Action and Idea

becoming

"Now these three states which constitute experience - the actor, the action, and the result - are surely a process of becoming. Otherwise there is no becoming, is there? If there is no actor, and if there is no action towards an end, there is no becoming; but life as we know it, our daily life, is a process of becoming. I am poor and I act with an end in view, which is to become rich. I am ugly and I want to become beautiful. Therefore my life is a process of becoming something. The will to be is the will to become, at different levels of consciousness, in different states, in which there is challenge, response, naming and recording. Now this becoming is strife, this becoming is pain, is it not? It is a constant struggle: I am this, and I want to become that. "

J. Krishnamurti "The First and Last Freedom"

-Action and Idea

How is one who is superficial to become serious?

Question: How is one who is superficial to become serious?*

Krishnamurti: First of all, we must be aware that we are superficial, must we not? What does it mean to be superficial? Essentially, to be dependent, does it not? To depend on stimulation, to depend on challenge, to depend on another, to depend psychologically on certain values, certain experiences, certain memories - does not all that make for superficiality? When I depend on going to church every morning or every week in order to be uplifted, in order to be helped, does that not make me superficial? If I have to perform certain rituals to maintain my sense of integrity or to regain a feeling which I may once have had, does that not make me superficial? Does it not make me superficial when I give myself over to a country, to a plan or to a particular political group? Surely this whole process of dependence is an evasion of myself; this identification with the greater is the denial of what I am. But I cannot deny what I am; I must understand what I am and not try to identify myself with the universe, with God, with a particular political party or what you will. All this leads to shallow thinking and from shallow thinking there is activity which is everlastingly mischievous, whether on a worldwide scale, or on the individual scale.

First of all, do we recognize that we are doing these things? We do not; we justify them. We say, "What shall I do if I don't do these things? I'll be worse off; my mind will go to pieces. Now, at least, I am struggling towards something better." The more we struggle the more superficial we are. I have to see that first, have I not? That is one of the most difficult things; to see what I am, to acknowledge that I am stupid, that I am shallow, that I am narrow, that I am jealous. If I see what I am, if I recognize it, then with that I can start. Surely, a shallow mind is a mind that escapes from what is; not to escape requires arduous investigation, the denial of inertia. The moment I know I am shallow, there is already a process of deepening - if I don't do anything about the shallowness. If the mind says, "I am petty, and I am going to go into it, I am going to understand the whole of this pettiness, this narrowing influence", then there is a possibility of transformation; but a petty mind, acknowledging that it is petty and trying to be non-petty by reading, by meeting people, by travelling, by being incessantly active like a monkey, is still a petty mind.

Again, you see, there is a real revolution only if we approach this problem rightly. The right approach to the problem gives an extraordinary confidence which I assure you moves mountains - the mountains of one's own prejudices, conditionings. Being aware of a shallow mind, do not try to become deep. A shallow mind can never know great depths. It can have plenty of knowledge, information, it can repeat words - you know the whole paraphernalia of a superficial mind that is active. But if you know that you are superficial, shallow, if you are aware of the shallowness and observe all its activities without judging, without condemnation, then you will soon see that the shallow thing has disappeared entirely, without your action upon it. That requires patience, watchfulness, not an eager desire for a result, for achievement. It is only a shallow mind that wants an achievement, a result.

The more you are aware of this whole process, the more you will discover the activities of the mind but you must observe them without trying to put an end to them, because the moment you seek an end, you are again caught in the duality of the `me' and the `not-me' - which continues the problem.

*From The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti free online links

Answer for youself...

THESE QUESTIONS ARE FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT AND ANSWER FOR YOUSELF!*



1. Do you feel President Andrew Jackson was a racist, a white supremacist and/or ethnic cleanser?

2. Do you feel President Andrew Jackson’s picture should be on the United States $20 bill and on the $1 gold coin?

3. Do you feel that the state of Georgia has always lived up to its motto-WISDOM, JUSTICE, AND MODERATION? Especially in the way the state treated the Cherokee people (and many good American citizens since then)?

4. Do you feel that the white and the Native American shaking hands with the words, “PEACE and FRIENDSHIP” above and below the picture is a true statement? This appears on the reverse side of some of the President Thomas Jefferson Nichols.

5. Do you feel the dome on Georgia’s capitol building should still be covered with the Cherokee’s gold that was taken from them at Dahlonega?

6. Do you feel that Dahlonega, Georgia should commercialize and promote tourism in their town about being the first gold rush in America? Keep in mind they took the gold from the Cherokee Nation’s homeland and were the catalyst for the Trial of Tears.

*Questions taken from a display at Red Clay, TN by Dr. M. Abram from

the Cherokee Heritage Museum and Gallery

Patrick Swiney has passed on at 64

And so it came to pass: last night the State of Alabama finally succeeded in its quest to kill former Police Officer Ronald Patrick Swiney.

The place of death: Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, where Mr. Swiney was serving a sentence of life imprisonment, without parole, upon his 1989 wrongful conviction for murdering his former wife, Betty Snow Swiney, and her ex husband, Ronnie Lynn Pate.

And indeed that conviction was wrong; it rested solely on evidence fabricated by the State, tailor-made to coincide with the scene of the crime. This fact cannot be denied; in recent years the nation’s leading experts in gun shot residue, ballistics and forensic pathology scientifically proved Patrick could not possibly have done what the State accused him of.

But the State courts would not hear of it; the newly-discovered evidence of Patrick’s innocence they would not consider. The judges and prosecutors remained hell-bent on covering up the truth: that the murders were committed by others, while Patrick was convicted of them, in retaliation for what Patrick did as a career police officer several years earlier … while working as an investigator for the Gulf Shores Police, Swiney uncovered evidence that a large scale drug ring was being spearheaded by then Baldwin County District Attorney Jimmy Hendrix and then Baldwin County Sheriff’s Department Chief Investigator Bobbie Stewart. A cop’s cop having sworn to uphold the law, Patrick turned the evidence over to federal authorities. Resulting was that some 47,000 lbs. of illegal drugs were seized, and DA Hendrix and Investigator Stewart were both sentenced to federal prison.

Soon after, several attempts on Officer Swiney’s life were made. One was nearly successful: at the hands of assailants he suffered knife wounds requiring several hundred stitches to keep him alive. One of the three assailants was identified. Though originally charged with First Degree Assault and Attempted Murder, a Baldwin County judge reduced the charges to a single count of Simple Assault for which he was allowed to go free after paying a small fine.

Throughout the many years of serving his unjust sentence to life imprisonment, former Officer Swiney was routinely denied the same quality medical care as afforded other inmates. Years ago he began suffering from serious heart problems. His medical records show as much. They also show he was denied corrective surgery. After developing pneumonia last week, he finally died on Tuesday, July 28, age 64. Plain and simple: it was a killing by the State of Alabama; not by lethal injection or the electric chair, but by confining an innocent man to an isolated dank prison cell and consciously ignoring his medical needs.

A reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest, prosecution and conviction of the person(s) actually responsible for planning and/or carrying out the December 10, 1987 murders of Betty Snow Swiney and Ronnie Lynn Pate.

(article taken from post by BookemDanno) To learn more about Patrick and the Website he inspired go here

On Transformation

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Transformation

Questioner: What do you mean by transformation?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Obviously, there must be a radical revolution. The world crisis demands it. Our lives demand it. Our everyday incidents, pursuits, anxieties, demand it. Our problems demand it. There must be a fundamental, radical revolution because everything about us has collapsed. Though seemingly there is order, in fact there is slow decay, destruction - the wave of destruction is constantly overtaking the wave of life.

So there must be a revolution - but not a revolution based on an idea. Such a revolution is merely the continuation of the idea, not a radical transformation. And a revolution based on an idea brings bloodshed, disruption, chaos. Out of chaos you cannot create order; you cannot deliberately bring about chaos and hope to create order out of that chaos. You are not the God-chosen who are to create order out of confusion.

That is such a false way of thinking on the part of those people who wish to create more and more confusion in order to bring about order. Because the moment they have power, they assume they know all the ways of producing order. But seeing the whole of this catastrophe - the constant repetition of wars, the ceaseless conflict between classes, between peoples, the awful economic and social inequality, the inequality of capacity and gifts, the gulf between those who are extraordinarily happy, unruffled, and those who are caught in hate, conflict, and misery - seeing all this, there must be a revolution, there must be complete transformation, must there not?

