Boktips: “What are you doing with your life?”

Jag tycker mycket om att utbyta tankar och erfarenheter med andra, både i tal och i skrift. Något som säkert märks med tanke på det jag skapat genom åren i form av events, föreläsningar, workshops, kurser, podcast, intervjuer och videoprojekt. Så gillar jag ju att läsa också – och i vanlig ordning vill jag dela med mig av det som berör mig.

Under sommaren tänkte jag därför dela några favoritböcker med utdrag, citat och mina anteckningar från läsningen. Böckerna handlar oftast om vad det innebär att vara människa och hur vi lever i relation till vår omgivning. Sååå…. Vill ni följa med på en boktipsrunda?
Se det antingen som en inspiration till att själv läsa böckerna, till att få en snabbresumé om dess djupare innehåll eller mer än gärna – dela dina tankar om boken och det jag delat av den!

”What are you doing with your life?”

J. Krishnamurti

Här är några löst utvalda delar, lite av vad jag tar med mig från boken – ibland citerat, ibland direkta utdrag och ibland en sammanfattning av mig. Siffran innan, visar vilken sida i boken som texten är hämtad/sammanfattad ifrån.

5-6
Mind vs Life – constent struggle. ”It’s only the free mind that can meet life”. Mind is static, life is movement, they don’t work together like that. Don’t try to understand the mind.

6-7
The Self är allt som är ‘to be’ = isolerat. Selk-knowledge. To know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship.

8
Society is the product of our relationships – så världen blir som vi väljer att leva den, hur vi får vårt levebröd och hur vi hanterar våra relationer utifrån våra idéer och livstro.

9
…no guru is needed/necessary because knowledge of oneself is from moment to moment. Self-knowledge can come only through isolation. Self-knowledge is the result of awareness of relationships.

10
Without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation.
Our weakness (och omognad) is that we want someone else to act for us and change the course of our lives. We wait for others. A mind that seek security and success is not intelligent.

11
The more we think over a problem, the more complex it becomes.

12
See the ‘me’ as a fact, as constantly in action. Not to grasp, not to achive, not to explain. The self is not ‘a problem’ that thought cannot resolve. Just be aware.

13-14
We all want ‘peace’, but that is to take shelter, that does not solve the problem. We must be clear in ourselves about what we want, about our intentions. Can we be clear? If we think we have found, we are enclosed.

15
We look for something permanent, a lasting certainty, because in ourselves we are so uncertain. We know facts, we know books, but we don’t know ourselves.

17-18
You want to hold on to the things that are beautiful, to beauty, but when holding becomes dependence and fear of loosing – life becomes enclosed.

20
Realizing the fact of insecurity. There is no security. Accept it. When we seek we always find, so don’t.

23-26
Thought process is the response of memory. No memory – no thought.
Thinking is the result of the past.
Thorough thought there is no possibility of a radical change, the sorrow will continue.

27
Any effort, any struggle, destroys the sensitivity of the mind and the heart. So. Just. Observe.

30
Right thinking is a movement of self-knowledge from moment to moment when there is awareness of all things and feelings.
knowledge is incomplete, so all things born of knowledge is limited, partial, never free. No freedom of thought.

31-32
Training the intellect does not result in intelligence.  
The mind, the intellect is satisfied with explanations, but intelligence is not, for to understand there must be complete unity of mind and heart.

33
Understanding, even for a second, can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness cannot be cultivated because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind but a dead mind.

34
After all, thought is word, and it is word that interferes. A mind that is caught in words cannot understand truth. Don’t analyze your thoughts and emotions, but become conscious of why you are thinking in a particular groove and in what motive you act.

36-37
We are the environment, our thoughts and responses comes from the values of our society.
The self is made up of entities (desires in various forms). From this arises the ‘me’, the thinker… so a division is established between the self an non-self, between ‘me’ and the environment or society. This separation is the beginning of conflict, inward and outward.
Self-knowledge is necessary if one is to be free from influences and values that give shelter to ‘me’.

