Met an old friend today, and it struck me that dying to the past from moment to moment is truly the most rigorous way of living.

The only thing I can do

I cry easily. When anyone speaks to me with strong disapproval, crying is the immediate habitual response. No matter what is said, however true or untrue or even silly it is, tears well up – and often it is the physical reaction that comes first. Strong emotion and a particular pattern of thought tend to follow the tears.

One way to move with this is through thought – by changing my conditioned response and my patterns of thought. It would not be too difficult to convince myself of the absurdity of my response, to dig into why it started to happen so I might change it, to remind myself to take deep breaths or even just observe my breath at the time of my reaction, and more likely than not, the reaction would die down and in time fade away.

I could go quite far with this sort of modification of thought. I could condition myself to become a much happier person – calmer, less reactive, less impatient –I’d be end up being nicer to people, so people would be nicer to me; it would all get pleasanter and pleasanter!

But I am sure I do not want to do this. There is no desire in me to ‘get over’ this reaction. Sure, it makes things difficult sometimes – I burst out crying in staff meetings and all kinds of possibly embarrassing situations, I cannot always be clear about what I want to say, and self-images are frequently and grotesquely punctured.

There truly is no desire to modify thought because I see how limited that is. I see that the self may get subtler and subtler, but the division still remains. Because there is deep concern with the most fundamental separation, because I want to find out if it can completely come to an end, and because it is clear that to condition myself would only be moving away from this question, it is impossible to do.

I am trying to say a rather subtle thing… I’m not saying I want to continue to be neurotic so that I have enough opportunity to observe the self in action. I‘m not saying I will be what ‘I am’ instead of suppressing my true emotions, or that I will remain stuck and put everyone else through my emotional mess.

Interestingly, just the action of not moving away brings about a sort of flexibility. Sometimes the reaction just dissolves, or the physical reaction happens but I remain completely clear and articulate through it, sometimes it does not even arise. I can address it with people when I see it limiting a relationship. And often I just go through the full-blown reaction. But I will stress that not-moving-away is not another more effective method to get rid of the reaction. It is the only thing I can do.

How the intellect can run ahead, creating an image of deep enquiry, while your life, each actual non-verbal moment of your life, is untouched by goodness and clarity!!

Smothering

A couple of years ago, before I grew possessive of my time, I met Teeny and Bounder every time I visited the local shopping complex. Now I go with a fixed agenda and shopping list to check off, avoiding everything that might distract me, especially my two excitable dog friends, who demand a good half hour of love before they are ready to stop squealing and let me on my way.

The last time I allowed myself the time to meet them, Bounder looked miserable. We had noticed his skin disease earlier -- Rahul had given him a course of medicine -- but how it had deteriorated unnoticed! Now, half a minute did not pass when he did not scratch himself desperately; he had little hair left; even his eyes were red and itchy.

I wept on my walk back. How important is all this work I am busy with, how important is anything I do, if I haven’t the space to be in touch with and respond to other beings around me? How does one fit everything into these tumbling days without smothering all that that waits quietly around the corners - indistinct, unplanned, but precious beyond words?

Photograph: the lake at The Valley School

Where the mind is without fear...

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Tagore

This poem is so beautiful and rings so true that it hurts. "ever-widening thought and action" makes me think of how we all seem to choose what causes to be sensitive to, what is important to us. And then we are all undoing each other's work -- some working for human rights but causing immense suffering by consuming animals, others working for animals rights without a care for the amount of waste they produce, others working for the environment but unaware of how they emotionally abuse people around them. Each person stagnating within his particular ideological construct. For 'ever-widening' love, sensitivity, compassion, awareness to be awakened seems quite different.

A Wish

I wish I could show you the glory of that tree in evening light, its honeyed leaves trembling in almost still air then shivering splendidly in breathless gusts of breeze, light and shadows flickering over me as I lay beneath, my back arched and pampered in Setu Bandha Saravangasana.

(Is it true that when you've finished reading 'Setu Bandha Sarvangasana' you've forgotten everything that came before? :D)

Paying Wages

On Sunday, for the first time in my life, I was faced with a request for a salary raise.

Rudramma, who has worked at my parents’ house for a long, long time, comes once a week to clean our place. She is an exceptional woman: she works hard and fast, cleaning shelves and hidden spaces without being asked, arranging and organizing as she cleans. I do not mind this because it is only once a week – after she has gone, I put things back where I think they belong!

We discovered early in the year how difficult it is to clean the house regularly after tiring days at school. Having to cook, wash dishes and manage other maintenance is difficult enough. In those first months, it felt like there was always something that needed to be done– the bookshelves to be dusted, or the floor or bathroom or fans to be cleaned! So we decided to have someone come in once a week to ensure that at least one regular, thorough cleaning was done. We preferred her coming in just once a week because we could then pay her a reasonable amount, and we didn’t have to have someone around the house all the time.

