The Flame without Smoke

Posted on by Alain Joly
©️ Krishnamurti Foundation India

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“Love is the only flame without smoke.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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The flame and the smoke is an analogy Krishnamurti referred to sometimes. For him, the flame is this burning centre of being that “can never be expressed with words”, that “is beyond the clutches of time”, and that is often expressed as love. The smoke is of the mind. It is “the smoke of envy, of holding, of missing, of recalling the past, of longing for tomorrow, of sorrow and worry; and this effectively smothers the flame.” The smoke is often what we take to be the flame but is not. It is all that is passing, all the thoughts, feelings, perceptions — the smoke that we have gathered to form experience, and that we take to be ourself, our centre of being. This wilful, separate, time bound, suffering self has appropriated the feeling of being when it is in fact the very smoke that is veiling our true nature. Being only is that flame without smoke. It is our true identity and “the source of all happiness”.

I have gathered, over the years, on social medias, many of the most striking quotes by Krishnamurti, that popped up on my screen. These, I found, acted on me like little koans, that had the power to pierce the smoke of the mind, and reveal the subtlest truths. They are like candies which, when chewed upon carefully, reveal the flame of what we truly are. They are short and easy, but need to be taken seriously. They can crack open our resistance, and show us that flame without smoke. I share them here with you…

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“Do not pursue what should be,
but understand what is.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“Love is not at the end of time.
It is now, or it isn’t.
And hell is when it is not…”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“Thought is never free because it is based on knowledge,
and knowledge is always limited.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“It is essential to understand the seeker,
before you try to find out what it is he is seeking.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“The ego is a ring of defence around nothing.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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Discover more of this selection of quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti… (READ MORE…)

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Fear and Trembling

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Plains near Beauvais’ – Camille Corot, 1860-70 – WikiArt

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“The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
to depart from the snares of death.”
~ Proverbs, 14:27

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There is an expression that we may find puzzling, maybe slightly paternalist, condescending and outdated, but is well worth looking at. We find this expression mostly in Christianity and Islam, where the mentions ‘fear of God’, ‘fear of the Lord’, or the injunction ‘fear God’ are found far more than a hundred times in the Bible, or in the Quran. This fear is said to be one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, along with wisdom, understanding, guidance, mightiness, knowledge, and devoutness. But why would we be afraid of what we longed for the most in our lives? We should be embracing it with ardour and ease. So what is this “fear of the Lord” that, in Proverbs 9:10, is said to be “the beginning of wisdom”? Why is it given such primary importance?

Maybe we fear god for the same reason that we fear death. We think that we are something, someone, a self that we appreciate and have a fondness for, that we love and want to cling to as something precious. We want it to continue. So we have elaborated strategies to keep our self padded with multiple pleasurable sensations through our various habits as thoughts, daydreams, pleasure oriented activities, routines, manipulations, avoidances, all these addictions that have come to form the main part of what we call our self. But these are vain distractions, for awareness as god seems to have in itself a momentum, a power to draw every thing and being to itself. So this pull can be felt as a threatening force from the limited point of view of a self that feels vulnerable, and finds temporary security in being something, even if this something is in final analysis the cause of its suffering. In Hebrews 10:31, it is said: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

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An essay that inquires into the notion of the fear of god… (READ MORE…)

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The Will of God

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Wind Blows’ – Hugo Simberg, 1897 – WikiArt

God’s will is what is happening now. Not as a body or an entity, not as a form or any kind of event. The reason is: form has already happened. Every object comes from the past. It has traversed at least a length of time to land in the field of awareness. Like a thought has. A thought is never now. It is the termination of something that took place a moment ago. It is an achieved result. But there is something in our experience that doesn’t come from the past, that hasn’t travelled any distance to be here, and that hasn’t moved through time to be now. So if you want to know what is God’s will, find the only thing in your life that is not a thing, that hasn’t yet taken form, and therefore needs neither space nor time to be. Find that which cannot be found, that which is formless, that which hasn’t travailed. For God’s will doesn’t come second, it cannot be a result, for such a thing would need a cause for itself to be. No. God’s will is first. As a ‘first’, it is in capacity to initiate, to create. But what is created is never itself God’s will, for it is already formed, with a life of its own. It is corruptible as form. So go to the essence, the origin. Find the incorruptible in yourself — that one uncreated thing — and take that only to be the will of God.

