The intelligent person should take the essence out of all sources, from scriptures small as well as great, — like the bee from flowers.

— Uddhava Gita

Yeah, in addition to taking the essential wisdom from all sources, you can also pollinate the wisdom!

(Photo by Tambako the Jaguar)

Weigh in the balance of your wisdom, the sense-pleasures on one side and the bliss of peace on the other. Whatever you determine to be the truth, seek that.

— Yoga Vasishta (tr. by Sw. Venkatesananda, p. 146)

Questioner: How would you cope with an incurable disease?

Krishnamurti: Most of us do not understand ourselves, our various tensions and conflicts, our hopes and fears, which often produce mental and physical disorders.

Of primary importance is psychological understanding and well being of the mind-heart, which then can deal with the accidents of disease. As a tool wears out so does the body, but those who cling to sensory values find this wasting away to be a sorrow beyond measure; they live for sensation and gratification and the fear of death and pain drives them to delusion. As long as thought-feeling is predominantly sensate there will be no end to delusion and fear; the world in its very nature being a distraction it is essential that the problem of delusion and health be approached patiently and wisely.

If we are organically diseased then let us cope with this condition as with all mechanism, in the best way possible. The psychological delusions, tensions, conflicts, maladjustments produce greater misery than organic disease. We try to eradicate symptoms rather than cause; the cause itself may be sensate value. There is no end to the gratification of the senses which only creates greater and greater turmoil, tension, fear and so on; such a living must culminate in mental and physical disorder or in war. Unless there is a radical change in value there will and must be ever increasing disharmony within, and so, without. This radical change in value must be brought about through understanding the psychological being; if you do not change, your delusions and ill health will inevitably increase; you will become unbalanced, depressed, giving continuous employment to physicians. If there is no deep revolution of values then disease and delusion become a distraction, an escape, giving opportunity for self-indulgence. We can unconditionally accept an incurable disease only when thought-feeling is able to transcend the value of time.

The predominance of sensory values cannot bring sanity and health. There must be a cleansing of the mind-heart which cannot be done by any outer agency. There must be self-awareness, a psychological tension. Tension is not necessarily harmful; there must be right exertion of the mind. It is only when tension is not properly utilized that it leads to psychological difficulties and delusions, to ill health and perversions. Tension of the right kind is essential for understanding; to be alertly and passively aware is to give full attention without the conflict of opposition. Only when this tension is not properly understood does it lead to difficulty; living, relationship, thought demand heightened sensitivity, a right tension. We are conscious of this tension and generally misread or avoid it thus preventing the understanding that it would bring. Tension or sensitivity can heal or destroy.

Life is complex and painful, a series of inner and outer conflicts. There must be an awareness of the mental and emotional attitudes which cause outward and physical disturbances. To understand them you must have time for quiet reflection; to be aware of your psychological states there must be periods of quiet solitude, a withdrawal from the noise and bustle of daily life and its routine This active stillness is essential not only for the well being of the mind-heart but for the discovery of the Real without which physical or moral well being is of little significance.

Unfortunately most of us give little time to serious and quiet self-recollectedness. We allow ourselves to become mechanical, thoughtlessly following routine, accepting and being driven by authority; we become mere cogs in the vast machine of the present culture. We have lost creativeness; there is no inward joy. What we are inwardly that we project outwardly. Mere cultivation of the outer does not bring about inward well being; only through constant self-awareness and self-knowledge can there be inward tranquillity. Without the Real, existence is conflict and pain.

Ojai 7th Public Talk 1945 (source)

“I am the wisdom of the wise.” — Bhagavad Gita (Song of God)

Photo credit: shoebappa

This blog is titled ‘The fire of wisdom’. What is wisdom? Is wisdom something to be gained? Is wisdom something that can be acquired? Is wisdom like a vegetable that you can buy from the market? Or is it like money that you accumulate and deposit into a bank account?

Wisdom, to me, is a state of being, the natural state of being. Wisdom is not something you acquire or accumulate. Buddha was called Buddha (the wise one) not because he acquired wisdom from somewhere else, but he simply removed the veil of ignorance and raised himself to his natural state of pure wisdom. Being in wisdom is your real nature. All you need to do is to uncover yourself and get rid of certain prejudices, misunderstandings, misconceptions, attachments that prevent you from realizing your real nature. The sun has always been shining behind the clouds. The cloud is temporary, but you think that being cloudy is your real nature. Sometimes, without your asking for it, the clouds of ignorance break up a little and you get a glimpse of wisdom, just for a moment, and you call that phenomena as intuition. But it’s not necessary to be at the mercy of the clouds. You can systematically blow away the clouds and let the rays of wisdom totally bathe you!

There are various methods to blow away the clouds of ignorance. Sheer devotion to God can raise you to the level of God who is nothing but wisdom. When you learn to enjoy unselfish work, you can free yourself from attachments that prevent you from being in the state of wisdom. Certain physical postures called yoga asanas, and exercises like pranayama can free you from inflexibilities and free the energies that gets clogged up in parts of your body and in nervous centres and you will be able to freely access the state of wisdom. Meditation and awareness can directly expose the dross in your mind and you can’t help but to rid of the dross, and then wisdom shines. Sparks of wisdom in the form of words coming through wise men and women can burn away a little ignorance in you, that’s what this blog mostly deals with.

There is no best method to disperse the clouds of ignorance. The best way is to use all these methods in varying proportions according to your circumstances. The important thing here to remember is that all these methods don’t deal with wisdom directly, they only help you clean up the impurities and ignorance. No master, no method, no book, no blog can ‘give’ you or ‘bring’ you wisdom. All they can do is make you aware of your ignorance and it’s upto you to choose wisdom or ignorance.

Wisdom is not personal. There is only one wisdom. It’s not my wisdom or your wisdom. There is only one sun whether you look at it from Antarctica or Australia or India or Mars or Jupiter. Wisdom is there for you to behold, but it’s not something you can hold on to. Wisdom flows. It’s like the present moment. When you try to hold on to the present moment, it’s already past! When you say ‘my’ wisdom, it’s no more wisdom, it’s only the residue. And wisdom is not in the future, you cannot anticipate wisdom. Wisdom IS. In fact, present moment awareness is a gateway to the state of wisdom… in fact, living in the present moment is wisdom.

Wisdom is not dependent on you. That you are currently experiencing night time doesn’t mean that that the sun has vanished. It’s always there on the other side. Just that you live in that half of the earth that is temporarily hidden from the rays of the sun, that temporarily goes through the phase of night. When you raise high above earth, when you come out of your comfort zone and float in space, there is no more night and day for you, you have transcended relativity, you are directly exposed to the sun of wisdom. It’s true that life on the dark side of the planet can be beautiful too. Living in the shadow, we have greatly been enjoying the beauty of moon, the twinkling stars, the meteor showers, and what not! But darkness is not eternal, the night has to give way for the day, sooner or later. And don’t you think we have lived in darkness for long enough? So long that we have totally forgotten that there are such things as sun and day. Don’t you think it’s time for dawn? Whether you are ready for it or not, the dawn is coming! Now, you don’t even have to raise high above the earth, you don’t have to renounce the the world. When the dawn comes, when sun of wisdom rises, it lights up everybody and everything right here on earth. Don’t worry that you will miss your stars and the moons. The sun is much more brilliant than the moon and all the stars combined, the day much more beautiful than you can imagine. The thieves that thrive in darkness — the dark forces — are so desperate now because these forces know that their times are coming to an end. The era of ignorance is coming to a close. Better prepare yourself for the dawn! Prepare yourself to bask in the glory of wisdom!

As the rising sun dispels darkness from men’s eyes and discovers what before lay hidden, so the dawn of knowledge removes evil from men’s intellect and reveals the Atman. Then do men know themselves as the Atman, and the Atman as themselves. — Bhagavatam.

And Krishnamurti replies,

The best way is to begin to understand yourself and change yourself. In this desire to help another, to serve another, there is hidden pride, conceit. If you love, you serve. The clamour to help is born of vanity.

If you want to help another, you must know yourself for you are the other. Outwardly we may be different, yellow, black, brown or white, but we are all driven by craving, by fear, by greed or by ambition; inwardly we are very much alike. Without self-knowledge, how can you have knowledge of another’s needs. Without understanding yourself, you cannot understand another, serve another. Without self-knowledge you are acting in ignorance, and so creating sorrow.

….

To help another, you must know yourself; like you, he is the result of the past. We are all interrelated. If you are inwardly diseased by ignorance, ill will and passion, you will inevitably spread disease and darkness. If you are inwardly healthy and integrated, you spread light and peace; otherwise you help to produce greater chaos, greater misery. To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

(Ojai public talk. 11 June 1944)