ROCK. FLOW. ROCK. flowforms at Dipper Falls | ON MEASURE, THOUGHT & WILDNESS

ON MEASURE, THOUGHT & WILDNESS

"Truth is a pathless land."
Jiddu Krishnamurti

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."
Henry David Thoreau

Just as we cannot think of Space without it in some way,
like a cup of fluid held in the hand, being contained, in
a similar, parallel way, we cannot think of Time without
imagining something like a stream or river, with a clear
direction, and a clear beginning and end.

Evidently, there are two fundamental errors here. Or
perhaps there is just one? The mistake is that we are
not fully awakened to the fact that thought of any kind
always implies measure, implies differences and
distinctions and frames of some kind, even when these
may be inappropriate. This means that going beyond
measure is truly to somehow go beyond thought, not
as an idea, but to actually bump one's head against
problems in Art, in Science, in Ethics and Religion,
where we can no longer see clearly where we are going.
I think of this as the pathless land of which Krishnamurti
spoke, where inner freedom and spirituality begin. It is
also, it seems to me, something of what Thoreau meant
with his idea of wildness. This is an idea of wildness that
transcends by awareness alone the overly tame and
cultivated "lives of quiet desperation" we lead.

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