So we are in our essence uncreated. This is our identity, to be without form, forever here, forever now, eternally landed, therefore without a will of our own. For what would a separate will be but a thing already formed, an effect with already a cause; and therefore not the causeless, therefore not God’s will. So if we want our life to follow a divine trajectory, we have to give our utmost attention to who we are. That will condition the rest of our existence. That matters the most: that little name we give to ourself, that little identity. Start with the truth of who you are, and be only concerned with the tail of that star. Make yourself bright with it — that’s how to follow God’s will. Be that one that is in no capacity to be a follower. Stand as and for the truth of being and be concerned with nothing else but that. That is the only possible will you can afford. Any other kind of will is not your own, although it may appear to be. So don’t expect to have a will, for a will is but an appearance that has formed in yourself. Go to yourself first. Go for that part of yourself that has no will but God’s will. You will find there a will that encompasses all other wills — for what is a will but the will to be happy, rested, fulfilled? Only at the condition of being without a will of your own can you embrace the one will of your true identity as being. Being is in fact its own will, for it has as its DNA the purpose of all wills, which is the peace of living. From that peace firmly set in your heart, any will is the will of God.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Hugo Simberg (1873-1917)

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Website:
– Hugo Simberg (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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The Russian Dolls

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Ornement, Matriochka, Babushka’ – Schwoaze – Pixabay

In fact, all we have to do is this: To open to our fact of just being. To let go of our acquired resistance, this tightness running in the background. It’s just an old habit. Our fear too — just an old habit born out of a concept. That concept runs something like this: we are a time-bound self that is separate and needs control and protection. Let this representation go. It’s not fundamental. It’s a narrative. It can be easily rid of. It is but a late creation in our timeless life as being. Just an idea lingering at the surface of our being, with no foundation. A simple belief that has once emerged. Just shake it off, it is utterly vulnerable and lonely, scared to be looked at and unmasked. So don’t let yourself be controlled by it. Don’t let your fear and resistance rule your life. Know better. I understand if you were your body, your mind, and your feelings — if they were being the whole of you — I see in that case how your fear and resistance could infiltrate you, take possession of you, and change you, ruin your innocence, harden you, damage you. I get the point. But you’re not. You’re not your body and mind, let alone your feelings. This is only an unchallenged, primal belief, which gave rise to the idea of you being a self separate from the world, a self which is then both the cause and the recipient for all your fears and resistances, for all your suffering, which then will continue the process: solidifying your idea of being a body; making your whole mind an asset of that body; giving rise to the idea of a self within that mind; which will in turn be a cradle for a whole array of consequential feelings; then god knows what feelings can make you do… Let all these Russian dolls go. Rest in that part of your self that is neither an idea, nor a concept, nor a representation, nor a thought. Go to the very heart. Start there. With Being. This is your illusory self’s weak point, where your primal belief cannot stand. This is what will disintegrate it. What will send you back to the truth of your being, and render your fears and resistances like these vain little clowns who are running around to disturb the show but never can. Be like the bigger doll, with infinite dimensions, in which all the other dolls fall back into place, unable to really act on your gorgeous being, powerless in diminishing it. Let the many dolls within your self be like humble and devoted attendants. Some of them dying of their natural death. Some of them appearing as having never been there in the first place. And some of them painted with the glorious qualities contained in the knowing of your own being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Schwoaze in Pixabay

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Wherever You Go

Posted on by Alain Joly

Listen to this: you are not meant to go anywhere. You may travel to the end of the earth and beyond. You may climb mountain after mountain, and dive deep into seas and oceans. You may visit the heart of the busiest cities, or be quietly at home. Wherever you go, please give it a close look. For you will never be where you go. Where you go is not where you will find yourself. The reason is: there is no geography outside yourself. Your self is the only geography for everywhere you go. Your self has mountains, cities, oceans and a home for you to live in. Your self has a body attached to it, for you to play the role of a person having a life in a world. But don’t be deluded. It is not because you always happen to be where your body is, that your self is located inside your body. There is a temporary, secret connection between your body and your self. But the truth is: your deepest self is free from any contingencies. It is not to be found anywhere in space, for it is itself owning the space you appear to be in. It has no habitation to live in. It cannot be conditioned, and its essence is impossible to move, or be transported from one place to another. So be always interested in that deepest part of yourself. Dedicate yourself to always know where you truly are. Not the superficial location of your body — not at the levels of names and forms. For where you are is not a place you can go to. It is not a place you have to reach or make an effort to attain. And your body is useless for you to know the place where you are. Where you are has no ‘where’. So in order for you to be where you are, well, then you have to only ‘be’. ‘You are’. Be only interested in that. In the fact that you are. That will give you your true location — where you truly are, wherever you are. That alone matters. Not your diving into seas and oceans. Not your roaming through cities. Not your being quietly at home. These are only distractions, making you head in the wrong direction. Where you have to go is always to your self first. Be there, in your self, in being, and all will appear pristinely simple. All places will fall into place — into your place as being. Then, wherever you may roam, you will reach the highest peak of your self. Then, wherever you may wander, you will be in the beating heart of your self. And wherever is the mellow sofa you may rest in, you will be resting in the sweet home of your self. See: you are not meant to go anywhere.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
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Cleansing the Temple

