To negate everything that man has invented

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Questioner: I still don't know what you mean by enlightenment?

Krishnamurti: A state of negation. Negation is the most positive action, not positive assertion. This is a very important thing to understand. Most of us so easily accept positive dogma, a positive creed, because we want to be secure, to belong, to be attached, to depend. The positive attitude divides and brings about duality. The conflict then begins between this attitude and others. But the negation of all values, of all morality, of all beliefs, having no frontiers, cannot be in opposition to anything. A positive statement in its very definition separates, and separation is resistance. To this we are accustomed, this is our conditioning. To deny all this is not immoral; on the contrary to deny all division and resistance is the highest morality. To negate everything that man has invented, to negate all his values, ethics and gods, is to be in a state of mind in which there is no duality, therefore no resistance or conflict between opposites. In this state there are no opposites, and this state is not the opposite of something else.
J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 7

Vincent Carriuolo

Interests: breathing, music, literature, golf, art, snowshoeing, writing, kayaking, meditation, skiing, walking/hiking, theatre (preferably drama), comedy clubs, concerts, art museums, poetry readings, working out and elephant polo at tiger tops, nepal (just seeing if you're still reading). some favorite films: the bicycle thief, dr. strangelove, 81/2, the diving bell and the butterfly, babette's feast, being there, city lights, everything is illuminated and life is beautiful. favorite reads: 100 years of solitude; the short stories of raymond carver; the divine comedy; the power of now; j. krishnamurti's the book of life; the short stories of eudora welty and ethan canin; the poetry of t.s. eliot; matsuo basho and robert frost; the odyssey; the secret language of symbols; a path with heart; zen flesh, zen bones; gift from the sea; siddhartha and anything by: j. krishnamurti; eckhart tolle; jack kornfield; anthony demello s.j.; thich nhat hahn; thomas merton; shunryu suzuki, : meister eckhart; emmett fox and ram dass. play blues harmonica. like color: cobalt blue. like flower: paper white narcissus. last read: one hundred years of solitude (again), quotes: just this. --anon. we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. --anais inn, a friend of bill w.