We Are Agitatied By Belief - Talk: J Krishnamurti

Your religion, your belief in God, is an escape from actuality, and therefore it is no religion at all. The rich man who accumulates money through cruelty, dishonesty and cunning exploitation believes in God; and you also believe in God, you also are cunning, cruel, suspicious and envious…. Because you collect sacred books and symbols of God, does that indicate that you are a religious person?
Religion is not escape from the fact: religion is the understanding of the fact of what you are in your everyday relationships; religion is the manner of your speech, the way you talk, the way you address your servants, the way you treat your family and neighbor, society and family, there must be confusion; and the mind that is confusion, problems and conflict.
A mind that escapes from the actual shall never find God; a mind that is agitated by belief shall not know truth. But the mind that understands its relationship with property, people and ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love- such a mind alone can understand reality.
We realise that life is ugly, painful, sorrowful; we want some kind of theory or doctrine which will explain all this, and so we are caught in explanation, words, theories, and gradually, beliefs becomes deeply rooted and unshakable because behind those beliefs and dogmas, there is the constant fear of the unknown. But we never look at that fear; we turn away from it. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. Beliefs divide people. Each dogma, each belief has a series of rituals and compulsions which bind and separate man. So, we start with an inquiry to find out what is true, what the significance is of this misery, struggle and pain; and we are soon caught up in beliefs, rituals and theories.
Belief is corruption because behind belief and morality lurks the mind, the self growing big, powerful and strong. We consider belief in God, the belief in something, as religion; that to believe is to be religious. If you do not believe, you will be considered an atheist; you will be condemned by society.
One society will condemn those who believe in God, and another society will condemn those do not. They are both the same. So, religion becomes a matter of belief and belief acts and has a corresponding influence on the mind; the mind then can never be free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true…
We are confused, and we think that through belief is superimposed on the confusion, and we hope that confusion will thereby be cleared away. But belief is merely an escape from the fact of confusion; it does not help us to face and to understand the fact but to run away from the confusion in which we are…. Belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. So, Religion, which is organized belief, becomes a means of escape from what is, from the fact of confusion. The Book of Life, KFI.

CAS In DYPIS

Yesterday Abhilash and Aditi had given this collage of cas picture’s. Children are really very creative and energetic. How much work they do?
CAS work is going on still some things are not clear to me, but I am trying my level best.
Getting information from occ forum, blogs and guide and of course Chiranjeet is biggest source of information for me. I wish soon everything will be clear for me. Anyway I am enjoying my work and this happy feeling is giving me energy to work more !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aaj Bhi Khare Hai Talab

Today I finish reading ' Aaj Bhi Khare Hai Talab'. It was revision for me. Long back I have read this book. That time also I felt we should revise our old water system, and today also same thought came in my mind. I know in Nagpur one person had good study about all pond system. Minti knows him very well. Mr. Sahatrabhojani had studied about it, and given a report to NMC. Nagpur's all ponds have interconnection and if we clean the ponds we can get a big chain of water source which will be helpful for water supply department of Nagpur and hole city will get sufficient water even in summers. But government is not paying attention and at last it must lying down somewhere in NMC office.

Teach Head, Hand And Heart

- Talk: Dada J P Vaswani

Date: 5^th September, 2011

“Judge a tree by its fruits,” said the great teacher of Palestine. Judged by its fruits, our current education system has failed miserably. A new type of education is needed, an education which should be related to life, real life.

Education must not be merely academic or abstract: it must not aim at stuffing the student with information acquired from dead books or a set of sterile moralities and superficial values. True education should equip the student to cope adequately with life, with what lies ahead of him so that he may become a worthy participant in the adventure of life.

Intellect has developed but reverence is lacking. Critical faculties are given free play and sympathy, the power that binds and builds, is receding. Knowledge without sympathy does more harm than good. It makes us suspicious and cynical.

Ideals that inspired education in ancient India must be rediscovered and introduced in our educational institutions, if we are to make our contributions to civilization and to the freshness of human life.

The number of schools and colleges and universities in India is multiplying. Graduates and holders of doctorates are increasing. Knowledge has spread. But have we grown in freshness, vitality and strength? Have we become more appreciative of the deeper values which alone give meaning and significance to life? Or do we feel bored, cut off from great ideals, hearts bereft of the song of sacrifice?

A new type of education is needed – an education which will not merely develop brain power, but an education which will give a triple training of the head, hand and heart.

Nation-building is character-building. What is wanted is not mere intellectual improvement but education that helps us become whole. The final end of education is not the gain of scholarship or education, power or financial independence. For all these without self-discipline and self-control could well transform to becoming anti-social forces. The object of education would be to form character.

Ancient Indic guru-shishya parampara was a beautiful blend of discipline and emotion. Today, students receive information but not much by way of training of emotions. Communion with nature was another part of ashram life. It developed the aesthetic side of the student’s life; it purified the heart.

True education is not dead knowledge; it is pulsating with life. Vidya or education is the search for the spiritual centre of life. Vidya is culture and this is possible with mental and physical discipline.