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple’ – Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1724 – Wikimedia

Maybe this is where peace in fact resides. In the fact that peace or happiness can never be found, never be reached. It will be nowhere where you expect it, not in any objective appearance or event, not in any wish granted, not in any kind of alignment between what you want and what you have. You will never obtain what you want. Truth is not there, in what you wish. It doesn’t care for your egoistic projections, for your own private self-interest. Truth is not a mere good to be bargained for, or hoped for, or waited for, which, if not granted will disappoint you, and make you like a rejected lover, or a bruised self. Truth is not any kind of crude object. Remember Jesus who cast out the merchants in the temple. Were you really thinking that there was a physical Jesus actually chasing the merchants from the temple, on the ground of some kind of moral rule?

The merchants in the temple, it is you. It is all of us when we have decided to argue with reality, to buy our happiness with some kind of object obtained, to bargain or negotiate with some invented superior entity the responsibility of what is happening to us, to come to god with pockets full of expectations and desires, making peace a simple object to be bought in the market place of our likes and dislikes. “Wouldst thou be free from any taint of trade?” did Meister Eckhart ask. Imagine the relief that it is: to know or realise that you will not have what you want, that ‘what is’ is all there is, all that you will ever have. What a relief! What a load finally put down, and got rid of! All that you want, desire, expect, all that, will never ever be granted to you. You can forget it all. ‘What is’ is the deal. The grandiose enlightenment you were waiting for lies there, in what simply is! It will never get better than that! You have it all here, in front of you. That is the gift that was specially designed for you. Happiness resides in what you have, in what you are, here and now. This is the secret that Krishnamurti meant when he said: “I don’t mind what happens.”

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On how truth is not an object to be bought in the marketplace… (READ MORE…)

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What We Have to Do

Posted on by Alain Joly

Well, now you know what to do, don’t you? All this time spent in the contemplation of truth must have served some purpose. The countless hours sitting on the cushion. The days in the company of Meister Eckhart or Rumi. And the sage of Arunachala. All these masters of presence. Surely they must have made a lasting impression on you. Now you won’t be seduced by experience anymore. You won’t be dragged into the train of every thought or worry that passes by. You won’t fall entranced by feelings, no matter how pregnant they may appear to be. You won’t let any of your sensations attach themselves to yourself, and suck your attention. Now you know better. You won’t be caught again. The time has come to find yourself just where you are. In that essential in yourself. Not at the periphery. Not in the weather of life, but deep down, in silence, in that presence that falls to nothing but itself. This is where you have to be. This is where your sacred interest lies. But we know that so well by now, don’t we? No need to stress that point again.

Well. But let’s rehearse it again. Just in case. Some part of it may have slipped away from our attention. There is never any harm in repeating what really matters: The important is never in the many, but lies secret in the reality that hosts every seeming appearance. So now we know, don’t we, where to look, where the promise hides, where that non-spoken truth is spoken. We know where is our duty to God. It is there, where you know, close to yourself, behind the behind, present as your most intimate identity. Don’t let yourself be drawn outside of it. Don’t fall to any passing occurrence, to anything that is not the entirety of you. That’s simple enough to make the difference. Stay with that part of yourself that is unmovable, that cannot be divided, set apart, isolated, looked at. That part that will never fail you, no matter hard you may try. And if you find anything, any thing, that stands to be noticed in your mind, an obstacle in yourself, then be unconcerned, go behind it, go for the space that holds it, that last frontier beyond it. And should that obstacle, that thought, that feeling, that perception, be so pregnant as to occupy the whole space of your self, then be bold, dive into it, right at the centre of it, free fall into it, on the other side of yourself, in this unknown, never visited part of you. Then… Then, you may come to that spaceless space, to that newness. Let it shower you, cleanse you. Be it and don’t move away from it no matter what. You won’t regret it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

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Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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