Choice-less Awareness or Help-less Awareness.

The main meditation instruction at Nilambe at that time was the explanation of Choice-less Awareness. This they considered as the real Buddhist practice. This methoud was put forwarded by Jiddu Krisnamurti and followd by E.W. Adikaram.

The late Godwin Samararatne, who was the chief meditation instructor at Nilambe at that time, was a follower of Jiddu Krisnamurti as well as Adikaram.

First let us examine what exactly is this Choice-less Awareness is. This Awareness is not Sati. One has to practice to get hold of Sati. That is why the practice is named as 'Aanapana Sati', meaning the practice of Sati based on the breathing. So Awareness is what everyone has. No need to practice for it. Then why it is Choice-less? There are people who cannot make mental choices, that is' 'not to think' when one wants it, 'to think' when one wants it, to shift the minds attention to a particular object (focus), etc. They may be born with such a situation or may have developed such a situation later.

Sometimes when one is sick, one may find himself with a situation like that.

Jiddu Krishnamurti had this problem, hence he felt that the 'thoughts are cropping up on its own' without a reason. They vanish without a reason. One cannot put away 'thoughts', if he desires so. By desiring as such one creates an additional problem, to the existing problem of thinking. The solution is to just watch the activity taking place in the mind as it is, as one does not have a choice. So there is no Path to solve this problem of suffering caused by the thinking. In that Awareness without a choice, if one finds a solution which may come automatically without any effort, as one cannot exercise such an effort, then well and good. That is the Freedom.

This is a mental problem K had, and K says that he was lucky to get this Freedom from the Known, from the Thoughts to Thoughtless, Unknown. Hence this does not constitute a Path of actions, such as Buddhist Bhavana.

They, Adikaram, Godwin and the present teacher at Nilambe, Upul, hold on to this idea of Choice-less Awareness, and think all the methods of Bhavana one can find in the Buddhist Scriptures are not Lord Buddha's real teaching, but the distortions added by later monks.

They, including Adikaram say, the real teaching of Lord Buddha can be found only in Jiddu Krishnamurti's teaching.

I suspect all these people who see that Krishnamurti's Choices-less Awareness is as the real Lord Buddha’s teaching have the same mental problem of Krirshnamurti, where one cannot move or shift one's mind as one wishes, and thinks "thoughts arise automatically without a reason, just like water drops falling" 

So it is better and much meaningful to rename this Choice-less Awareness as 'Help-less Awareness'.  Also it is pathless, and one can wait for the freedom to come about, in his entire life time, if it does not happens as it happened luckily to Krishnamurti.

Did it really happened to Krishnamurti?


< Previous                                          First                                              Next >