Jiddu Krishnamurti , Clarice Lispector, the Gospel of Matthew, and stillness

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“...if the mind realizes its own absolute incapacity to know the unknown, if it perceives that it cannot take a single step towards the unknown, then what happens? Then the mind becomes utterly silent.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (talks in Bombay, Jan6/1960)

"The most difficult thing is to do nothing: to remain alone before the cosmos"

Clarice Lispector (JdoB, Sept18/71)

"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? …Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns… Are ye not much better than they? …Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin..”

Matthew 4:6

            Stillness is the liberation from all that comes and goes.

            Stillness isn’t. All that comes and goes is.

            To chase after all that comes and goes is to be unstill.

            To be still is to be the is that isn’t.

            This is the return to the hub of the wheel, the eye of the hurricane.

            And yet how easy it is to do, and how difficult indeed it is to ‘not do’.

            It is said that the most difficult posture to bring to perfection in Hatha Yoga is the 'Corpse pose', which is the only position in which one must do ...nothing!

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These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.