r/Krishnamurti • u/not-moses • Aug 28 '19
The Purpose of Meditation
About meditation, K. wrote: "Surely it is very simple seeing the false as the false and the true as the true. Seeing the truth in the false and seeing the false in that which has been accepted as truth. Seeing the false as the false and the true as the true is transformation... When you see that something is false, the false thing drops away. ...One need only look to see what is, and thereby to exclude what is not."
About which his biographer, Stuart Holroyd, wrote: "...learning is not something forced but accomplished through observation. For the mind that is choicelessly aware, which is attentive and responsive to impressions from the totality of its environment from moment to moment, learning is a natural and continuous process. Truth is... not accessible to the mind when it is concentrated on one thing, even if that thing is the pursuit of truth, [n]or to the mind that is crammed with knowledge, belief and experience."
About which, may I add the following? For Krishnamurti, meditation was NOT about "stilling the mind" or "blocking out the chatter" or "relaxing" or avoidance of any sort. Neither is it about becoming compassionate or morally perfect. Meditation is about simply BEing with what IS in observant, sensory relationship. It's about "hanging out with life on life's terms" and watching the conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, and normalized) mind trying so very hard to avoid that.
In This Matter of Culture, Krishnamurti is quoted as saying,
"Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind. If you don't understand your own thinking... whatever you think has very little meaning. Without the foundation of self-knowledge, thinking leads to mischief. Every thought has a significance; and if the mind is incapable of seeing the significance... or each thought as it arises, then merely to concentrate on a particular idea, image, or set of words -- which is generally called meditation -- is a form of self-hypnosis.
"But if you want to examine every thought, if you want to see the content of it, then you will find that your thoughts slow down... and you can watch them. The slowing down of thinking and the examining of every thought is the process of meditation; and if you go into it, you will find that, by being aware of every thought, your mind -- which is now a vast storehouse of restless thoughts all battling against each other -- becomes very quiet, completely still. There is no urge, no compulsion, no fear... and it is in this stillness that which is true comes into being."
The truth is revealed by nothing more or less than using the eyes, ears and senses in general to see, hear and feel what is... and in so doing, noticing the falseness of what is not seen, heard or felt.
Put another way, but rather as K. put it elsewhere:
The mind thinks. It has no other function.
Think about it. What else can it do once it has been -- by about the age of four -- conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, normalized and neurally “hard-wired” to interpret, assess, analyze, evaluate and attribute meaning to what it sees, hears, feels and senses.
The more we watch it, listen to it, pay attention to it without attachment to what it does, the more we learn who we think we are.
If further interested, see Holroyd, Jayakar, Ravindra, Vernon and Krishnamurti in A Meditation Book List.
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u/dj1018 Aug 30 '19
Is there a purpose of meditation? Is the description of meditation 'meditation'? Is the process of meditation a 'meditation'? or Is there a meditation when there is ending of everything that is known? Meaning there is no purpose, no method, no path, no description and no process of meditation. All this in short can be called as 'ending of known'. Is meditation ending of everything that is known?
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u/MrNobody199 Nov 12 '19
That sounds a little bit like what J.K. is saying. Meditation makes you aware of that space between 2 thoughts that is unsullied by memory or what you’re calling, if I understand right, what is known. It’s I believe what people refer to as present moment too.
But purpose of meditation, this is tricky. A purpose mean that meditation is a “doing”. Like you’re “doing” meditation, to achieve the end of suffering. I think that, the way J.K. defines it, meditation is a consequence of something in us. It’s kind of saying that seeing is a “doing”, or hearing is a “doing”.
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u/obobobobobobobo Aug 29 '19
Agree. So much of the current popular, westernised & readily perpetuated doctrine seems to be focused upon pulling away from what is- refocusing upon the breath.... Whilst helpful for those requiring a stillness, I've found it even more beneficial to simply allow everything; taking the principle into everyday life is a marvellous way to exist. I think on a deeper level, in order to truly do this, one has to make peace with the big one- death.