…what happens when, instead of thought-knowledge, one puts attention in the middle of the picture?
It was Kabir who introduced it… and it flowed from there.
This is… what I would call “the spirit of Kabir”.
It (attention) must not be left out of the equation; otherwise, what is left is ashes.
–Stephen Smith, (emeritus Brockwood Park staff member) 5th February, 2019.
Brockwood Park is the J. Krishnamurti school in the UK.
This space has a collection of Kabir Jaithirtha’s exploration of J. Krishnamurti’s teachings and their impact on education with colleagues, students and friends.
Kabir Jaithirtha (1949-2018) joined The Valley School, KFI, Bangalore as a teacher in 1978. Later in 1990, he was a member of the group that started Centre For Learning, a small, independent school in Bangalore. Between 2007 and 2010 he worked as Director, Rajghat Besant School, KFI, Varanasi. He was co-founder of Shibumi (2008).
He was a trustee, Krishnamurti Foundation India (1982-2018)
The idea of a series of 20-minute dialogues came about when Kabir Jaithirtha, while engaging with 13-year-old children, noticed that they didn’t always have the stamina to engage meaningfully in the earlier, once a week, hour-long format. Hence the idea of having more frequent dialogues, for a shorter duration, everyday, with the group of children came about.
It is absolutely necessary to be able to look at the flower, to be able to look at the tree, to be able to look at the sky and the cloud, but equally it is possible to get the child to observe the activity of thought as it is happening within him or her. And when you begin to do that from a very young age, a different quality can come into being in the child.
In a very deep sense he (K) was a profound teacher because he did not seek to instruct you but because he was concerned with an act of exploration. Any good teacher, I feel, would be concerned in awakening, in the student, the capacity to explore. And you get the capacity to explore by exploring, you don’t have to do something else and then get the capacity to explore and then he begin to explore.The very act of exploring is also creating the capacity to explore.
There should be a group of adults who are very deeply interested in the whole movement of life……in a very natural way they can come together to create a school
What makes their school different, says Kabir Jaithirtha (Director, Rajghat Besant School and Trustee, Krishnamurti Foundation, India), is the simple fact that children are treated with dignity and as individuals.
