Back pain came to me this morning. It was rather severe, but I never tried to get away from it. The pain is still here and it is wonderful. Why should I struggle and wish it wasn’t here? It IS here. That is a fact. Why should I wish for something other than what is? To wish for something else is to be confused about what is real. There is no confusion. The pain is here and I am with it, one hundred percent.

I went to my brother-in-law’s house tonight for a visit. My wife is in the United States, and will be there for another five days, so maybe they thought I would be bored living here by myself. While I was there, they asked me if I feel lonely. I said no. They made some comment about me being cold. That is so interesting to me. I am cold because I am not lonely? That is a very funny thought. How can I ever possibly be lonely? Every moment is with me. Even looking at a table is new, and fascinating. My wife lives in my mind, so how can I be without her? The pain is with me, and I am not alone. It seems that some people may believe that being lonely is a natural state in some conditions. If I were to believe that an outside event can make me lonely, I must be crazy. I don’t need to be lonely. Why would I seek it out and grasp it? Why would I ever need to be lonely? That thought brings confusion. Lonliness is confusion. Thought is confusion.

I love my wife, and she is with me now. She is in the United States, and I am in Japan, and she is with me. How could I ever be lonely?

The present moment destroys all confusion. It ends the suffering we feel we need. Why do we need it? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

You are already complete right where you are. Don’t believe your thoughts because they don’t exist. You are already perfect, in every way.

The empty, expressive, and out-spoken human being known as U.G. Krishnamurti has died. Bereft of life, he has ceased to be, leaving the world on March 22, 2007 at 2.30 pm in an apartment in Vallecrosia, Italy. I am a bit late in eulogizing, but I am sure he would not care at all.

I first ran into him in 2001, when I lived in Quincy, Massachusetts. It was U.G. that first opened me to the possibility of nothing being outside of myself. I had to make all the discoveries on my own, but without him, it would have arrived much later.

I feel no sadness, but I hope those close to him will not suffer. I know so many of his “followers” hung on his words, even though he asserted there was no teaching to follow. I often wondered if he ever grew annoyed by hearing the same questions over and over again, but I guess it would not matter anyway; the truth is always the truth.

What follows are quotes from U.G., and some other info you may, or may not, find interesting.

Thanks, U.G.

UG did not show the slightest signs of worry or fear about death or concern for his body even at the end of his life.  He did not leave any specific instructions as to how to dispose of his dead body.  ‘You can throw it on the garbage heap, as far as I am concerned,’ he often would say. 

Responding to questions on death, UG said, ‘Life and death cannot be separated. When what you call clinical death takes place, the body breaks itself into its constituent elements and that provides the basis for the continuity of life. In that sense the body is immortal.’

And let this be told: when UG rejected the notion of soul or atman and declared that our search for permanence was the cause of our suffering, he sounded like the Buddha; when he blasted all spiritual discourses as ‘poppycock’ and thrashed the spiritual masters as ‘misguided fools’, we thought of the fiery and abusive words of the great 9^th century mystic of China, Rinzai Gigen, who declared, ‘I have no dharma to give… There is no Buddha, no Dharma, no training and no realization…’ When he spoke of ‘affection’ as ‘thuds’ felt in the spot where the thymus gland is located, we related it to Sri Ramana’s declaration that the ‘true heart’ is located on the right side of the chest. Likewise we sometimes connected his radical statements to certain expressions or declarations in the Avadhuta Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, the Upanishads and Zen Koans, or compared them with the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj and even the post-modern ‘deconstructionists’. We could go on thus, making such connections and comparisons, but that did not help us to get a handle on the mystery that was UG!

That mystery, that enigma, is no more. Once, a couple of years back, when Mahesh Bhatt had asked him, ‘UG, how would you like to be remembered?’ UG had said, ‘After I am dead and gone, nothing of me must remain inside of you or outside of you. I can certainly do a lot to see that no establishment or institution of any kind mushrooms around me whilst I am alive. But how do I stop all you guys from enshrining me in your brains?’

UG Says

Quotable Quotes

I have no teaching. There is nothing to preserve. Teaching implies something that can be used to bring about change. Sorry, there is no teaching here, just disjointed, disconnected sentences. What is there is only your interpretation, nothing else. For this reason there is not now nor will there ever be any kind of copyright for whatever I am saying. I have no claims.

There is no teaching of mine, and never shall be one. “Teaching” is not the word for it. A teaching implies a method or a system, a technique or a new way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. What I am saying is outside the field of teachability; it is simply a description of the way I am functioning. It is just a description of the natural state of man — this is the way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

My interest is to point out to you that you can walk, and please throw away all those crutches. If you are really handicapped, I wouldn’t advise you to do any such thing. But you are made to feel by other people that you are handicapped so that they could sell you those crutches. Throw them away and you can walk. That’s all that I can say. ‘If I fall….’ - that is your fear. Put the crutches away, and you are not going to fall.

