[ life calls for attention, dept. ]
In J Krishnamurti’s intimate daily diary, after deeply reflecting on the violence of his time, he notes a response that’s as relevant and useful today as it was then:
“In total attention, the summation of all energy, violence in all of its forms, comes to an end. Attention is not a word, an abstract formula of thought, but an act in daily life.”
In reality, in aware functioning not from inner conflict, not from chaos – while perhaps on occasion, being in and around it – the aware response is one of completely not knowing, of unattached watching only. Attention, plain and simple. In that attending, from that place of undisturbed and undisturbable being, there’s a resting in a receptive and open peace.
One does not ‘do’ anything; one simply allows everything to be as it is. There’s no effort, no doer, doing. Or, to put it another way, in alert, passively aware living, there’s not a living in conditioning as before, but a watchful living with conditioning.
When we pause, attend, look and listen, just for this moment, this now, the harmony of innate spirit directly encounters the real beauty of it all; we dwell in light and shadow, in paradox without contradiction; in abundance without lack; we eat, drink, touch and taste deeply. Gratefully. We’re nourished and delighted by the immediate, the obvious, the miraculous; we fall silently into deepening, spiraling rings of not-knowing – into an ease of knowing we do not know and no longer fearing we need to know, to control, to defend, to pretend. To figure it all out.
There’s a freedom to live simply in wonder; to explore, to discover more and more fully that what we are is way beyond the minds’ proposed and supposed contradictions that seemingly – when believed – separate and create opposition in ones direct experience. In clear-eyed attention, without fear or favor, we’re absorbed and saturated with love and compassion – stripped of binary mind’s personal, petty, ‘compare and contrast’ relationships, opinions, conflicts and confusions. One is dissolved into the Oneness of reality. Only awareness of awareness, remains.
In everyday seeing, the waves of sentient experience come and go, like a breeze thru our open window; they rise and fall back, only to rise and fall again, into – and out of – this ocean of universal being. In reality, in quiet, watcher-less watching, in alert attention, there’s a recognition of our whole being as unmoved Creation, moving endlessly. 🙂
