MEDITATION - J> Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "Without meditation, there is no self-knowledge; without self-knowledge, there is no meditation. So, you must begin to know what you are. You cannot go far without beginning near, without understanding your daily process of thought, feeling , and action."

When I read, think or talk about meditation I feel like I am trying to teach others how or what meditation is of which I am not; I am simply reminding myself, bringing my thoughts and consciousness back into a meditative mode; the writing helps to do this for me.What is meditation? One can simply type in the subject and there are zillions of opinions and comments about it in the Nat and for free most of them; it is healthy come to think of it when there is so much effort put into promoting the subject of  - meditation..However , sadly enough there are far fewer number of people who take interest in the subject than those promoting; far less fewer.
I had my father to thank for introducing me to meditation at my early age and I was living in an environment that was ideal for taking on this practice: I was growing up in the East Coast where the South China sea met the rice fields of a place called Batu Burok. My house back then was located across the street from the Istana Badariah; the Trengganu Sultan's Palace number two.Directly behind my house seperated only by a water way was the rice field that stretched all the way to the foothills in the far distance. Today these are no more the same as development has replaced song birds and fresh water fishes with motor cycles and rubbish: and the Palace has become worse for design; gone are simplicity.
I used to spend allot of my time staring out across the South China Sea.;often daydreaming or letting my imagination take its flight of fancies and this was how i became acquainted with the act of meditating. I would let myself drift sometimes with the white clouds, sometimes with the gentle waves and I would find myself lost in a whole new world until it was time to return to the here and now; often enough because of a bug bite or one form of discomfort or another. I spent allot of time by myself while growing up and often at places that was solitary away from the general public; I was not much of a 'groupy'  kind of guy.
My favorite image that I would hold on to and that would manifest itself often enough in my life is the solitary flight of an eagle; a lone flyer hovering in circles while riding the wind. Whenever this image crops up in my consciousness in one form or another I feel free; still do. Hence in most of my drawings and sketches I would have a bird or two just hovering in the distant skies. My heart is always in flight scanning the horizons for any signs of life. It was from this habit that I must have grown into my meditative practice.

."To be free from the net of time is the important concern, not to think about the unknown, because you cannot think about the unknown. The answers to your prayers are of the known. To receive the unknown, the mind itself must become the unknown. The mind is the result of the thought process, the result of time, and this thought process must come to an end. The mind cannot think of that which is eternal, timeless; therefore, the mind must be free of time, the time process of the mind must be dissolved. Only when the mind is completely free from yesterday, and is therefore not using the present as a means to the future, is it capable of receiving the eternal..."

My meditation practice became more serious as i got older and especially after being introduced to books such as "The Master Key" by Frank Haarnel? and the a book on "Raja Yoga"; Yoga of the MInd.. later still i was exposed to the works of Alan Watts author and Zen Teacher whose book "The Way of Zen" I read for the first time while living in Green Bay, Wisconsin and which at one moment had me experienced a state of 'Satori' and the result of which I created the "Cheeseburger Buddha" character; this was sometime in 1979?.
It was during this time too that i discovered the works of Jedu Krishnamurti; I was working as a librarian at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay at the time.These men helped to mold  my mind to what it is today for better or worse.
Later still I was able to join the San Francisco Zen Community at Green Gulch Farm in Sausalito, Marin County, California where i embarked upon and intensive meditative practice in the Japanese 'Zazen" or sitting meditation tradition. For over tow years I dedicated my time towards exploring the workings of my mind; the rising and falling of thoughts, the clinging and craving of my senses; the deluded state of my being. There was a time when I felt like I was Superman while doing these 'Practice Periods' at the Zen Center. Mentally, physically and emotionally i was fully alert and awakened; I felt freedom! Time came and went but I was there in the moment living with my consciousness of my breath; in and out, in and out; all else was of no consequence.


"Therefore, our concern in meditation is to know oneself, not only superficially, but the whole content of the inner, hidden consciousness. Without knowing all that and being free of its conditioning, you cannot possibly go beyond the mind’s limits. That is why the thought process must cease, and for this cessation there must be knowledge of oneself. Therefore meditation is the beginning of wisdom, which is the understanding of one’s own mind and heart".
Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti Book "The Book of Life"

One simple fact I have come to realize is that my mind is like a magnet that attracts whatever it was that i had envisioned in my meditation all the elements that would manifest the vision into reality; the thoughts becomes manifested into the actuality. However time still had the final say in when this will happen and i had to learn = Patience.It all happens in time and all I had done was to set the ball rolling and my mind makes it happen in time and when it happens I would often be caught surprised of it myself; sometimes whispering for fear of being cocky; i made that happen or i wished it into being; i saw this before but where was it? This is meditation in action; the power to create and bring forth into manifestation one's thoughts and ideas.
However I have yet to taste the pure meditative state of mind as explained above by Krishnamurti; I am still stuck in this rut of the so called I, me and mine; I have yet to be able to let go of my ego!

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "When we are aware of ourselves, is not the whole movement of living a way of uncovering the “me,” the ego, the self? The self is a very complex process which can be uncovered only in relationship, in our daily activities, in the way we talk, the way we judge, calculate, the way we condemn others and ourselves. All that reveals the conditioned state of our own thinking, and is it not important to be aware of this whole process?" 

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