Anthony questioned me about my interviews with Krishnamurti and one point came up with particular sharpness, as it appealed strongly to both of us and enjoyed talking about it. The idea was not new, and we both had come across it in his writings, but it acquired a new freshness as a word-of-mouth experience, and we lingered with mutual pleasure over it.
Krishnamurti had told me, When I go for those long daily walks of mine, alone through the woods for one or two hours, it happened to me that not a single thought crosses my mind during all that time. Yes, I know, psychologists say it is not possible, but there you are, it happens to me. I must be a freak! He smiled winningly as he said the word freak, he asked me whether I knew what it meant (I was reminded of his insistence never to go on talking unless he made sure that what he had said had been understood), and then went on. I have also a similar experience at night. I sleep well and I never dream. Again psychologists say such a thing is not possible, but it is in my case. Then he came to the vital point: I think this happens to me because I enter fully into each experience, and I come out clean from each of them too. Nothing sticks to the mind, and maybe this is why it remains clean. He said no more on that point, but I sensed at the moment that he had said something of the utmost importance.
Anthony, who lived this idea on his own, insisted on it repeatedly and beautifully at his retreats. Live every experience to the full, so that it leaves no remainder, no scraps. Account without carryover. Journey without luggage. No living on credit, but cash down each time. In and out; fully in and fully out. Again the lotus and the water, the symphony that flows, the river that runs its course.
What prevented us from living this way (which is the only true way to live) is attachment on one side and fear on the other. We are attached to an experience and we dont let go of it in our minds even when the experience has already passed; or we are afraid of a coming event, and its fear fills the mind before it has arrived. A free mind carries no encumbrance. A free mind lives life moment to moment, and this is the secret to enjoying it to the full.
Anthony not only spoke like that, he also lived like that. One little insight he gave in passing in one of those days. The retreat grounds at Lonavla were large and were divided into two parts: the old grounds, where the St. Stanislaus Villa stood, and where the Sadhana Institute had been housed for several years, and the new grounds, a portion cut out from the old, separated now by a wall, and where the new quarters for the Institute were being built. The two grounds being contiguous, we often passed from one to the other, and it was in this connection that Anthony said one day in the group, its curious what happens to me, but Ive observed it again and again. I often pass through the old Sadhana grounds where I lived and worked so many years with the intensity you all know, so that those grounds and every corner in them are full of memories of all kinds for me. I know all this, and I remember all this, and yet the fact is that whenever I pass through those grounds, in company o r alone, I feel absolutely nothing by way of emotion, attachment, romance, or nostalgic feeling. Nothing. And I am not a stone, as you know. I feel deeply. But nothing stirs in me when I go through those grounds. The reason must be that I lived that experience to the full, and it has left no residue within me. That is the way I want to live.
That was the way he lived. And he left a signal testimony of it in the last words he said to us in Lonavla, which will also be the last words of this book. Inspired farewell, pathetic parting, prophetic benediction at the end of the final Eucharist we offered all of us together in thanksgiving to one another, to Anthony and to God.
It was the last evening of the last day, thirteenth of April 1987, Monday in Holy Week. The Eucharist was almost over in the same hall and with the same chairs that had witnessed so many intense and beautiful moments in those truly blessed fifteen days of Anthonys last retreat ever. We were lingering lovingly and unhurried over the deep silence that follows the passing around of the paten and the cup with the Body and Blood of Christ who held us now all together in the embrace of His presence and His love. In that sacred silence Anthony spoke, and these were his words:
Don't change: Desire to change is the enemy of love.
Don't change yourselves: Love yourselves as you are.
Don't change others: Love all others as they are.
Don't change the world: It is in God's hands and He knows.
And if you do that change will occur marvelously in its own way and in its own time.
He paused for a while and he added his final words:
Yield to the current of life unencumbered by baggage.
He did.
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