The Hollow Dreamer [1]
The idea that we have of ourselves spends all its time dreaming of what it would do if it were real – not that it ever will be, of course. Not that it ever could be! Or perhaps we should say that the idea we…
Krishnamurti
The Thinker IS Only A Thought
Only thought says what things are we think that things are – we assume things to be what they are defined as being but this just isn’t true. All we know are our labels for things and it is the thinking mind that provides us…
Methods Are Always Violent
Being still is an art, not a science. Being still isn’t something anyone else can tell us how to do, and it isn’t something we can tell ourselves how to do either. Being still (or peaceful) in the face of life’s adversities is the greatest…
Not Clever To Be Clever
We wear out the shoe of samsara by walking on it, says Chogyam Trungpa. This is a very radical statement and completely contrary to mainstream Western spirituality, it is contrary to how most of us would see ‘spirituality’ because ‘wearing out the shoe of samsara…
Recycling Time
The everyday self, according to Joseph Campbell, is ‘a fraction that thinks it is whole’. The everyday self thinks or assumes that it is whole but it is all the same persistently acquisitive, persistently restless, persistently fearful of unwanted outcomes and this shows that it…
Overcomplicating Life
The positive approach works for many things but not for all things. It works very well for making a cup of tea, for example. The formula is simple: firstly, we boil some water (in a kettle or whatever), secondly, we throw the water in a…
Going Beyond Methods
What is happening in meditation is that we are going beyond the method, going beyond the procedural side of things. So – we might quite reasonably ask – what does it mean to be going beyond the method, beyond the procedural side of things? How…
The Dark Father
The ‘Dark Father’ of unbridled rationality eats his own children, just as Cronos did in the ancient legend. He might not actually physically eat them as Cronos the Titan did, but by the weight of his controlling and stultifying authority he represses their psychological growth…
The Prison of Purposefulness
The cruellest prison we could ever find ourselves in is the prison of purposefulness. What could be crueller than this? The funny thing is though that we are more than likely to have very little (if any) appreciation of the truth of this statement. We…
The More We Resist
As soon as we start to imagine that we can change our inner state on purpose we have entered into the ‘illusion-making business’ and the illusion-making business is the biggest business there is. We are always imagining that we can change our inner state on…