The desire to imitate is strong. We have hardly any independent thoughts. A mind that thinks along traditional lives cannot discover that which is new. We become mediocre imitators, cogs in a cruel, social machine.
This imitation of what we should be, breeds fear, and fear kills creative thinking. Fear dulls the mind and heart so we are not open for life.

38
To have an open mind is more important than learning. Wisdom comes from observation and understanding of everyday incidents in human relationship.

41
We want to identify ourselves with something. You can forget your (true)self in material things = materialistic, or in the spiritual world = spiritual. Same, same.
To loose oneself in the worship of something because one feels small, full of sorrow and of little value.
The rich looses themselves in cars, travels, amusement. The clever in inventions, the stupid follow others who tell them what to do. The ambitious wants to do something.
So all of us want to forget ourselves, so we try to find something greater with which to be identified.

43
To escape collectively is the highest form of security.

45-46
What is wrong with pleasure? It becomes a memory, that demands a greater continuity. Repeated.
Understand pleasure, don’t get rid of it. When pleasure is not fulfilled, then begins frustration.

51
Most of us have an idea, a concept of what we ought to be, but we never change fundamentally. To bring about a good society, humans have to change. We must find the energy to bring this radical transformation of the mind. For that we need energy. Bit we waste our energy through conflict, resistance, conformity, acceptance of shit, obedience…
We can not conform to a pattern! Most would rather accept, obey and follow. Quicken the mind and heart! We need an explosion, we need to look at life totally different.

53
If you observe your own ways, you still see that you do nothing but follow somebody or another.
The significance of life can only come when you put away this authority.
What is freedom from authority? You can break a law – but that is not freedom from authority.
But there is freedom in understanding just that.
We want to be told what to do (även att gå mot strömmen är att ledas av den). We do not know the significance of life as long as we are copying, imitating, following.

How can we know the significance of life, when all the one is seeking is success?
We want success, to be secure, for someone to tell us that we are doing right, following the right path. All our life is following a tradition.  We try to achive result. So we do not know significance of life, we know fear. Fear of doing wrong. Our minds are so confused, caught in theory, that we cannot describe ‘life’.

So what do we mean by ‘life’, away from definition and words?

55
We want a purpose in life, so that we can guide our everyday of life towards an end.
Which is more important:
‘to find the purpose in life’ or ‘free the mind from searching’.
Perhaps when the mind is free from that search, that way freedom itself is the purpose. Because it is only in freedom one can discover any truth. So do not seek the purpose of life.

56
Why ask about purpose of life? Because you are uncertain. What’s important is to understand that confusion in which one is. We do not understand the confusion, we just want to get rid of it.
The answer is here. The one who is concerned does not ask what is the purpose of life, but he is concerned with the cleaning up of the confusion.

57
The man who sees things as they are and is content with what he has, is not confused. He is clear, therefore he does not ask what is the purpose of life.

58
Our difficulty is that since our life is empty, we want to find a purpose to life and strive for it. Therefore our purpose in life is how to make our lives rich.
To be happy, find God? You can only make your way towards an object that you know… When you seek a purpose of life, you are really just escaping and not understanding what life is. Life is relationship, life is action in relationship.

Why are we so frustrated? Because we don’t understand ourselves. We prefer to run away and seek the purpose of life from relationships.

59
The question about purpose in life is put only by those who do not love. Love can be found only in action, which is relationship.

64
Fear… it darkens the mind. We are a lot like animals, that is a fact. But it is possible to be free from that, and also see if we can go beyond ‘society’. To discover – we must be free from fear. We need to bring human unity. Nationalism (and religion) has divided man.

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…och där tog boken INTE slut, men mina understrykningar gjorde det. Antagligen för att jag insåg att jag strök under typ halva boken…Med andra ord - gillar den verkligen, den är läsvärd!
Jag hoppas detta gav dig någon tanke att ta vidare, en nyfikenhet att utforska mer - och kanske läsa boken!

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