The drift of a conditioned mind

 When the spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti stayed in India, a monk insisted that he needed to see him. He had walked for many days and wanted to ask him how he could become enlightened. 

Krishnaji smiled and he said, “You are trying to find an answer, aren’t you, sir? You are trying to find a solution.” He said, “I would rather change this process and merely look at what you are trying to do with yourself. Look at what thought is trying to do to itself. “ So he said that thought is trying to persuade itself and pressurize itself to stop its operations, because it wants to get something out of it, and this is something which thought can’t do.

The monk went into a deep state of meditation, and after a while his eyes opened and with tears in his eyes, he said that he got it. He thanked J. Krishnamurti profusely and wanted to leave but the sage invited him to stay a little longer and talk with him. After a while the monk asked, “What do I do if this blissful state leaves again?” 

Krishnaji said, “This is just the question that I knew you were going to ask me.” He said, “But who is it that asks the question? The mind that is silent is asking this question, or the mind that was not able to get silent and worrying over it that is asking the question?”

Again, the monk fell into a state of deep contemplation and once again tears were streaming down his face after some time. “I got it now,” the monk said smilingly, “this is the last time you will hear from me” and left.

I love the monk’s break-through experience. It shows that thinking is more than an aberration interrupting our inner peace. The conditioned mind has a drift that purposefully takes us away from the inner stillness that aligns with being. In the monk’s case it was the quest for enlightenment that was the interference but once the game was recognized, inner stillness and being became the default state. Maybe we have to look through this game more than once just as the monk had to, but that’s ok, at least we get our arms around the drift of a conditioned mind.

#jkrishnamurti #spirituality #silence #being