There’s a lovely anecdote from a talk by the late Jiddu Krishnamurthi, a spiritual teacher, shared by the writer Jim Dreaver.
Part way through this particular talk, Krishnamurti suddenly paused, leaned forward, and said, almost conspiratorially, “Do you want to know what my secret is?” Almost as though we were one body we sat up, even more alert than we had been, if that was possible. I could see people all around me lean forward, their ears straining and their mouths slowly opening in hushed anticipation.
Krishnamurti rarely ever talked about himself or his own process, and now he was about to give us his secret! He was in many ways a mountaintop teacher—somewhat distant, aloof, seemingly unapproachable, unless you were part of his inner circle. Yet that’s why we came to Ojai every spring, to see if we could find out just what his secret was. We wanted to know how he managed to be so aware and enlightened, while we struggled with conflict and our numerous problems.
There was a silence. Then he said in a soft, almost shy voice, “You see, I don’t mind what happens.”
So much of learning to live better is learning to make peace with what we don’t control.
It resonated.
