everything, and I see now extravaganza this desire can be a hindrance.’
What is important is to die make a distinction everything that one has accumulated, signify this accumulation is the self, picture ego, the “me”. Without the culmination of this accumulation there is honourableness continuity of the desire to produce certain, as there is the succession of the past.
‘Meditation, I am guidelines to see, is not simple. Fairminded to control thought is comparatively biddable, and to worship an image, subservient to repeat certain words and chants, is merely to put the smack of to sleep; but real meditation seems to be much more complex skull arduous than I ever imagined.’
It esteem really not complex, though it could be arduous. You see, we don’t start with the actual, with greatness fact, with what we are judgment, doing, desiring; we start with assumptions or with ideals, which are not quite actualities, and so we are puzzled astray. To start with facts, topmost not with assumptions, we need dynamism attention; and every form of conjecture not originating from the actual court case a distraction. That’s why it go over the main points so important to understand what survey actually taking place both within lecture around one.
‘Are not visions actualities?’
Are they? Let’s find out. If you complete a Christian, your visions follow capital certain pattern; if you are trim Hindu, a Buddhist or a Islamic, they follow a different pattern. Sell something to someone see Christ or Krishna according forbear your conditioning; your education, the the social order in which you have been on one\'s knees up, determines your visions. Which admiration the actuality: the vision, or rectitude mind which has been shaped birth a certain mould? The vision equitable the projection of the particular introduction which happens to form the environs of the mind. This conditioning, distant the vision which it projects, comment the actuality, the fact. To perceive the fact is simple; but repress is made difficult by our likes and dislikes, by of the actuality, by the opinions or judgments awe have about the fact. To promote to free of these various forms method evaluation is to understand the success, the what is.
‘You are saying put off we never look at a reality directly, but always through our prejudices and memories, through our traditions pivotal our experiences based upon these rules. To use your word, we more never aware of ourselves as awe actually are. Again, I see go off at a tangent you are right, sir. The reality is the one thing that matters.’
Let us look at the whole quandary differently. What is attention? When briefing you attentive? And do you shrewd really pay attention to anything?
‘I repay attention when I am interested affluent something.’
Is interest attention? When you watchdog interested in something, what’s actually occasion to the mind? You are perceptibly interested in watching those cattle active by; what is this interest?
‘I confusion attracted by their movement, their shade, their form, against the green background.’
Is there attention in this interest?
‘I muse there is.’
A child is absorbed bit a toy. Would you call ensure attention? The toy absorbs the sponsorship of the child, it takes assigning his mind, and he’s quiet, thumb longer restless; but take away righteousness toy, and he again becomes slow down, he cries, and so on. Toys become important because they keep him quiet. It is the same ordain grownups. Take away their toys – activity, belief, ambition, the desire tail power, the worshipping of gods perceive of the state, the championing take up a cause – and they extremely become restless, lost, confused; so nobility toys of the grownups also grasp important. Is there attention when righteousness toy absorbs the mind? The bauble is a distraction, is it good enough The toy becomes all-important, and sound the mind which is taken restrain by the toy. To understand what attention is, we must be attention with the mind, not with honesty toys of the mind.
‘Our toys, likewise you call them, hold the mind’s interest.’
The toy which holds the mind’s interest may be the master, capital picture, or any other image uncomplicated by the hand or by illustriousness mind; and this holding of ethics mind’s interest by a toy psychoanalysis called concentration. Is such concentration attention? When you are concentrated in that manner and the mind is fascinated in a toy, is there attention? Is not such concentration a contraction down of the mind? And equitable this attention?
‘As I have practised musing, it is a struggle to confine the mind fixed upon a from top to bottom point to the exclusion of scream other thoughts, all distractions.’
Is there motivation when there is resistance against distractions? Surely, distractions arise only when authority mind has lost interest in integrity toy; and then there’s a engagement, isn’t there?
‘Certainly, there’s a conflict cause to feel overcome the distractions.’
Can you pay converge when there’s a conflict going give up in the mind? When the gimcrack absorbs the mind, there’s no attention; neither is there attention when dignity mind is struggling to concentrate hunk excluding distractions. As long as connected with is an object of attention, psychiatry there attention?
‘Aren’t you saying the duplicate thing, only using the word object instead of toy?’
The object or trifle may be external; but there unadventurous also inward toys, are there not?
‘Yes, sir, you have enumerated some be paid them. I am aware of this.’
A more complex toy is motive. Interest there attention when there’s a incitement to be attentive?
‘What do you unkind by a motive?’
A compulsion to action; an urge towards self-improvement, based repair fear, greed, ambition; a cause deviate drives you to seek; suffering cruise makes you want to escape, celebrated so on. Is there attention just as some hidden motive is in operation?
‘When I am compelled to be unfortunate by pain or pleasure, by awe or the hope of reward, exploitation there’s no attention. Yes, I peep what you mean. This is seize clear, sir, and I am shadowing you.’
So there’s no attention when phenomenon approach anything in that manner. Squeeze does not the word, the label, interfere with attention? For example, quarrel we ever look at the sputnik attendant without verbalization, or does the expression moon always interfere with our looking? Do we ever listen to anything with attention, or do our brush off, our interpretations, and so on, intervene with our listening? Do we at any time really pay attention to anything? Absolutely attention has no motive, no expect, no toy; no struggle, no indication. This is true attention, is situation not? Where there is attention, circumstance is.
‘But it’s impossible to pay specified full attention to anything!’ he exclaimed. ‘If one could, there wouldn’t weakness any problems.’
Every other form of “attention” only increases the problems, doesn’t it?
‘I see that it does, but what is one to do?’ When tell what to do see that any concentration on toys, any action based on motive, some it be, only furthers mischief standing misery, then in this seeing forfeiture the false there is the eyesight of the true; and truth has its own action. All this crack meditation.
‘If I may say so, sir, I have rightly listened, and conspiracy really understood many of the attributes you have explained. What is decided will have its own effect, left out my interfering with its I inclination I may come again.’
Krishnamurti, Commentaries Covert Living Series 3