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Dwight Lee Wolter's avatar

I spent a week with J. Krishnamurti in Switzerland many years ago.

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Stephen Johnson's avatar

At a time in my life when I really needed it. Read Krishnamurti's "Think On These Things".

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Yvonne's avatar

So beautiful and so true. Thanks for sharing!

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Stephen Treloar's avatar

I love your non materialistic, holistic approach.

This poem of mine makes similar points Jiddu?!

What do you think.

True Relation

True relation

Needs no messiah

Just millions of people

Learning together

They’ll build no temples

But they do have a shrine

This beautiful planet Earth

Home to humans kind

Blind ambition

A thing of the past

New community created

Designed to last

There’ll be no popes

There’ll be no kings

With mutual understanding

No need for these things

There will be great teachers

But no need for a throne

The leaders of this movement

Content to work from home

The answers are all around us

They’re just not obvious

The great majority

Kept oblivious

Yet slowly there’s awakening

Slowly all can learn

That life’s great triumphs

Are never what we own

They’re how we raise our families

Connect with our peers

How we treat the weakest souls

Who’ve known little more than tears

Revert to the Stone Age??

I hear the cynics say

To create such utopia

Give everything away!!

Not sure what it would look like

Nothing important needs to go

Just hatred and greed

And untamed ego

Kindness the main mantra

Compassion and empathy

As we let go of the hold

Grief’s had on you and me

We’ll tread easy on the planet

Food and most goods locally

Keep waste to minimum

End consumerist folly

I’m sure it won’t be easy

I’m sure many will resist

Contentment of early responders

An inspiration to the rest

There won’t be other chances

We don’t really have a choice

There is no planet next

So let’s hear your voice

Raised up and overwhelming

A clarion of love

For every living thing

The mighty peace dove

Stephen Treloar May,2023.

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Yvonne's avatar

Stephen, my comment 'So beautiful and so true 'was addressed to you. Thank you for sharing!

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Stephen Treloar's avatar

Thank you Yvonne.

Please check out my Substack article, The Cycle Must End, which gives insight into the origins of this poem, and provides a brief outline of the book on empathy that I am writing.

Please let me know what you think?

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Tommywetlands's avatar

☯️ 🌼🙏🌼☯️

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Yvonne's avatar

We live too much in our head and not enough in our heart. Just recently I was accused of being 'too sensitive'. I think that being sensitive or 'too sensitive' is not my issue but rather the issue of the people who are insensitive.

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Bruce Isaacson's avatar

I agree with you totally. We cannot let let the insensitive carry the day.

https://drawstrength.substack.com/p/modern-disobedience?r=1ulfu

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Keith Brighouse's avatar

Sensitivity is as much to do with our conditioning as our intellect has. That said, I think many people can miss two quarters of their half a world in pursuit of temporal ambitions that will not in the end satisfy them. Life is a sensual experience and once you have fulfilled the need for material survival, it is wise to slow down and appreciate the sensuality of life.

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Stephen Johnson's avatar

Here we are as a nation and the world at a tipping point that could rival our two world wars or create a gilded age of progress and prosperity for most. Instead of the concentration of great wealth into the hands of the few including megalomaniac dictators that would wipe out whole nations for their own personal gains. An old mindset of power, greed, and control. Or the enlightenment of new technologies of clean energy, biometrics, medicine, artificial intelligence, and more for the good of all humanity. Each person has their own choice in this matter even though most see the billions of people and think how can I as one person affect anything. You hold in your hands access to the greatest amount of information ever compiled and/or a desktop computer that can be used for research to try and understand objectively the world around us. Or use it subjectively to confirm your biases, prejudices, and separating yourself from humanity as a whole to your own color, class, and beliefs motivated by the forces of division. It all gets down to individual choice. Either we live together on this tiny blue dot or not.

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Joshua Bond's avatar

Technology is a form of power, and as with all forms of power, (money, guns, land-ownership, controlling politicians, etc), Technology will be accrued by the already-powerful (not hard to see) and will be used by them against the common good.

New 'technological fixes' will not fix problems created by the previous generation of technologies. And it's not only because technology is 'in the wrong hands', it is because technology itself (like money) ultimately enslaves, rather than fulfils its promise to 'save you time for higher pursuits'.

We've known for over 100 years (quantum physics) that there is no such thing as objectivity - the observer and the observed always both change together - they are "one-interactive-thing", and all in the context of the greater 'tiny-blue-dot'. The current political paradigm of 'top-down-control' of people and planet will eventually fail because it is not in line with the deeper reality of 'one people, one planet' - but unfortunately when it crashes is likely to cause massive immiseration of ordinary folk. We already see it in certain parts of the world.

So I agree "Either we live together on this tiny blue dot or not."

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Autonomy4Life's avatar

Intellectualism is a mind trap, it separates us from each other and nature and God the creator. It is ego, building us up to tear us down, one argument after another.

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cal lash's avatar

"What is explained can be denied but what is felt cannot be forgotten."

Charles Bowden

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Vincent  Martínez-Grieco's avatar

this is so alrmingly accurate as to how the earth has been sectioned off for profit and greed by the gilded ones...sensitizing has been blown away and devalued in favor of "just the facts, ma'am". sit on a park bench for 5 minutes without naming, evaluating, or fixing what appears...then go and voice your concerns and provide action for a more equitable. inclusive, and diverse world. thank you for this reminder

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Mark Mazur's avatar

"The Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius was to express satisfaction that when he took to philosophy, he did not waste time on history, syllogism, or astronomy, while Seneca declared that recent inventions such as transparent windows, central heating, and shorthand were of no interest since they could not help to strengthen or calm the soul."

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Bruce Isaacson's avatar

Krishnamurti is, to me personally, the most important writer of the 20th Century. And there is no artifice, no technique, just the man talking with other humans trying to find their way.

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Óscar Rodrigues's avatar

We do need intellect, if I may disagree. It's just that, without love, it becomes harmful. So we need both.

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John Tischer's avatar

Intellect the greatest function of the mind in the West, but not in the East. That’s why the West is so screwed up.

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Just A+ Content Guy's avatar

Intellect draws the maps, but sensitivity is the passport nobody can fake.

Agreed, most of us can out-argue a philosopher but can’t remember the last time we actually watched a blade of grass. Maybe our brains are crowded because we forgot to look outside our own heads.

📌 Sometimes the smartest move is putting down the argument and picking up a little wonder.

⬖ Frequency of Reason, making room for curiosity in a crowded mind: bit.ly/4jTVv69

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Serious Jane's avatar

“Intellect is the result of conditioning.” So true. We have been conditioned since birth to “belong” in this world humans made. Pay attention to Nature. It is indifferent to humans and will continue without us if we don’t destroy it from our own greed. Travel. Have adventures, and sometimes, tell no one. Live fully in the moment. Uncondition yourself!

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Rick Martin's avatar

I used to go to Ojai, near Santa Barbara to hear him speak. There was a clarity in his thinking that was unsurpassed in those times. I love to see him quoted anytime!

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Tim Small's avatar

A great passage - many thanks. I am currently struggling - part time and sporadically - through Ian McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary”, which illuminates his work on right/left brain function. It’s fascinating and compelling. And also long! But his schema maps quite directly onto the Krishnamurti passage. We tend to overestimate our left-brain-based rationalit capacity. The other side, which perceives and conceives more holistically, deserves an equal - or, in McGilchrist’s view, greater - place at our mental table. It’s the part more inclined toward truly value-free (or temporarily suspended) observation.

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