Krishnamurti and the fresh, young mind
Here is a piece by Krishnamurti that
- once again - rings so true to me. K’s teachings are all about the struggle
with the mind. This is one of my favourite subject matters (see my essay
Q&A, in fact most of the content of my book en.light.en.ment); indeed, the
mind probably is my favourite subject above all.
In this quote K draws our attention to
the value of not just an open mind, but indeed the empty mind. Our past
experiences may teach us lessons, but they also may keep us from finding the
truth, ourselves or indeed - as he puts it here - God.
The mind is meant to be kept young,
fresh and innocent. In his book Freedom
from the Known he advises that only with such a mind - detached from the
burdens that life piles up for us - can we find inner peace. So once again, the operative
here is: Accept, Detach and Let Go.
Die every day
What is age? Is it the number of
years you have lived? That is part of age; you were born in such and such a
year, and now you are fifteen, forty or sixty years old. Your body grows
old - and so does your mind when it is burdened with all the experiences,
miseries and weariness of life; and such a mind can never discover what is
truth. The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but
innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent -
he may not be - but the mind that is capable of experiencing without
accumulating the residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is
inevitable. It must respond to everything - to the river, to the diseased
animal, to the dead body being carried away to be burnt, to the poor villagers
carrying their burdens along the road, to the tortures and miseries of life -
otherwise it is already dead; but it must be capable of responding without
being held by the experience. It is tradition, the accumulation of experience,
the ashes of memory that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the
memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past - such a mind is
fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you are ten
or sixty, you will not find God.
The Book of Life, 1995 November 10,
Harper San Francisco