People call me an ‘enlightened man’ — I detest that term — they can’t find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I’ve searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn’t arise. I don’t give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.

The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there — it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By ‘life’ I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself.

God is the ultimate pleasure, uninterrupted happiness. No such thing exists. Your wanting something that does not exist is the root of your problem. Transformation, moksha, liberation, and all that stuff are just variations on the same theme: permanent happiness.

All your experiences, all your meditations, all your prayer, all that you do, is self-centred. It is strengthening the self, adding momentum, gathering momentum, so it is taking you in the opposite direction. Whatever you do to be free from the self also is a self-centred activity.

There is nothing there, only your relative, experiential data, your truth. There is no such thing as objective truth at all. There is nothing which exists outside or independent of our minds.

Mind or thought is not yours or mine. It is our common inheritance. There is no such thing as your mind and my mind (it is in that sense mind is a myth). There is only mind, the totality of all that has been known, felt and experienced by man, handed down from generation to generation. We are all thinking and functioning in that thought sphere just as we all share the same atmosphere for breathing.

You have been told that you should practice desirelessness. You have practiced desirelessness for thirty or forty years, but still desires are there. So something must be wrong somewhere. Nothing can be wrong with desire; something must be wrong with the one who has told you to practice desirelessness. This (desire) is a reality; that (desirelessness) is false – it is falsifying you. Desire is there. Desire as such can’t be wrong, can’t be false, because it is there.

Human nature is basically violent, because thought is violent. Anything that is born out of thought is destructive. You may cover it up with all wonderful and romantic phrases: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Don’t forget that in the name of ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ millions and millions of people have died, more than in all the recent wars put together. But we now have come to a point where we can realize that violence is not the answer, that it is not the way to solve human problems. So, terror seems to be the only way. I am not talking of terrorists blowing up churches, temples, and all that kind of thing, but the terror that if you try to destroy your neighbour you will possibly destroy yourself. That realization has to come down to the level of the common man.

The real problem is the solution. Your problems continue because of the false solutions you have invented. If the answers are not there, the questions cannot be there. They are interdependent; your problems and solutions go together. Because you want to use certain answers to end your problems, those problems continue. The numerous solutions offered by all these holy people, the psychologists, the politicians, are not really solutions at all. That is obvious. They can only exhort you to try harder, practice more meditations, cultivate humility, stand on your head, and more and more of the same. That is all they can do. If you brushed aside your hope, fear, and naiveté‚ and treated these fellows like businessmen, you would see that they do not deliver the goods, and never will. But you go on and on buying these bogus wares offered up by the experts.

I can never sit on a platform and talk. It is too artificial. It is a waste of time to sit and discuss things in hypothetical or abstract terms. An angry man does not sit and talk and converse pleasantly about anger; he is too angry. So don’t tell me that you are in crisis, that you are angry. Why talk of anger? You live and die in the hope that someday, somehow, you will no longer be angry. You are burdened with hope, and if this life seems hopeless, you invent the next life. There are no lives to come.

My interest is not to knock off what others have said (that is too easy) but to knock off what I am saying. More precisely, I am trying to stop what you are making out of what I am saying. This is why my talking sounds contradictory to others. I am forced by the nature of your listening to always negate the first statement with another statement. Then the second statement is negated by a third and so on. My aim is not some comfy dialectical thesis but the total negation of everything that can be expressed.

I have not yet left my house today. There is nothing for me to do outside. I didn’t make a plan for an outside activity. I guess it really doesn’t matter if I went out or stayed in; I wouldn’t know the difference. Obviously, there is an outside, and an inside. I am outside,  and I feel the wind, see the trees, and hear the birds making beautiful sounds. I am inside, and I see my computer screen, I feel the heat from the heater, and I hear the Kitty clock strike three. Another beautiful sound. It is all the same. If you are completely present you don’t really know what you are seeing. The present moment is infinitely there, and all time and thought cannot penetrate into that. Attention is absolute, and everything is beautiful. Or as some people are fond of saying, it is as it should be.

It is never tiring, always seeing something new. At every moment, there is always great energy. Not in the sense of a stimulant. It is an energy of complete action and awareness. This energy cannot wane, and is present when one merges with reality. Thought and time cease to exist, and the only thing left is everything.

The last few posts have been short, but that is all I can give for now. This is all that comes out.