So when Rudramma requested a raise, we were already paying far, far above the general hourly rate around here. It is quite likely she was just pushing her luck, as my mother tells me she tends to do. But despite all the rationalization and economic theory, I do not really understand why she should be paid any less than I am. I do not earn very much: what I do earn is more than sufficient for me right now, but it would be only just enough -- perhaps not even enough -- if I had a family. And I live a fairly simple, inexpensive life.

How does one decide how much to pay someone? I do not trust the ‘rates’ – they may be the norm, but what makes them fair? On the other hand, it seems presumptuous to try to calculate how much a person ‘needs’. Then how does one decide? The only solution I have found so far is to pay according to how much I value the service provided. How much would I be willing to spend to have somebody else do this work?

I have so little experience with money that I do not know if this is viable. Insecurities come up – will I save enough, am I paying too much given my own earnings, will people take advantage of me, what is the most sensible thing to do? And there is the other kind of question - is it just conditioning that prevents me from paying more, am I being over-cautious, what is the right thing to do?

Somewhere I sense that perhaps money is something that should be used to give rather than to accumulate. And many moments come with the intense realisation that I must just trust life and what it brings, instead of protecting myself from it.

Since Angie and Adi were unreachable on the phone, I made the decision myself, after a quick consultation with my mother. I took the middle path: raised her wage, but not as much as she had asked for. Her wage is creeping close to ours now, and the next time she asks for a raise, I know I will go through the same whirl of questions!

To See the False as False

Speaking to parents who visit Shibumi, I find that in communication with their children, most are either dogmatic and insecure about what they believe in, or in an attempt to be open-minded, shy away from expressing anything that resembles absolute truth.

Truth can never be absolute -- it is not a statement, it is not the words used to express it. But truth is not personal either -- there no 'my truth' or 'your truth'.

Lacking clarity ourselves, we do not give our children the sense that there IS something beyond the multitude of views and positions which they will someday find themselves floundering in.

It is also assumed that at some point everyone finds their own set of views and opinions to navigate the world with. Then one flounders no more.

It is possible, however, to have nothing to hold on to, no opinion, view or belief, but to stand firm in this whirlpool, to navigate the world with the strength of clarity. And that strength is not rigid: it is pliable, tender, free.

When one is even somewhat in contact with the living, moving truth, there is a clarity that comes into being. In the light of that clarity, the false is very simply exposed. There need be no judgment, no putting-down, no ego involved. No 'other-ing', no superiority whatsoever! Do we find it possible to see something false, and not to accept it, but to deny it with complete compassion, with complete vulnerability?

It is so clear that when I am judgmental, it is merely a form of self-protection. Separating myself, subtly putting myself above another, finding ways to be invulnerable, to escape anticipated pain. Without a reaction and a shift to the opposite, which is complete acceptance and subjectivity, can one see what happens when one denies all judgment but continues to see the false as false?

Faith

Ever since I attended the 'Learning with Kabir' workshop, I have been wondering about faith. Usually the word 'faith' is associated with belief, passivity, rigidity. Clearly, Kabir wasn't speaking of that sort of faith. Although what was said about faith rang very true, there was something I hadn't completely understood then.

Today, suddenly, the word fell into place perfectly! Faith is what allows the deepening of enquiry. Faith is the strong, clear feeling that truth lies here… in the negation of the self, or the discovery of the true self of interdependence and impermanence -- whatever one terms it. Faith is what allows me, when I come across something that Krishnamurti or the Buddha or somebody else says that does not make perfect sense yet, to hold it in my mind rather than trying to evaluate it right away and perhaps discarding it.

Faith is in truth, in the Teachings, not so much in a particular person who appears enlightened. So faith in this sense is not passive: it brings about observation and awareness from moment to moment. There seems to be an element of memory in faith. Something pricks you and you suddenly jump up in attention -- is that prick memory or something quite different?

You can forever be debating this theory or that, wondering whether you really want to let go of this self that offers so much pleasure and security, postponing, living in confusion. Faith is commitment to truth, despite confusion and all other movements of the mind. It is diving in. When confusion arises, it is faith that causes you to step back to see the trappings of the self. Then you are no longer caught in the confusion.

I will tentatively say that the source of this faith does not seem important. Reading or listening to somebody, meeting someone whose life and presence shakes you up, your own mind or culture, something mysterious perhaps… faith seems to come about differently for different people.

For me, I know it is irreversible. I can see clearly truth of the Teachings: there is no doubt about it; and it is not merely an opinion I am holding on to.

It does seem important for faith not to be blind belief or the seeking of security, but perhaps even an initial faith that is not based on a clear sense of truth is a good thing. If one is drawn to the Teachings enough to cause actual exploration, perhaps that is all that matters?