07/20/2019
If you force the body, it is not yoga
“I don’t want to control myself at any level, physically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually. It is a dangerous thing I am saying unless you understand it very carefully. When there is control there is division, and therefore there is effort and so distortion. So I have to find out how to live without control, without the duality of the controller and the thing to be controlled.
Mr Krishnamacharya and Desikachar say if you are doing yoga there must be no effort at all, no forcing the body at all. If you force the body it is not yoga, so to do something without effort. Standing straight without bending the knees, to touch the floor may take a week or longer, but don’t make an effort. The moment you make an effort you are forcing the muscles, therefore the muscles become taut, distorted. Whereas you say, ‘All right, I am going to do this thing very slowly, take time, give attention to it.’ Do it very gently.
I want to live a life without any control. The whole of life to be without control, but yet highly disciplined. I see any form of control implies effort. That is the thing first you must understand before you understand meditation. Effort: I must get up, I am lazy, I must force the body, I must go for a walk, it is good for me, I must drive it, I must not be angry – all the musts and shoulds imply control. Control implies suppression, conformity to a pattern, whether that pattern is the social pattern or a pattern which you have developed yourself.
Freedom implies freedom, not from something. To live a life which is completely free means no control. Can you live a daily life without any control, and yet be punctual for meals, get up at the right time to exercise, study or whatever you do, without the least effort? Effort implies duality, contradiction, wanting, not wanting, and therefore distortion. So the mind that lives without effort is a mind that has no distortion whatsoever. Unless you really understand very clearly what it means to make effort, what is involved in effort, meditation becomes a process of control and direction. That is not meditation at all.”
JKrishnamurti
Ojai Pepper Tree Retreat Sept 16
An organism that is independently intelligent
Yoga, the series of exercises and breathing, was invented many thousands of years ago in India. Yoga is to keep the glands, the nerves and the whole system functioning very healthily, without medicine, and keep it highly sensitive. And the body needs to be sensitive otherwise you cannot have a very clear brain. If you stuff yourself with wine, meat and all the rest of it, how can your brain function clearly? Your smoking and drugs become such superficial immediate satisfactions without any understanding what is beyond.
Yoga is not something mysterious. One has to do it to keep the body supple. The brain has to have all the blood it needs, and therefore right breathing. If I may be a little personal, I do it every day for two hours, regularly. Not the regularity of machinery. One has to have very good, healthy, sane body, and therefore a brain that is capable of thinking rationally, healthily, objectively, non-personally, therefore efficiently, and a brain that is absolutely quiet; not mechanically made quiet. You can see the truth of this, the simple logical fact of it, that one needs to have a very good healthy, sensitive, alert body, a brain that functions very clearly, non-emotionally, and for such a brain to be absolutely quiet.
Krishnamurti in Saanen 1970, Talk 7
Skill in action implies no effort
Question: If you do yoga every day for two hours, is that not a form of discipline?
K: The body tells you when it is tired, the body tells you not to do it that morning. When we have abused the body, driving it to do all kinds of things, spoiling its own intelligence, by a particular food we like, smoking, drinking and all the rest of it, the body becomes insensitive. Then thought says, ‘I must drive it, I must force it.’ Such driving the body, forcing it, compelling it, becomes a discipline, whereas yoga means skill in action, without any effort. Skill in action implies no effort. If any form of effort is involved when you do the exercises, that is not yoga. Therefore you do it easily, and the regularity of it depends on the sensitivity of the body. It is not a mechanical regularity. All this requires a great deal of intelligence, not only the intelligence of the body but the mind and the brain. When there is intelligence it will react, tell you what to do or what not to do.
Krishnamurti in Saanen 1970, Talk 7
If you force the body, it is not yoga
I don’t want to control myself at any level, physically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually. It is a dangerous thing I am saying unless you understand it very carefully. When there is control there is division, and therefore there is effort and so distortion. So I have to find out how to live without control, without the duality of the controller and the thing to be controlled.
Mr Krishnamacharya and Desikachar say if you are doing yoga there must be no effort at all, no forcing the body at all. If you force the body it is not yoga, so to do something without effort. Standing straight without bending the knees, to touch the floor may take a week or longer, but don’t make an effort. The moment you make an effort you are forcing the muscles, therefore the muscles become taut, distorted. Whereas you say, ‘All right, I am going to do this thing very slowly, take time, give attention to it.’ Do it very gently.
I want to live a life without any control. The whole of life to be without control, but yet highly disciplined. I see any form of control implies effort. That is the thing first you must understand before you understand meditation. Effort: I must get up, I am lazy, I must force the body, I must go for a walk, it is good for me, I must drive it, I must not be angry – all the musts and shoulds imply control. Control implies suppression, conformity to a pattern, whether that pattern is the social pattern or a pattern which you have developed yourself.
Freedom implies freedom, not from something. To live a life which is completely free means no control. Can you live a daily life without any control, and yet be punctual for meals, get up at the right time to exercise, study or whatever you do, without the least effort? Effort implies duality, contradiction, wanting, not wanting, and therefore distortion. So the mind that lives without effort is a mind that has no distortion whatsoever. Unless you really understand very clearly what it means to make effort, what is involved in effort, meditation becomes a process of control and direction. That is not meditation at all.
Krishnamurti at Brockwood Park 1970, Discussion with students and staff