Today, knowledge has made us cynical. Education is analytical and critical, but lacks power for the creative life of society. It has made alliance with secularism, with utilitarianism, with “getting on”. The problem of education will not be solved unless knowledge is related to a Spiritual synthesis of Life, to what is called Adhyatma Vidya. There has been too much organization of the machinery of education. We have given too much time to study of processes and too much time to their ends and values. Organization has brought with it officialism, and officialism is the death of true culture.

A sound theory of education is a theory of ideals – the values and means by which they may be secured. The ideal is a vital idea. It is dynamic. The ideal shows the principle of infinite vitality. Thus ideals shape our lives.

From Times Of India (The Speaking Tree)

Conflict Necessary For Creativity

Raj Kachroo

When M K Gandhi was thrown out of a train in South Africa he had a choice to make – either to ignore the event and live in peace or enter into a conflict and face harassment, hardship and the possibility Why? Did he not have a guru who had taught him that living in peace and tranquility was the ultimate objective of life and the best way to achieve this objective was to avoid situations of conflict? Why did he not walk away?

The Dalai Lama chose to live in exile rather than live in peace in Tibet. He is a spiritual master himself. He preaches peace around the world. Does he not know that living in peace requires avoiding situations of conflict?

Aung San Suu Kyi did not have to stay in jail. Winston Churchill did not have to join the Word War. Nelson Mandela did not have to fight a war with Idi Amin. There is a long list of people who have embraced conflict despite standing for peace, otherwise. They had the courage to stand up against repression rather than submit to it.

Both the Ramayana and Mahabharata, revered Indic epics, are stories of war, not peace. Krishna did not tell the Pandavas to ignore the incident of Draupadi’s humiliation in court (the Draupadi vastraharan). He encouraged them to go to war. The Gita says engaging in war to uphold truth is not a matter of choice for a warrior; it is his duty. Islam says participation in jihad is the duty of a Muslim when the fight is to uphold justice when challenged by oppression, as a way of self-defense.

Most of us are confused between conflict and the method of resolving a conflict and the method of resolving a conflict. We assume, incorrectly that Gandhi, as a peace loving person, must have avoided situations of conflict. On the other hand, he faced conflict head-on. Bhagat Singh and Gandhi were both gearing themselves to deal with conflict, except that Gandhi tried to employ peaceful means while Bhagat Singh chose aggression.

The duty of a scientist, artist or professor is also to engage in conflict against repressive regimes of knowledge. Any kind of limited knowledge is a form of bondage. Albert Einstein advanced the boundaries of scientific knowledge. James Joyce did the same in the world of literature. He flouted rules of writing as he saw them as restrictions on creativity. Picasso and M F Hussain, for example, explored realms beyond accepted rules in visual art. Mother Teresa redefined the concept of caring. Every one of them faced criticism and controversy, yet they remained convinced of the nature of their work and the methods they used to fulfill their vision. They remained engaged.

One can only conclude from this that the people we admire and even those we worship have all rejected the existing as being adequate and have chosen to engage in conflict to expand the existing. They have redefined the purpose of our life.

The purpose of our life is not to live in passive acceptance but to engage with conflict in order to be creative. Creativity is the purpose of life. The purpose is to advance an individual soul and the collective Consciousness. The only word of caution here is that we must first settle ourselves spiritually so that we know whether a conflict is justified or not.

The Old Man And The Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Continue…….

Date: July 4, 2011

When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

‘Santiago,’ the old boy said.

‘Yes,’ the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

‘Can I go out and get sardines for you for tomorrow?’

‘No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net.’

‘I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way.’

‘You bought me a beer,’ the old man said. ‘You are already a man.’

‘How old was I when you first took me in a boat?’

‘Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?’

‘I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.’

‘Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?’

‘I remember everything from when we first went together.’

The old man looked at him with his sunburned, confident, loving eyes.

‘If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,’ he said. ‘But you are your father’s and your mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.’

‘May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too.’

‘I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box.’

‘Let me get four fresh ones.’

‘One,’ the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.

‘Two,’ the boy said.

‘Two,’ the old man agreed. ‘You didn’t steal them?’

‘I would,’ the boy said. ‘But I bought these.’

‘Thank you,’ the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful ant it carried no loss of true pride.

‘Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,’ he said.

‘Where are you going?’ the boy asked.

‘Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light.’

‘I’ll try to get him to work fat out,’ the boy said.

‘Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid.’

‘He does not like to work too far out.’

‘No,’ the boy said. ‘But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin.’

‘Are his eyes that bad?’

He is almost blind.’

‘It is strange,’ the old man said. ‘He never went turtling. That is what kills the eyes.’

‘But you went turtling for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.’

‘I am a strange old man.’

‘But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?’

‘I think so. And there are many tricks.’

‘Let us take the stuff home,’ the boy said. ‘So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines.’

The Old Man And The Sea

Ernest Hemingway

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is worst form of unlucky and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and furled; it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

‘Santiago,’ the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. ‘I could go with you again. We’ve made some money.’

The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

‘No,’ the old man said’ ‘You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.’

‘But remember,’ the old man said. ‘I know you did not leave me because you doubted.’

‘It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.’

‘I know,’ the old man said. ‘It is quite normal.’

‘He hasn’t much faith.’

‘No,’ the old man said. ‘But we have. Haven’t we?’

‘Yes,’ the boy said. ‘Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home.’

‘Why not?’ the old man said. ‘Between fishermen.’

They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.