Why include insights of Krishnamurti as a resource for child and parent development? “The better we know ourselves the more appropriate our model will be for children, who are the future of humanity.”
The entire spectrum of a child’s development is ‘model dependent’ and we are that model. Every act we call parenting is a form of adult development as we nurture and encourage optimum development in our child. The journey we call parenting is one of becoming a whole, mature, wise adult with love, deep empathy and compassion leading the way.
Most spiritual or religious traditions offer a set of cultural beliefs, rules, and dogma. Krishnamurti’s insights dig deeper into the very nature and structures of thought, how we are conditioned by beliefs, and traditions, often blinded by the images we have of ourselves, and others. Freeing the mind of this conditioning opens the doors of perception to vast fields of entangled empathic intelligence, a constant movement that serves the wellbeing and wholeness of every living thing, including our children.
The ancients called this state emptiness. Empty of the constant noise and chatter conditioned thought and memories produce. Krishnamurti describes this state as silent, revealing the sky-like nature of pure perception and awareness, clear, lucid, radiant, and highly sensitive. And with that, knowledge takes its proper place, and we behave differently.
Silence grew and became intense, wider and deeper. The brain which had listened to the silence of the hills, fields and groves was itself now silent. It had become quiet, naturally, without any enforcement.
It was still, deep within itself; like a bird that folds its wings, it had folded upon itself; it had entered into depths which were beyond itself. It was a dimension which the brain could not capture or understand. And there was no observer, witnessing this depth.
Every part of one’s whole being was alert, sensitive but intensely still. This new, this depth was expanding, exploding, going away, developing in its own explosions, out of time and beyond space. (Time and space being limited mental concepts.) jk
Not being a concept, this luminous, skylike essence of our mind with its vast intelligence, cannot be understood by thinking or imagining. The following comes close however:
Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds.
We should always try and remember: the clouds are not the sky, and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and non-dependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.
So where exactly is this Buddha nature? It is in the sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, it is fun, dimensionally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity.
To talk of this nature of mind as sky-like, of course, is only a metaphor that helps us to begin to imagine it’s all-embracing boundlessness; for the Buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the radiant clarity of awareness. As it is said: It is simply your flawless, present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake.
Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
With this understanding or insight, parenting becomes a completely different experience.
m
Krishnamurti
The Mind of J. Krishnamurti -The best introduction to Krishnamurti available.
Insights from Krishnamurti
- On The Years of Awakening with Mary Lutyens
- On Choiceless Awareness with Dorthy Simmons and Achyut Parwardn
- On Conditioning with David and Saral Bohm
- On Change with Lana Peters and Ravi Ravindra
- On The Sacred Pupul Jayakar and William (Bill) Quinn
- On The Violent Self Part One with Professor P. Krishna
- On The Violent Self Part Two with Professor P. Krishna
- On Freedom and Authority with Mary Zimbalist
- On Meditation Part One with Mark Lee
- On Meditation Part Two with Mark and Asha Lee 2
- On Relationship Satish Inamdar, MD
- On Death with Scott Forbes
- On The Religious Mind Part One with Samdhong Rinpoche
- On The Religious Mind Part Two with Samdhong Rinpoche
- On Conflict Part One with Evelyne Blau
- On Conflict Part Two with Michael Mendizza
Play Segment
- On Education with Mark Lee and Karen Hesli 1
- On Education with Harsha Tankha and Dr. P. Krishna 2
- On Methods with Laura Huxley and David Shainberg
- On Happiness with Mary Codogan
- On Fear with Javier Gómez Rodríguez 1
- On Fear with Javier Gómez Rodríguez 2
- On Freedom from the Known with Sunanda Patwardhan, Allan W. Anderson, Prof. Krishnanath 1
- On Freedom from the Known with Sunanda Patwardhan, Allan W. Anderson, Prof. Krishnanath, Padma Madholkar, and Doris Pratt 2
Will Krishnamurti’s legacy survive AI? Technology is replacing living systems as the model for human development. Transhumanism is the final stage of this long crusade.
This trajectory will soon render Krishnamurti’s legacy invisible and obsolete. The audience will be colorblind, incapable of seeing what has been lost.
What can be done?