[quote=Bentinho Massaro;17678]Dear people, I would like for all of you to read the following piece of text from Jiddu Krishnamurti.
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Thank you, it is always nice to know other spiritual seekers thoughts.
I [I]feel[/I] it is very important to understand what is being said if you want to experience your true nature more and more and make sure you are not caught up in a self-created, well-disciplined illusion - which we often call our meditation.
Why do you feel that ? I mean, either it is really important, or, it is not. If you [B][I]feel [/I][/B]that is really important, than that belongs to the realm of feelings. Now, people’s feelings rarely have the clarity of their thinking. Thus, in objective thinking, there should be a striving for having it performed as free of the effects of feeling as possible. Which only means, that no matter how sure is your feeling about a thought, in analyzing it’s truth, this feeling should be neglected. Because not what we feel about thoughts make them true or untrue, but how they relate to other thoughts. I am not saying that we can arrive to knowledge only through unbiased thinking, not at all. But to arrive to correct and reproductible end results, having the same arguments, anyone thinking along, arriving to the same conclusions, this freedom from personal feelings needs to be respected. Otherwise, at a certain thought one will feel this, another one feel that, and this will affect the thinking process, and instead of objective thinking, we descend to the realm of opinions. And the truth is, noone is interested in another one’s opinion exactly because of the fact, that opinions are based on biased, unfree thinking. And the reason because in everyday talking we are shy about speaking of any matter of importance, like, money, sex, politics, and religion is exactly this, that people simply are not capable of objective thinking. Once a thought very dear to someone is analyzed freely, that person will feel attacked, threatened. And to show how important that thought is to him/her, he will raise his voice, to underline that he says something important. Now, if you disagree, even respectfully, than you are seen as a bad person. You are not invited next time. And to prevent all this, we rather avoid those subjects what we know are causing troubles, and talk about the weather, or our pets, or someone who is not present.
This is not very different on a forum like this one, too. If you say something what questions a basic belief of some tradition, religion -and I count materialist science among them- than one is often adressed by a moderator. Surely, if one is attentive, and careful, respectful, than this will not happen. But when we share thoughts, opinions, than we must realize that opinions are always colored by personal feelings, and are organic part of the opinator’s life and fate. We must always have this in front of us, that we really do not know, what age, what life, what circumstances determine someone who we share thoughts on an internet forum. Avoiding touchy subjects is not the solution, though. The solution is to realize, that we need to face them, and we need to face them in a controlled environment. A person who lived for a 100 years was asked, what is the secret of a long life, and the answer was: to know, that everybody is right. This should be our main feeling when having a discussion. Because people are always right in that they always seek what’s best for them, they indeed long for truth, and peace, stability, and happiness, just differently. So, even if someone seems to behave or have opinions, thoughts apparently wrong, erroneus, we need to forget this feeling of something is wrong, and we need to silence our own emotions of approval or disproval. Only this way we can arrive to a correct understanding of the other person. Suddenly, the real causes of his behaviour, thoughts will dawn in us, and we will be able to relate to them in a healthy, helping manner, or if there is no such possibility, at least with the ability to accept that there are greater distances between thoughts that we can bridge with our present capacity of thinking.
However real it may feel, meditation through concentration will always be a dependent state, contrived, compulsory, self-made, stuff from the mind.
Unless you are a mind reader, how do you know how other people meditate ? I did not see anyone sharing that, neither here, nor elsewhere. I have read texts about how one should meditate, but between instructions, and what actually happnes, we must allow the possibility of an existing difference. Thus, you might only talk about your personal struggles in meditation, and assuming that others meet the same diffculties. What probably are similar … yes, such assumption can be made. But you do not have any right to judge how other people meditate. None. You have the right to judge how do you meditate, in fact, you are required to perform this judgement, in order to know what success you are having with it. What you do here, is projecting something on people, without actually knowing if it is true or not, than judging them, than again, telling them how they are wrong. I know, I often do that myself. One theef always knows another theef. 
That is not freedom, even if it feels better than everyday life, it is not freedom. Believing that it is, is in my opinion the biggest misstep, blind spot, delusion of today’s spiritual society. Be very vigilant of your own temptations to accept a state as being freedom. You might be blinding yourself.
However much I wish to respect teachers and tradition - my wish for you all to be ultimately free, utterly free, forever free - far exceeds my respect for traditional means. I do apologize to anyone I might offend today, yesterday or tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean I will stop going against the traditional current for the sake of waking people up, where I can, if I can.
When I recollect my thoughts and focus on some that fill my soul with the necessary strenght, emotions and will impulses, I can’t say that’s better than everyday life. This again is an assumption. Thus, I do not beleive that it is freedom. But it is the freedom to perform, and act along what I accept to be right.
You use the words free, freedom many times. Freedom seems very important to you. But in you, I do not see the presence of real freedom. I see in you the rebellious freedom, one that rejects everything, one that refuse to accept any determination. And the great power in this proclaimation about the necessity of freedom, this comes form the unwillingness to accept the very fact, that you are not free. People desire and want, what they do not have.
The question of freedom cannot be answered without answering what is right. Human beings are not free, nor can they possibly free in the manner many people assume, that they can perform whatever actions they like. The only freedom is to chose what we do (or do not), but to chose, we need to know, what is the better choice. Thus, freedom cannot be seperated from learning and understanding. And learning and understanding is done through trial, and error. Thus, our freedom, is simply, the freedom to err. And this freedom needs to be respected. Because to accept what we do not understand, on behalf of any authority, be it tradition, religion, teacher, parent, would surely be not freedom, as you say. But this line includes you, Bentinho Massaro, too. After a long process of learning, understanding, people grow to have intuitions about what is right and what is wrong. The more we learn, and understand, the more we will realize that truth is but one, but much more colorful, diverse, and complex than we would ever thought. And thus we grow to appreciate all traditions, teachers, people, because we understand that every one of them is right in his own way. Thus, the way is not giving up meditation, and thinking alltogheter, but making the human soul , first through intellectual thinking so powerful and encompassing that it can reflect the truth of the whole world.
The way is not rejecting traditions, religions. Yes, if we see them as they are, without a deeper capacity of understanding, the landcape is so alienating, some of them are so different that one loses hope that they can be ever reconciled. But they can, and this is the way. Until one is an excellent buddhist, but he cannot accept the truth of christianity (as it is, entirely, and not just seeing it’s similarity with buddhism) or one is a hindu who cannot except buddhism, or zen, or christianity, than one’s understanding is still lacking. Until one does not realize their depth and truth, what suprasses the fantasms of today’s materialist science, what indeed are wishful theories created out of the fear of the supersensible, until that person is lacking in understanding. Surley, religions were created as means to link (religare, to link) those human beings to the spiritual world, who no longer were able to personally expereince it. And surely these religions all suffer from the ever increasing materialism of humanity, and thus their basic truths or meaning is often so absurd, that it rejects people with a sound intellect. But we need not to throw them away, but to restore them in our inners selves in their original glory, because they are broken pieces of a primeval wisdom.
A person is starting to understand, when he/she can see the spirit in everything. Nothing is more far from a real spiritual path than withdrawing from the world, into a shell, and imagining that we are free. That path is no longer walkable, and those walking it are doing it in vain.
About the Krishnamurt quote … isn’t it about understanding ?
Understanding is gained by accepting things, and not by rejecting them.
Let people to do what they do best … to err. This is the way we learn.
