My site has been hacked with malicious code. Please make sure you have adequate antivirus protection if visiting. I will look into clearing it up this evening.
Duncan :(
A mighty tree felled by snowflakes
Knowing is not experiencing:
But if you and I, as individuals, can see this whole working of the self, then we shall know what love is. I assure you that is the only reformation which can possibly change the world. Love is not the self. Self cannot recognize love. You say “I love,” but then, in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not. But, when you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not.
- Krishnamurti
You know, it can walk. And it does.
Today I walked the very western end of the South Downs Way. I parked at Cheriton then rode the bus into Winchester. From the city centre, the path crosses the M3 then through the hamlet of Chilcomb, up onto the downs. Then across to Cheesefoot Head and Gander Down. I left the SDW to get back to Cheriton, a mile or so off the path. It took 3.5 hours with a lunch stop. I aim to walk the full 100 miles before the end of the year. Here’s the video from today:
Krishnamurti, Book of Life, 6 Feb:
You know what I mean by the self? By that, I mean the idea, the memory, the conclusion, the experience, the various forms of namable and unnamable intentions, the conscious endeavor to be or not to be, the accumulated memory of the unconscious, the racial, the group, the individual, the clan, and the whole of it all, whether it is projected outwardly in action, or projected spiritually as virtue; the striving after all this is the self. In it is included the competition, the desire to be. The whole process of that, is the self; and we know actually when we are faced with it, that it is an evil thing. I am using the word ‘evil’ intentionally, because the self is dividing; the self is self-enclosing; its activities, however noble, are separated and isolated.
Creation is when the self is not there, because creation is not intellectual, is not of the mind, is not self-projected, is something beyond all experiencing.
- Krishnamurti, Book of Life, 5 Feb
Lesser Seen Brockwood – Before there were fridges or freezers (4/365), originally uploaded by :Duncan.
I’m not sure if this was for keeping ice, food, naughty children, or what. I suspect it was an ‘Ice House’
From the television last night. Recorded in 2005.
Amazing how serious and joyful he is.
When I see the Dalai Lama I am always reminded of Hunter S Thompson. They are brothers with very different paths!
When I see the Dalai Lama I am always reminded of Hunter S Thompson. They are brothers with very different paths!
You can feel how thought and conclusions and opinions and judgements form your facial expression
You can feel how tension and protection affect your posture
You can feel how the brain gets patterned and grooved
You can feel it happening in yourself
You can see it happening in others
You can feel all this undo
And end before it begins
Book of Life, 4 Feb:
Love admits no division. Either you love, or do not love.
Like a shrimp in a suitcase laying on a window ledge,
like a pair of tartan slippers and they’re underneath a hedge,
like a scout master at daybreak putting peanuts in his glove,
like a specially formed ice arch for climbing over doves,
like a sardine in a hair net and he’s staring at a priest.These things you’ll find constantly irritate our minds.
Like a sugar unicycle that’s being ridden by a fork,
like a batten berg owned by Jesus that can miraculously talk,
like a lemon pip with sideboards fighting a bearded crab,
or Bono in a boob tube on the choir master’s lap,
like a elaborate heating system apparently in Kent.These things you’ll find constantly irritate our minds.
Like a badger with an afro throwing sparklers at the Pope,
like a family of foxes and they’re glowering at some soap,
like a lump of Nazi nougat walking down an avenue,
like a Tudor vacuum cleaner saying “How do you do?”
like a kestrel having sex above a television set.These things you’ll find constantly irritate our minds.
Moles. Kind of cute. Kind of a nuisance to gardeners. Someone told me they have worm larders down there. They don’t just eat worms, they bite their heads off and keep them for later. The worms stay alive and fresh but can’t go anywhere because they have no mouth or brain. Do worms have brains? I don’t know, but moles do.
I began the morning not with asana but with yoga nidra and then awareness meditation. The true value of gentleness. Gentleness – not you being gentle so much as gentleness itself. Why be hard on yourself or on others? Hardness restricts, gentleness allows.
Book of Life, 3 Feb:
If I am stupid and I say I must become intelligent, the effort to become intelligent is only a greater form of stupidity; because what is important is to understand stupidity. However much I may try to become intelligent, my stupidity will remain. I may acquire the superficial polish of learning, I may be able to quote books, repeat passages from great authors, but basically I shall still be stupid. But if I see and understand stupidity as it expresses itself in my daily life … then that very awareness brings about a breaking up of stupidity.
As someone who relishes solitude, I enjoyed this article today. An extract:
I asked a few friends when they had last spent 24 hours without human company. “That’s a tough one,” one 40-year-old woman said. “A whole day, you mean?” No, a whole day, evening and night. “I simply couldn’t!” She has a young son, which would make things difficult right now, but what about before he came along? “Twenty-four hours, without seeing anyone at all? It's never happened to me.” Elsewhere, a few people suggested that, they guessed, it might possibly, perhaps have occurred a decade or two ago, when they were living on their own, or sharing with friends who had pushed off for the weekend. They were definitely ill, or they’d have invited someone over, or gone a-visiting.
Are people uncomfortable with solitude because they so rarely experience it, or do they so rarely experience it because they are uncomfortable with it? What is clear is that most of us persist in equating aloneness with loneliness, and company with companionship, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary. “We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers,” is how Henry David Thoreau put it after two years as the sole inhabitant of a house he had built in the Massachusetts woods. You’re never more alone than when you're in a crowd. A cliche, perhaps, but most of us recognise the truth in it.
Before moving to the back of beyond, I spent almost 40 years surrounded by people, first as one of five children, then in shared houses, and finally in a succession of London flats. I had girlfriends, a daughter, flatmates, people to the left of me, people to the right of me, people in front, behind and, in the more pleasant moments, under or on top of me. I sometimes feel unloved now, but I sometimes felt unloved then. Doesn’t everyone?
Delightful twirly curly blossoms in the grove today
Book of Life, 2 Feb:
You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself. The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself.
For sure!
Starting today, I’m taking one photograph every day for one year. I tried it last lear, and took 238 photos. Expect many of the same views, but an all new year! Expect lots of Brockwood photos, but a new, 2010 Brockwood!
