It was a nice cottage in the country, with a lawn that had been mown, rolled and weeded for many a year. The whole place was well looked after, prosperous and joyful. Behind the house was a small vegetable garden; it was a lovely place with a gentle stream running beside, making hardly a sound. The door opened and was held back by a statue of the Buddha, kicked into place. The owner was totally unaware of what he was doing; to him it was a doorstop. You wondered if he would do the same with a statue he revered, for he was a Christian. You deny the sacred things of another, but you keep your own. The beliefs of another are superstitions, but your own are reasonable and real. What is sacred? On the beach, he had picked up a piece of seawashed wood in the shape of a human head. It was made of hardwood, shaped by the waters of the sea, cleansed by many seasons. He had brought it home and put it on the mantelpiece; he looked at it from time to time and admired what the sea had done. One day, he put some flowers around it, and then it happened every day; he felt uncomfortable if there were not fresh flowers every day, and gradually that piece of shaped wood became very important in his life. He would allow no one to touch it except himself; they might desecrate it; he washed his hands before he touched it. It had become holy, sacred, and he alone was the high priest of it; he represented it; it told him of things he could never know by himself. His life was filled with it, and he was, he said, unspeakably happy. What is sacred? Not the things made by the mind or hand or by the sea. The symbol is never the real; the word âgrassâ is not the grass of the field; the word âGodâ is not God. The word never contains the whole, however cunning the description. The word âsacredâ has no meaning by itself; it becomes sacred only in its relationship to something, illusory or real. What is real is not the words of the mind; reality, truth, cannot be touched by thought. Where the perceiver is, truth is not. The thinker and his thought must come to an end for truth to be. Then that which is, is sacred. Where there is no love, there is nothing sacred. Love is whole, and in it there is no fragmentation.
From The Beauty of Life â Krishnamurtiâs Journal
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