Death

Kinfonet Discussion
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Living with death

To find out what is death there must be no distance between death and you who are living with your troubles and all the rest of it; you must understand the significance of death and live with it while you are fairly alert, not completely dead, not quite dead yet. That thing called death is the end of everything that you know. Your body, your mind, your work, your ambitions, the things that you have built up, the things that you want to do, the things that you have not finished, the things that you have been trying to finish – there is an end of all these when death comes. That is the fact: the end. What happens afterwards is quite another matter; that is not important because you will not inquire what happens afterwards if there is no fear. Then death becomes something extraordinary, not sadistically, not abnormally or unhealthily, because death then is something unknown, and there is immense beauty in that which is unknown. These are not just words.

We are talking about dying to the things that your mind clings to.

So to find out the whole significance of death, what it means, to see the immensity of it, not just the stupid, symbolic image of death, this fear of living and the fear of dying must completely cease, not only consciously but also deep down. Our lives being empty we try to give significance to life, meaning to life. We ask, ‘What is the purpose of living?’ because our own lives are shallow, worthless and we think we must have an ideal to live by. It is all nonsense. So fear is the origin of the separation between that fact which you call death and that fact which you call living. What does death mean actually, not theoretically? We are not discussing theoretically, we are not discussing merely to formulate an idea, a concept. We are talking of facts, and if you reduce a fact merely into a theory, it is your own misfortune. You will live with your own shadow of fear and your life will end miserably as it has begun miserably.

So you have to find out how to live with death. Not a method; you cannot have a method to live with something you don’t know. You cannot have that idea and say, ‘Tell me the method and I will practise it and I will live with death.’ That has no meaning. You have to find out what it means to live with something that must be an astonishing thing, actually to see it, actually to feel it – to be aware of this thing called death and of which you are so terribly frightened. What does it mean to live with something which you don’t know? I don’t know if you have ever thought about it at all in that way; probably you have not. All that you have done is, being frightened of it you try to avoid it, you do not look at it. Or you jump to some hopeful ideal or belief and thereby avoid it. But you have really to find out what death means, and whether you can live with it as you would live with your wife or husband, with your children, your job, your anxiety. You live with all these, don’t you? You live with your boredom, your fears. Can you live in the same way with something that you don’t know?

To find out what it means to live, not only with the thing called life but also with death, which is the unknown, to go into it very deeply, we must die to the things that we know. I am talking about psychological knowledge, not of things like your home or office. We are talking about dying to the things that your mind clings to. You know, we want to die to the things which give us pain; we want to die to the insults, but we cling to the flattery. We want to die to the pain but we hold on like grim death to the pleasure. Please observe your own mind. Can you die to that pleasure, not eventually but now? You do not reason with death, you cannot have a prolonged argument with death. You have to die voluntarily to your pleasure, which does not mean that you become harsh, brutal, ugly, like one of the saints – on the contrary, you become highly sensitive; sensitive to beauty, to dirt, to squalor; and being sensitive, you care infinitely.

Life and death are not divided; they are one.

Now, is it possible to die to that which you know about yourself? To die – I am taking a very superficial example – to a habit, to put away a particular habit either of drinking or smoking, having a particular kind of food, or the habit of sex, completely to withdraw from it without an effort, without a struggle, without a conflict. Then you will see that you have left behind the knowledge, the experience, the memories of all the things that you have known and learnt and lived by. And therefore you are no longer afraid, and your mind is astonishingly clear to observe what this extraordinary phenomenon is, of which man has been frightened through millennia, to observe something which you are confronted with, which is of no time, and which in its entirety is the unknown. Only that mind can so observe, which is not afraid and which is therefore free from the known – the known of your anger, your ambitions, your greeds, your petty little pursuits. All these are the known. You have to die to them, to let them go voluntarily, to drop them easily, without any conflict. And it is possible; this is not a theory. Then the mind is rejuvenated, young, innocent, fresh; and therefore it can live with that thing called death. Then you will see that life has an entirely different substance. Then life and death are not divided; they are one, because you are dying every minute of the day in order to live. And you must die every day to live, otherwise you merely carry along the repetition like a gramophone record, repeating, repeating, repeating.

So when you really have the perfume of this thing, in your breath, in your being; not on some rare occasions but every day, waking and sleeping, then you will see for yourself, without somebody telling you, what an extraordinary thing it is to live, with actuality, not with words and symbols, to live with death and therefore to live every minute in a world in which there is not the known, but there is always the freedom from the known. It is only such a mind that can see what is truth, what is beauty and that which is from the everlasting to the everlasting.

Krishnamurti in New Delhi 1963, Talk 5

In many cases, he asks to listen or observe but here he asks to die.
Can someone say “Why he asks us to ‘die’ to things (live with death)”?
What will happen if one fears to die?

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Hasn’t he talked about this in the quote? It is not giving specific answers, it is thinking about the way we live… But then we are always left with questions. So we have to see we have habits of response with automatic thoughts. These are satisfying some urge, and are the fear. You will see this in many of the discussions here. Basically we are blinded with fear, and resort to all kinds of ways to avoid it. This is said to be derived from a primal function of attaching words to things, and then psychologically being stuck with this mental attachment to seeing a world composed of things, and then thinking the whole is unification of parts.

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An ideal to live by…one’s precious what-should-be

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What does it mean to realize that “somewhere in time you are already dead”? Not only you but all your loved ones, everyone that you see, know…already dead somewhere in time? What is the effect of the realization of that fact on one now while still living, that your death has already taken place somewhere in time?

I’m roughly recalling this strange statement by K and thought it would be good to pass it on for consideration.

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We fear death because of the stories we heard about it in the movies and in the books. We have an image about death which is fictitious and not true.

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It’s a good thought exercise because it’s one thing to imagine how your friends, family, and fans (if you have any) will feel about your death (since no one else will care), but to imagine outliving all your friends, family, and fans has a greater impact because living when no one knows or cares that you exist is tantamount to being nothing more than who you think you are…which (psychologically) is all you ever were.

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Aside from that the realization that your death has already happened in time puts the present in a different perspective.

As you died you would regret every moment spent in self pity, worry and fear…so why do it now while there’s still time?

You would regret having chased an image, any image so why not stop chasing it now while there’s still time?

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How and when this body dies can only be speculation. But that this body has died somewhere in time is fact. Not just this body but all bodies, this earth, the sun , stars…all have already died, disappeared, somewhere in time.

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Dan,

Are you aware that there is a difference between psychological time and chronological time?

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According to Einstein, events in my past (like my grandfather dying) are happening right now for some observers, and for other observers, my grandad isn’t dead yet. (nb. we’re talking chronological time here, I’m pretty certain)

PS. These are observers moving at different speeds relative to me. (looking through a telescope from alpha centauri for example)

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It’s too complicated for me to explain. The squirrel is sitting on the wire attached to the tree and readying to do a tightrope walk out to the suspended bird feeder. That is this ‘now’ what he will do is another now. These ‘nows’ Coexist in one ‘now’. He has decided against trying it and has come down the tree ‘now’. That squirrel was born ‘now’ and it died ‘now’.

Maybe someone can explain it better.
Psychologically there is only ‘now’. All else is memory or imagination.

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One of the points of the excercise, if not the main point is that you can’t put off till tomorrow what psychologically needs to be ‘done’…because psychologically there is no tomorrow.

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Chronologically, just to complicate matters, now is relative (happens at different moments depending on our position in space/time). So can we say that in actuality (ie.outside of what I think/experience) there is no now?

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I’ll leave that to the ‘speculators’, I know there is a ‘now’. I only mentioned this excercise, this statement by K that you have already died, because others might have missed it and I find it interesting.

Something just now that if the brain / mind is like a ‘room’ that is only ever in the ‘now’, then thought which is the past, has no business there. To receive, be in the ‘Present’, the ‘room’ must be empty. And then it IS the Present?

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Not very good with analogies but this occurred to me in relation to your question: Eternity is like a huge complicated tapestry. The present moment is a thin line of light moving across it. The light is chronological time. The warp and woof of each moment determines that which comes after?

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It all IS. The beginning, the middle, the end.

And probably the ‘tapestry’ consists of every possible and potentially possible ‘depiction’!

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Practical, technical, factual thought is of “the past” and is essential for living, so (theoretically) the awakened, enlightened brain does not dispose of the past, but is disabused of conditioned response based on misunderstanding, ignorance, and belief.

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I was thinking more of thought as fear, thought as ‘pleasure’ , what we’re calling psychological thought having no place in the ‘now’ moment. It is a ‘distraction’. Seemingly harmless but as in the case K spoke of while he was shaving, the pleasant memory of a time in Sweden arising, ‘had no place’ and needed to be “wiped away “.

So perhaps then the enlightened mind is the mind that can discern what is and what isn’t appropriate to be in the ‘room’?

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By any chance, do you have a reference to this incident? I dont remember it and would like to read it in its original context, if possible.

Secondly, you have been mentioning this incident a few times now recently. It obviously had a big impact on you, it seems. So you agree with K that having a pleasant memory of a different time, somewhere else, when one is doing something here and now as mindlessly as shaving, has no place and needs to be wiped away?

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When you are remembering some incident (pleasant or unpleasant), what is actually taking place? I mean, assuming it serves some purpose, what woud that be?