Greatness is anonymity. - JKOnline Daily Quotes |
- Greatness is anonymity.
- We are worshippers of words and labels.
- The known is sensation
- Attachment is an escape from loneliness.
- it is the thought which creates the thinker.
| Posted: Greatness is anonymity, to be anonymous is the greatest thing. The great cathedral, the great things of life, great sculpture, must be anonymous. They do not belong to any particular person, like truth. Truth does not belong to you or to me, it is totally impersonal and anonymous; if you say you have got truth, then you are not anonymous, you are far more important than truth. But an anonymous person may never be great. Probably he will never be great, because he does not want to be great, great in the sense of the world or even inwardly because he is nobody. He has no followers. He has no shrine, he does not puff himself up. But most of us unfortunately want to puff ourselves up, we want to be great, we want to be known, we want to have success. Success leads to fame, but that is an empty thing, is it not? It is like ashes. Every politician is known and it is his business to be known and therefore he is not great. Greatness is to be unknown, inwardly and outwardly to be as nothing; and that requires great penetration, great understanding, great affection. - Banaras, India 20th January 1954 13th, Collected Works. |
| We are worshippers of words and labels. Posted: Labels seem to give satisfaction. We accept the category to which we are supposed to belong as a satisfying explanation of life. We are worshippers of words and labels; we never seem to go beyond the symbol, to comprehend the worth of the symbol. By calling ourselves this or that, we ensure ourselves against further disturbance, and settle back. One of the curses of ideologies and organized beliefs is the comfort, the deadly gratification they offer. They put us to sleep, and in the sleep we dream, and the dream becomes action. How easily we are distracted! And most of us want to be distracted; most of us are tired out with incessant conflict, and distractions become a necessity, they become more important than what is. We can play with distractions, but not with what is; distractions are illusions, and there is a perverse delight in them. - Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 68, Action without Purpose |
| Posted: When you are aware that you are happy, is there happiness? When there is happiness, are you aware of it? Consciousness comes only with conflict, the conflict of remembrance of the more. Happiness is not the remembrance of the more. Where there is conflict, happiness is not. Conflict is where the mind is. Thought at all levels is the response of memory, and so thought invariably breeds conflict. Thought is sensation, and sensation is not happiness. Sensations are ever seeking gratifications. The end is sensation, but happiness is not an end; it cannot be sought out. "But how can sensations come to an end?" To end sensation is to invite death. Mortification is only another form of sensation. In mortification, physical or psychological, sensitivity is destroyed, but not sensation. Thought that mortifies itself is only seeking further sensation, for thought itself is sensation. Sensation can never put an end to sensation; it may have different sensations at other levels, but there is no ending to sensation. To destroy sensation is to be insensitive, dead; not to see, not to smell, not to touch is to be dead, which is isolation. Our problem is entirely different, is it not? Thought can never bring happiness; it can only recall sensations, for thought is sensation. It cannot cultivate, produce, or progress towards happiness. Thought can only go towards that which it knows, but the known is not happiness; the known is sensation. Do what it will, thought cannot be or search out happiness. Thought can only be aware of its own structure, its own movement when thought makes an effort to put an end to itself, it is only seeking to be more successful, to reach a goal, an end which will be more gratifying. The more is knowledge, but not happiness. Thought must be aware of its own ways, of its own cunning deceptions. In being aware of itself, without any desire to be or not to be, the mind comes to a state of inaction. Inaction is not death; it is a passive watchfulness in which thought is wholly inactive. It is the highest state of sensitivity. When the mind is completely inactive at all its levels, only then is there action. All the activities of the mind are mere sensations, reactions to stimulation, to influence, and so not action at all. When the mind is without activity, there is action; this action is without cause, and only then is there bliss. - Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 85, Sensation and Happiness. |
| Attachment is an escape from loneliness. Posted: What you are concerned with is dependence, which is a fact, with all its implications. Then there is a deeper fact, which is loneliness, the feeling of being isolated. Feeling lonely, we attach ourselves to people, drink, and all sorts of other escapes. Attachment is an escape from loneliness. Can this loneliness be understood and can one find out for oneself what is beyond it? That is the real question, not what to do about attachment to people or environment. Can this deep sense of loneliness, emptiness, be transcended? Any movement at all away from loneliness strengthens the loneliness, and so there is more need than ever before to get away from it. This makes for attachment which brings its own problems. The problems of attachment occupy the mind so much that one loses sight of the loneliness and disregards it. So we disregard the cause and occupy ourselves with the effect. But the loneliness is acting all the time because there is no difference between cause and effect. There is only what is. It becomes a cause only when it moves away from itself. It is important to understand that this movement away from itself is itself, and therefore it is its own effect. There is, therefore, no cause and effect at all, no movement anywhere at all, but only what is. You don't see what is because you cling to the effect. There is loneliness, and apparent movement away from this loneliness to attachment; then this attachment with all its complications becomes so important, so dominating, that it prevents one from looking at what is. Movement away from what is, is fear, and we try to resolve it by another escape. This is perpetual motion, apparently away from what is, but in actuality there is no movement at all. So it is only the mind which sees what is and doesn't move away from it in any direction that is free of what is. Since this chain of cause and effect is the action of loneliness, it is clear that the only ending of loneliness is the ending of this action. - Freedom, Love and Action Eight Conversations |
| it is the thought which creates the thinker. Posted: Pursue a thought completely, go through with it to the end, think it out fully, and you will see what happens. You will find that there is no thinker at all, because it is the thought which creates the thinker. Therefore, there are not two states as the thinker and the thought. The thinker is a fictitious entity, an unreal state.There is only thought; and the bundle of thoughts creates the 'I', the thinker. And the thinker, having given himself permanency, tries to transform thought and thereby maintain himself. - Bombay 10th Public Talk 14th March, 1948, The Collected Works |
| You are subscribed to email updates from JKOnline RSS To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment