Amazing grace, love, and Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti goads us along with his patent, catechistic style:

"Can the mind, which is heavily conditioned, break through, so that it has great depth, a quality which is not the result of training, propaganda, of acquired knowledge? And can the heart, which is burdened with sorrow, which is heavy with all the problems of life- the conflicts, the confusion, the misery, the ambition, the competition- can that heart know what it means to love? (Talk in New Delhi, Nov '69)

If we are serious enough about life, if we 'take it to heart', so to speak, it is easy to see that if we let the mind rule our lives we will certainly make money, art, nice houses, delicious dinners, and everything else which by mankind can be made, but we never will make the one thing that can be made by the heart and the heart alone- we will never make Love.

I am taking some substantial leaps here, but what I am speaking of now is not an issue to be proven or disproven in the halls of philosophy, but can in fact only be realized in the experiences of the soul. And one of those experiences has been beautifully documented in a very well known song:

"Twas Grace that taught my heart to feel,

and Grace my fears released."

Amazing Grace

I include this here because it is important to note that grace does not teach the mind to think, but the heart to feel. And from Grace comes gratitude, from gratitude humility, from humility innocence, and from innocence we are born again to Beauty and Love (how's that for leaps?).

Now, the love of which we are speaking, in this case, is not simply the emotion of caring or romance with which we regularly associate the word, but is, instead, the act of attentively participating in life completely, and directly, at every moment, without expectation, bias, or knowledge. As Krishnamurti proffers- love is not about emotion, but it is when we "care for the watching".

When we 'watch' truly, we watch without right and wrong, true or false, and all the rest of the mind's inherent judgments. "There's vast mystery in the act of seeing", says Krishnamurti , and "This needs care, attention, which is love." (Journal, Apr. '75)

To look without 'the violence of knowledge', with full attention, in the unbias of the accepting witness, that is when we are truly 'in' love, because love is absolute, intimate, attention. Only by completely realizing the validity of this observation, will we then accept Krishnamurti 's dictum to- "Love, and do what you will." And we can only do that by 'following our bliss' and 'not doing what we hate'.

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These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas