Here I sit looking out my paned window at the Arizona light and feeling that I want to say something, but not knowing what. It is not an itch to write or a compulsion so much, but a Windex smear across my internal optic (huh?). I still don’t have it as I fuss with these words within this sentence which is coming to an end. So I lean back on my squeaking chair and wait. Please wait as I wait. Something says that I should write about conditioning, a major theme in the works of the spiritual master, Khrishnamurti. At a later time I will give you the website which carries on his works and is always interesting. It really is the work of disciples after the master is gone. Aha! If you have a beef with Christianity, target Paul, he, in essence, created it.
I began reading Khrishnamurti in 1975 (The Flight of the Eagle). It was a difficult book to decipher, like reading Plato in college at 18. As I worked my way through it I realized I was reading a great mind and until this day it is the book I go back to, especially for his insights about the observer and the observed. He is only now beginning to be introduced into colleges for he does not follow the path of philosophers as we generally know it — because, in fact, he is useful, very much in the world.
At times i wrestled with his ideas, got angry with him, but I persisted. I wanted to read him without being conditioned by him, which was exactly one of his major ideas. I looked for imperfections in the man, he seemed too good, too perfect. i judged him for this and that and, finally, I grew and gave all that up and just read him out of sense of admiration for what he had done with his life. He and Kazantzakis were friends and both men sought to cleanse themselves of societal lint and conditioning; they both wanted to be free. I imagine that was in me too. I question authority because it is a man-made fabric; tear at it, shred it, for it is all gossamer.
Khrishnamurti seeped into my writing in the 70s and 80s and even until this blog. He was raised to be a messiah by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbetter of the Theosophists. He chose to give all that up and he did by telling his followers that truth is a pathless way and that each one of them must begin his or her journey alone. At a later point in his life a questioner asked if he felt dismayed that after all his years of writing and lecturing not much has changed in the world or in those who had listened to him. His reply was, in effect, that a rose must give off its aroma. Well, dear reader, if you are a writer are you compelled to give off your aroma or do you want it both ways American, that is, make money?
Goddam it, you are going to die and everything you have done, you have imagined, you have felt, touched, eaten, pissed, shitted away dies with you; a few memories are kept about you by loved ones and then they die until you are lost like my proverbial medieval French serf. You are no more, you have come and gone, you are less than vapor, you are beneath and below a mote. And you chase your tail about making money, making it in this corrupt society. You are suckered in by your own personal avarice. Knowing you will die, if you are serious about life, each line, each paragraph, each story or novel should be your very best. Wake up, schmuck. Dustin Hoffman understands. He has said that he has so many films in his life and that they will last long after he is gone, so he feels it is imperative to do the very best job he can in each appearance. Daniel Day-Lewis is a monument to this point of view.
i need an ending, reader. So here it is. Do the best job you can and leave your writing to the world community to do with as it will. After all, you don’t own your heart, or liver — you have never touched or seen them! You inhabit your body for a set amount of years. Will your writings to the world. It is your treasure.
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