Excerpted from J. Krishnamurti's Commentaries on Living.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the notion that "reality is unattainable through any means"? Can you share a personal story of a time you experienced simplicity of heart beyond all inner and outer desires to be? How do you reconcile the teachings that focus on being with this message that a desire to be is also an attachment that takes us away from the being of reality?
This sounds great and in isolation I agree. In the reality I live in, I see people need food, shelter, education, healthcare, transportation for one and one's loved ones. This gets ine into the means and end dynamic bc of spending your time on these needs. So how do you reconcile being forced to have these means and ends with having none?
I have learned to simply be myself and to let others be themselves.
Reality shifts as we construct and deconstruct it each day through our perceptions and experiences and how we react. Simplicity of the heart happens when we do not try to control it. I've had this experience when allowing myself to fully immerse in the present. Example, yesterday at a dance in a park I felt fully free, alive, happy and filled with joy. There was no attachment to dancing a certain way, it was allowing the rhythms to fully connect internally and just move however my body decided. Liberating!
Beyond my understanding,creating more confusion than resolving it. Let us demystify the mysticism of spirituality. Let us not complicate it further & further.Let us help ourselves the common beings you and me with simple ,straight easy to follow guidance from the enlightened. Love
Recently I have spent a lot of time with a three year old grand daughter, a puppy and a new born. Just watching them go through daily life is a lesson in pure joy that comes from just being and having very simple minds with no agenda, no show and no outward or inward fear. There is pure joy in just being and having the simplicity of heart, I wish I could learn from them and not the other way around.
I think in this passage reality is the Ground of Being, and reality is unattainable through goal-directed behavior, whatever that may be. Goal directed behavior is a means to an end, and being attached to goal directed behavior gets in the way of pure being which unites us with the reality of the Ground of Being. Reality is attainable in being purposeless in the moment. I guess the closest I've come to simplicity beyond all inner and outer desires has been in moments of intimacy with nature or with another and in moments of meditation. Attachment to desire is attachment. 'Reality' is attainable by letting go of desire and simply being. As I see it, that is what the teachings that focus on being teach. To attain 'reality' we must purposelessly be what the teachings are about and not be attached to any means.