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Midway Reflections
Ducks and Drakes with Krishnaji is about half done. I have no idea how many pages it will be. I’ll know when it is about to end. While preparing for this effort I’ve been reading two books about K. One is by a fairly impartial biographer and is a recent book about K that came out in 2000, Star in the East by Roland Vernon. The other one is by Mary Lutyens, friend, colleague of K for decades and it is called The Years of Awakening. a hagiographic biography which presents little disagreement or objective sifting of evidence about the World…
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Ducks and Drakes, 9
As I look back upon the decades of reading Krishnamurti, I’ve sensed that the essential teachings I was attracted to are these: K’s concepts of seeing, choiceless awareness, the observer is the observed, and the understanding of what is. Other ideas came along for the ride: K’s comments and definitions about conditioning, how to look as if for the first time, his thoughts about radical revolution within the individual person, his questioning of all authority, indeed, even of what K had to say; his putting the onus of his dialogues on the listener or questioner; his commentaries on society and religion which I delighted…
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Ducks and Drakes, 8
In may 1987 I wrote this for my column in a local Forest Hills, Queens newspaper. In this instance I used a question by a student of mine, Debra Cavaler, age 16. Question: Why is it that when I read columns, everyone recommends counseling every time a question is asked? It isn’t that I disagree with counseling. There is nothing wrong with it, but I feel it builds dependency. Don’t you think it builds character to cope with and solve’s life’s problems on one’s own? By this time, eleven years into reading K, my response reveals how saturated I had…
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Ducks and Drakes, 7
In the last several days I’ve ordered two biographies about Krishnamurti. I feel I need to dwell within his context. His writings are so voluminous, his collected works in 17 volumes, in addition to many other transcriptions of talks, several films about him, videos, tapes and CDs is all beyond my ability to comprehend or assess. At his deathbed his chef, Michael Krohnen, whose book I have read, The Kitchen Chronicles gives his response to a question put to him. “‘What really happens to that extraordinary focus of understanding and energy that is K after his death?’ His answer was immediate, short and unambiguous,…