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Krishnamurti’s Daily Thought

ByElizabeth

Three or four weeks ago, I came out of my morning meditation thinking about the teachings of Krishnamurti.  (I read a lot of Krishnamurti when I was in high school, so his teachings have influenced me with varying degrees of subtlety).  Two or three days later, I was “spammed” with Krishnamurti’s Daily Thought.  Someone, apparently somewhere in Europe, somehow got access to an email list to which I subscribe.  As I had just been thinking about Krishnamurti, though, instead of hitting “unsubscribe,” I read the thought for the day.  I’ve been reading it since, and I am exploring how much my readings in high school have been part of my foundational thinking.

When I was volunteering at the Lantern yesterday, one of the other volunteers called and reminded me that there were books put aside for me.  It is not my habit to put books aside, and I had no recollection of so doing, so I was curious to discover the books were there.  One of the two books was a slightly water damaged paperback of Krishnamurti On Right Livelihood.  The universal energies are obviously suggesting I examine this early influence.  I am contemplating what the following question means for me in today’s current context of multiple wars, a deep recession, and burgeoning environmental degradation:

Is it not necessary for each one to know for himself what is the right means of livelihood?  If we are avaricious, envious, seeking power, then our means of livelihood will correspond to our inward demands and so produce a world of competition, ruthlessness, oppression, ultimately ending in war. Krishnamurti, Ojai, July 1944

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    Day After Walk About

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    Capitol Hill Neighborhood, Eastern Market, House Office Buildings, US Botanical Garden, Barbara Kruger at the Hirshhorn, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington Monument, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (Sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt), Vietnam Memorial, Street Art on George Washington University Campus, and various points in between.

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    Lady Macbeth (and Bhavana)

    ByElizabeth

    The young woman sitting next to me on the train north from New York, who is impossibly tall and has lovely, strong features (i.e., is perfectly cast), is memorizing Lady Macbeth’s lines.

    I had on my own lap print-outs of mantras that Paul Muller-Ortega has invited us to memorize as part of our continuing studies.

    To enter the character of Lady Macbeth, one of the first steps is to memorize the lines, to know completely what she says and not just to hear it and appreciate it. Memorizing the lines is an essential part of the route to becoming Lady Macbeth.

    Paul Muller-Ortega has suggested that the reason to memorize various mantras is not to acquire them, not to be able to demonstrate a superficial knowledge or skill, but to aid in the profound practice of
    bhavana–deep contemplation at the heart level. It is not the fact of memorization, but the activity of memorizing. It is no accident that we call memorizing, “knowing by heart.” We seek to learn by heart to invite ourselves into the space of concentration that requires. It is a slow and difficult process for me. I persist, though, because of the deepening and expanding understanding it facilitates.

    I note for those yogis (and other readers) who might find the idea of learning mantras alien or uncomfortable or apparently at odds with your own religious beliefs or practices, that studying the mantras does not require or make one a Hindu. I think of it as an invitation to understand and embody the highest archetypes and principles they invoke and represent and compatible with my other observances.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    The Breath Leads the Way (and Atha Yoga Anusasanam)

    ByElizabeth

    I was reminded the other day of a principle of reading the great Hindu philosophical work:  all of the meaning of the text can be understood from not only the first sutra, but the first word.  The first sutra of The Yoga Sutrasof Patanjali’s is “atha yoga anusasanam” — now begins an exposition of the practices of yoga.  Implicit in the “atha,” the now, is that something else has come before.  The translations I have speak of previous study and preparation; the studies offered by Patanjali are not for the novice, but for one who has already been practicing.  If we read Patanjali’s first sutra with the implicit understanding that the first word contains all of the exposition to follow and that we do not need the rest of the explanation and practice if we truly understand the first word and sutra, then I think more must be meant here by “atha” than just this exposition now comes after previous study.

    In this latest contemplation of mine what the word “atha” must hold within it for the practitioner, I thought about the Anusara axiom of practice “the breath leads the way,”  which has been the alignment focus in my classes for the past week.  What does it mean to have the breath lead the way?  At its highest level, it serves to bring us back to “first principle” of “opening to grace.” (As an aside, I note that I  believe can apply to the Anusara principles of alignment the same method of understanding:  the principle “open to grace,” and even the first word “open” holds all of the other Anusara principles.  All the other principles and axioms are explanations and methods for living “open to grace.”)

    When we let the breath lead the way, we start each pose by a deep listening, an openness to something greater, an openness to the pulsation between the universal energies and our individual self.  We invite the subtle energies to support us and lead us like a great dance partner.  We actively surrender to the dance, while still bringing our own skill to our part of the dance, the way the partner being led in a waltz is skilled both in the dance and in being led.  In letting the breath lead the way in our yoga practice, we come to the very fullness of the present moment even as we move through a sequence of asanas in time and space.  Being open to grace in each moment, in each part of the pose, and allowing our self to be led by the pulsation of the breath even as we move with it, brings us to a recognition that in each moment, we are both part of the sequence of time and space and more than time and space (akrama krama).  We come to the  atha of samadhi.  We use the practice of letting the breath lead the way to teach us to open to grace, to find the exquisite timeless fullness of being itself in order to illuminate all of our practice.  If we are already in that atha, that now, then we do not need any of the other practices or explanations, but if we cannot find it on our own, then again and again, the study and practice begins now — atha — so that we can experience in our very heart the fullness (purna) of our selves and better illuminate everything we do on and off the mat with the blissfulness of  that fullness.

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