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The jnani profile In this section we start to build up the understanding of the jnani spiritual personality by looking briefly at two examples from recent and ancient history, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986), and the Buddha (precise dates uncertain but born in the 6th or 5th C BC). It can be better to start with contemporary Masters and use their lives and teachings to understand those of the past, than the other way round. Why? Because living or near-contemporary figures are well-documented, and suffer less from mythologising and formulising (reduction of their teachings into formulae or dogma). The great Masters of antiquity are hard to unearth from the mounds of speculation heaped on their lives and writings, though credible portraits can sometimes be reconstructed using contemporary templates.
We have an extensive literary canon in respect of both Krishnamurti and the Buddha. Krishnamurti wrote books, and there are also numerous transcripts of audio and video recordings of his talks and dialogues with contemporary figures, including scientists, religionists and philosophers. The Buddhist canon is more problematic, because two rather different traditions (Theravada and Mahayana) claim their texts as the Buddha's authentic word. Scholars however generally agree that the Theravada or Pali canon is more likely to be reliable about the historic figure. (It is the Buddha as revealed in the Pali canon that will be discussed here, though this is not to dismiss the spiritual insights conveyed by later Buddhist traditions.) What then, in these two men, separated by two and a half millennia, are recognisable in common as jnani traits? Firstly: they both taught awareness, silence of the mind. Secondly they both taught independence, questioning, doubt. Thirdly they placed no emphasis on the devotional, either devotion to themselves or to any other principle. The Buddha's teaching is summed up in his adoption of the term nirvana, meaning extinguishing (of the separate self, or ego). Krishnamurti's teaching is summed up by the term he often used: choiceless awareness. The Buddha was often referred to as the 'Conqueror', or as a 'lion roaring in the forest'. Krishnamurti was in his own way just as powerful a figure, as shown in the masterful way that he directed dialogues with distinguished and erudite visitors. The two Masters had other things in common: they were both were iconoclasts, and taught and travelled for upwards of forty years (this makes a difference: for example Christ's three year stint was too short to leave behind reliable witness). The jnani profile can be absorbed by immersing oneself in the respective canons of these two men (see Bibliography section), but also by encountering the other great jnanis of history. These include: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Lao Tsu, Mahavira, Plotinus, Patanjali, Milarepa, and more recently: Ramana Maharshi, Douglas Harding, and the great living teacher, Andrew Cohen. (There are too many to list them all here!) It was pointed out in the introduction that the jnani seeker approaches the divine through the head, or mind , as an initial response. The development of spiritual love follows behind, or is hidden from view (this was Vivekenanda's formulation: that he was all jnani on the outside but all bhakti on the inside, while his Master, Ramakrishna, was the reverse). Another way to look at it is that the jnani's work is to progressively illuminate all the dark corners of the mind with spiritual love, while the bhakti's work is to progressively illuminate all the dark corners of the heart with spiritual intelligence.
More detailed accounts of the great jnanis, both living and dead, are to be found in other sections of the site. |