(When * Michael) and I sat down to have this conversation, it was hot and high season for flying insects, but once we got underway they left us alone.)
* Michael Krohnen (1943-2023)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqsR-Tb0q_M
I find simplicity to be essential to understanding the complexities of life. It governs one’s ability to listen and observe without presumption. Through quiet observation, asking good questions of oneself and dialogue with others we discover our essential connection with the world. Apart from sitting quietly beneath a tree, there is perhaps no better way to gain insight into the whole movement of thought and emotion. After all, our concern with common factors present in the day to day perception of change is something we share with everyone.
Dialogue is as relevant today as it ever been and a good way to move through and beyond opinion.
‘Diversity is essential to a vibrant society, one could say, as vital as biodiversity is to our planet’s ecology. However, the conflicts associated with differences of race, religion or political ideology can hardly be equated with natural processes. Such preoccupations have always obscured the more important questions regarding the nature of consciousness, individuality and intelligence. Needless to say, we human beings have been conflicted over such matters for millennia. While debate has become one of the less violent ways of trying to settle such differences, reaching agreements in which separate interests are more often placated rather than resolved is no real solution to the deep seated complexities of self-interest. Such procedures fall far short of what can be achieved through the exploration of meaning and value in free and open dialogue. Participation in dialogue of this nature is akin to meditation, it is something that grows naturally from the spirit of inquiry. Like meditation, dialogue is significant because it can loosen and often dissolve rigid viewpoints bound by self-isolating opinion, tradition or belief. When we can listen to the whole movement of thought, inquiry itself becomes much more important than any agreement or disagreement. When this occurs a perceptive movement can take place, which moves far beyond pitching one thought against another. This is essentially an emergent process that is free of the ‘me’ or ‘you’, leaving us free to utilize the thinking process creatively, without conflict.’
Author’s passage from ‘Of Time and the Timeless’ *
* © 2011. Published by Karina Library, Ojai.