I am listening to a song that I have not heard in a very long time. The last time I heard it was over 10 years ago, if my memory is correct. What an odd feeling. There is no nostalgia, even though I still have the song memorized and can remember the things I did while listening to it, all those years ago. I remember everything, but it has no effect on the present moment. I hear this song now as if every note is pure and new. It is more beautiful than anything memory could present to me.

Memory is always the same. It can try to present itself as something new, and fool us into some magnificent experience, but in the end, we are left the same as before. We believe there is something wonderful to be had somewhere else. Outside of us. Memory presents it on a platter, separates us from the now, and leaves us feeling disconnected. That is a funny thing how our memories make us feel as if we are separate from the experiences we have. It is in that disconnect that we meet the sense of  being somehow apart from the present moment. It is only the past, fooling us.

Memory has its place, but that place is not a movement that frees human beings; liberating us from ourselves. Can the past possibly meet the present? Because the present has no place for the past. We can postulate on the future, but it is only through the past. They are both fantasies. Besides, the future will never be here, as we are ever in the present.

Can the past ever meet the present? You have to find out for yourself.

A few days ago there was an earthquake, just off the coast of Ishikawa prefecture. That is next door to Toyama prefecture, where I live. Akiko, her mother, and I were eating breakfast. I had no particular thing happening in my mind. I don’t remember anything being in there at all. The house started to shake a little bit. We live close to the flight path from the airport in Toyama, so there was no thought of other possibilities. The shaking continued and became more pronounced. All three of us realized what it was, at that moment. Since my event occurred on December 1st of last year, I have had no fear experiences to speak of. No near hit-and-runs, no muggings, no house fires, etc., so I was curious as to what would take place in my mind. The house shook more intensly and I was observing my mind, curious as to how it would react. I wanted to anticipate, almost wanting fear to be there, so I could obsevre, but it never came. Not even so much as a flutter in my blood pressure. The earthquake came and went, and I was still empty.

I could not anticipate, because I could not project the past. I could not bring up my memory, to give me some idea of what might happen. It was not there at all, and without that projection, fear was absent. It must be obvious by now that fear is not based on any actualities at all. It is not real; not sticking with the present moment. Fear is thought. Thought projects what could occur, we believe it, then we are afraid. Our continuity is threatened, either physically or phychologically, and we project a fantasy of what could happen. Even at the very moment of the stimulus, we project onto it what could happen. But none of it is real. All fear is based on these fantasies we are constantly inventing.

When we are afraid, why is it that we never question it? We never question the fear itself. Why am I afraid? If you blame it on something outside of yourself, then you have stopped inquiring and are not serious about it. The source of fear is inside of us and can’t be found in an external event or circumstance. If there is a person in front of me intending to do me harm, why should I be afraid? Am I to believe that somehow, he got into my mind and made me feel fear? He has some supernatural power to alter my thoughts to make me believe something that is not real? That is crazy. If I believe that something outside of myself can cause fear, I am absolutely INSANE. Lock me up and throw away the key.

Remove every external circumstance and ask yourself again, why am I afraid? If you penetrate deeply inside of yourself, give your ego a rest, and take a long look, what do you see? Could it be that you are afraid of losing your continuity? That some change would be too much for you to accept? If you fear a recession, it challenges your continuity. If your life is threatened, it challenges your continuity. If you are afraid of losing your loved one, that certaily challenges your continuity; the way you live your life. I am just asking about it. I am not saying anything to the effect of “this is the way it is.” Just take a look inside.

Why do you fear? Take any small step you can to really see it. Is it because security is threatened? Physical or psychological? If that is the case, do you seek security outwardly? Do you have security in only what has been given to you? Your knowledge, social position, or your seat down at town hall, your position in the church or in your job. Do those things make you feel secure? Why? Have you ever asked? How could you possibly feel any sense of security from things that could explode at any moment? Someone could lie about you, and your social position would be gone in a second. The economy could bust, and you’d be left with nothing. War could break out in your neighborhood and leave you homeless. I am not saying that these negative things will happen to any of you, but how can you have complete security there, in those things? Don’t go into a cave and pray, or sit on a cusion and meditate forever to find an answer; just see it for what it is. There is no real security in those things. The only real security comes from within all of us. It starts and it ends there. There is no blame, there is no fear, and there is no real outward security. Ask yourself. Just look to the best of your ability, without your knowledge of who you are, and try to see the source of this.

I still do not have complete command of the language to make this read the way I want it to. But I will keep plugging away. It gets easier with time. I have a great sense of peace knowing the only security that exists is within myself. I cannot put my life on the line by trusting outward events and circumstances. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Is that what enlightenment is? To be free from all of this stuff? When you are free, then what? Is there anything to be free from? Have you asked these things? Get to it, if you haven’t. You won’t live forever.