Yesterday, I had an opportunity to attend the discussions at the J Krishnamurti Foundation and we discussed a lot of things. We discussed whether there exists something called choice. In life, there come many situations wherein we exercise choices. For example, the choices of food to begin the day, choice of friends to talk to, choice of decisions to make at the office, the choice to study or socialize, the choice to watch a movie, the choice to study a particular stream, the choice to choose a particular career, the choice to enjoy the material world or move along the spiritual path, and the list is unlimited. However, do we actually have a choice in any of these decisions?
If one is clear, where is the choice? For example, if a child is clear that it wants to study Physics, where is the choice? If the child is not clear, there is a choice of hundreds of subjects. If the child is clear that he wants to study science, the choice gets restricted to only a few subjects that come within the basket of science. Isn't choice just a result of lack of clarity and the moment one is clear, there is no choice. There appears to be a choice between the pursuit of the material life and the spiritual life. However, the moment one tastes the divine, there is no choice.
Availability of choice just seems to be the result of confusion. There will be confusion so long we do not look inward and sort out ourselves. The moment a kid looks inside and understands his temperament, he has no confusion about the stream he will take. The moment we look inside and understand our drive, we will understand that we do not want to stay incomplete and discontented. We lack something that we are seeking. We will also see clearly that we have been seeking contentment in the outer world such as the taste of the food, a well-decorated beautiful home, friend circle, relationships, jobs, promotions, wealth, power, accumulation of information and knowledge, and even so-called spiritual experiences. We will also see that despite all our efforts and choices so far, we feel more discontented than when we were kids. This simple observation brings clarity to all of us.
A simple act of observation inside brings clarity that we are discontented and seeking something to be complete. We have tried different external means and this discontentment has not reduced but rather increased. Different people have tried different ways and means to be contended through different other means that we have not tried but deep interactions with even those people have revealed that they too feel equally discontented after making all these choices. That brings us clarity that all choices are just the outcome of sheer confusion within. With this clarity confusions drop and we live life with clarity. In a state of clarity, there is no confusion. Ram had no confusion about whether to go to the forest or not. Krishna had no confusion whether to fight the battle of Kurukshetra or not. There was no choice. There was only one possibility being the expression of the divine. When the divine takes over, one is complete inside and there is no discontentment. Since there is no discontentment, there is no confusion, and since there is no confusion, there is no seeking and there is no choice to make, rather there is absolute clarity.
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