Now, is this transformation, is this radical revolution an ultimate thing, or is it from moment to moment? I know we would like it to be the ultimate thing because it is so much easier to think in terms of far away. Ultimately we shall be transformed, ultimately we shall be happy, ultimately we shall find truth, but in the meantime, let us carry on. Surely, such a thing that must come from moment to moment, must be discovered anew, and surely, there can be no discovery through accumulation. How can you discover the new if you have the burden of the old? It is only with the cessation of that burden that you discover the new (this does not mean that we don't study history, so please don't jump to that conclusion).

So, to discover the new, the eternal, in the present, from moment to moment, one needs an extraordinarily alert mind, a mind that is not becoming. A mind that is becoming can never know the full bliss of contentment - not the contentment of smug satisfaction, not the contentment of an achieved result, but the contentment that comes when the mind sees the truth in what is and the false in what is. The perception of that truth is from moment to moment, and that perception is delayed through verbalization of the moment.

So, transformation is not an end result. Transformation is not a result. Result implies residue, a cause and an effect. Where there is causation, there is bound to be effect. The effect is merely the result of your desire to be transformed. When you desire to be transformed, you are still thinking in terms of becoming, and that which is becoming can never know that which is being.

Truth is being from moment to moment, and happiness that continues is not happiness. Happiness is that state of being which is timeless. That timeless state can come only when there is a tremendous discontent - not the discontent that has found a channel through which it escapes, but the discontent that has no outlet, that has no escape, that is no longer seeking fulfillment.

Only then, in that state of supreme discontent, can reality come into being. That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of love - for love is not different from truth. Love is that state in which thought process as time has completely ceased. And where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning, for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and greater, ever-mounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti talk, February 20, 1949

Also in his book The First and Last Freedom (free online copy)

Cherokee Indian Princess

Nanye-hi (ᎾᏅᏰᎯ: "One who goes about"), known in english as Nancy

Ward (c. 1738–1822) was a ghigau, or beloved woman of the Cherokee

nation, which meant that she was allowed to sit in councils and to make

decisions, along with the other Beloved Women, on pardons.

She attempted to live in peaceful coexistence with white people.

Cherokee Removal Memorial Park

"In 1838-1839 U.S. troops, prompted by the state of Georgia, expelled the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast and removed them to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. The removal of the Cherokees was a product of the demand for arable land during the rampant growth of cotton agriculture in the Southeast, the discovery of gold on Cherokee land, the racial prejudice that many white southerners harbored toward American Indians, and the illegal actions of the Georgia legislature to pass unethical and unjust laws against these people."

"The stated goal of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions regarding the Cherokee was 'to make the whole tribe English in their language, civilized in their habits and Christian in their religion'.”

Cherokee removal memorial Park

One of the worst acts of “man’s inhumanity to man” took place when an entire race of peoples were driven from their lands in 1838. It was here at the Blythe Ferry that approximately 9,000 Cherokees and Creeks camped while waiting to cross the Tennessee River on their forced removal. They had been held captive in stockades a few miles back. Many books have been written on the heart wrenching description of what is now called “The Trail of Tears.” Butrick’s Journal describes their condition in the camps as, “very much like brute animals-being down on the naked ground exposed to wind and rain-like droves of hogs.” Butrick also states, “But not only the Cherokees-the dear Creeks and Seminoles have fallen by the same means, fictitious treaties.” He speaks of “Nanny as a slave” so this shows the diversity among the attachments.

A mental picture of what happened here at Blythe Ferry can be drawn from these excerpts:

Oct. 16th, 1838-“10 o’clock AM,” “We have only succeeded in getting some twenty wagons across the river--proprietors of the Ferry are determined to retard all exertions.” J. Powell

The last detachment crossed November 12, 1838. “I reached Blythe’s Ferry on Saturday, November 10-found the great body of Mr. (Peter) Hildebrand’s detachment of emigrating Cherokees quietly encamped--about twelve wagons had crossed--at dawn four boats were put in requisition and continued until dusk--close of the day about sixty wagons across--this morning before 12 o’clock eighteen wagons and all the people were over to Winsfield Scott.”

This park is dedicated in memory to these peoples. May it serve as a touchstone for this generation and future generations.

Directions to the Cherokee Removal Memorial Park

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