8:30-9:30am - Audio
In the Grove
9:30-10:00am - Morning Tea/Coffee
In the Main House
10-10:25am - Hello/ Welcome/ Music
In the Student Center
10:30am-12:05pm - Keynote Presentation
Keynote presentation in Student Center
The Challenge of Choiceless Awareness with David Moody
At first glance, choiceless awareness looks like something easily accessible, not too difficult to understand or actualize. On closer inspection, however, this apparently simple idea presents challenges and obstacles not apparent on the surface.
In this presentation, we will examine some of those challenges and try to discern how to resolve or transcend them. We will consider numerous quotations from Krishnamurti’s teachings to show what he means by choiceless awareness, and show why it is a profound and subtle proposal, as well as one that is fruitful and revealing in the course of daily life.
12:15-1:30pm - Lunch
Collect your pre-ordered lunch ticket or purchase one at the information hub. Lunch will be available at the Main House servery.
1:45pm-3:15pm Afternoon Programs 1st slot
In the Student Center
Presentation: The Art of Living and Dying With Choiceless Awareness by Jerry Flexer
Krishnamurti’s letter to the schools dated August 1, 1979, opened with this Krishnamurti-dictated question, which he had perhaps heard before, or maybe had chosen as a most important subject for education:
If I may ask you in all seriousness, what do you consider to be one of the most important things in life? … Krishnamurti’s written reply was … Perhaps it is the art of living. We are using the word art in its widest sense.
Q: Do you mean to say that one aspect may cover the whole field of life? Is that possible?
K: It is possible. Let us go into it very slowly and hesitantly. … We are exploring together one facet of life, and in the very understanding of it we may cover the whole field of life.
In this presentation, we will start with an exploration of what several selected folks have had to say about Krishnamurti’s most unique notion of ‘choiceless awareness,’ including a few Krishnamurti commentators and a few American scholars. In the second part, we will look at selected examples of what Krishnamurti himself had to say about choiceless awareness. In the final part, Jerry will offer his own take on the topic, which, perhaps, might suggest a close connection between what Krishnamurti had to say about the art of living and his notion of choiceless awareness.
At the Main House
Tea and School Tour (1:45-2:45)
Accompany Jodi Grass, Head of School, for a leisurely walk about the campus.
In the Reflective Classroom
Understanding Comes with the Awareness of What Is, dialogue facilitated by Terry O’Connor
We invite 15 participants for each dialogue. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
Understanding comes with the awareness of what is. There can be no understanding if there is condemnation of or identification with what is. If you condemn a child or identify yourself with him, then you cease to understand him. So, being aware of a thought or a feeling as it arises, without condemning it or identifying with it, you will find that it unfolds ever more widely and deeply, and thereby discover the whole content of what is. To understand the process of what is there must be choiceless awareness, a freedom from condemnation, justification, and identification.
When you are vitally interested in fully understanding something, you give your mind and heart, withholding nothing. But unfortunately you are conditioned, educated, disciplined through religious and social environment to condemn or to identify, and not to understand. To condemn is stupid and easy, but to understand is arduous, requiring pliability and intelligence. Condemnation, as identification, is a form of self-protection. Condemnation or identification is a barrier to understanding. To understand the confusion, the misery in which one is, and so of the world, you must observe its total process. To be aware and pursue all its implications requires patience, to follow swiftly, and to be still. There is understanding only when there is stillness, when there is silent observation, passive awareness. Then only the problem yields its full significance. The awareness of which I speak is of what is from moment to moment, of the activities of thought and its subtle deceptions, fears, and hope. Choiceless awareness wholly dissolves our conflicts and miseries. -J. Krishnamurti – Collected Works, Vol. IV – 143
Is it possible to see without judgment, without identification? How might that come about? What does it mean to observe the total process? How do we see what we’re not seeing? Dialogue is an earnest inquiry into the fundamental issues of life and self. It is a laboratory in which our own thoughts and reactions are revealed in the mirror of relationship. It is not a debate where thought is paramount, but a deep, unhurried listening to ourselves and others. In this safe and respectful space, awareness can arise.
3:30pm-5pm - Afternoon Programs 2nd slot
In the Student Center
What is Meditation? (Video showing)
4th Public Talk by Krishnamurti in San Diego, 1970
In 2018, The KFA partnered with the California State Library to re-digitize the original 16mm Film recordings of the talks held at San Diego State University.
This project was funded by the California State Library, which supports institutions that hold valuable California historical materials by assisting in the preservation, digitization, and public availability of the material. These re-digitized films are now available on archive.org as a part of the California Revealed repository.
In the 1st Grade Classroom
Oak Grove School Workshop: Noticing Ourselves with Pastoral Care Time with Ali Danch
We invite 15 participants for each workshop. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
Ali will lead a discussion around Pastoral Care at Oak Grove School, which includes an exploration of what is meant by self-knowledge. This time includes opportunities for students, teachers, and other adults on campus to explore the many ways humans might explore the self. It is precisely not prescripted, but exploratory. This might include provocations from the teachings, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, hiking, journaling, poetry, music with no words, and on and on.
In the Reflective Classroom
Is There Anyone Who is Aware or is Awareness the Ending of Something?, dialogue facilitated by Deborah Kerner and Richard Waxberg
We invite 12 participants for each dialogue. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
One of the supreme gifts Krishnamurti gave us was his insistence that we can gather together to inquire and probe into the operation of our current human consciousness in order to see for ourselves how the content of our consciousness, the beliefs, concepts and ideas we carry from one day to the next, shapes our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Krishnamurti pointed out that once our minds have been conditioned to live in fear and conflict, we will ultimately and subconsciously accept a sense of perceptual limitation.
Deborah and Richard have been facilitating dialogues since 2005 for the Krishnamurti Foundation of America, based on Krishnamurti’s profound insights that a spiritual life can effectively begin by exposing the entire operation of our human consciousness, including the perception-shaping mechanisms of the subconscious. And that if a group of serious-minded people is willing to explore together in an atmosphere of mutual trust, affection, and sensitivity, there exists the potential to discover for ourselves that the mind can free itself of its psychological burdens so that a new mind free of the past, a mind that is fresh, fully alive and clear, can begin to flower.
8:30-9:30am - Audio
In the Grove
9:30-10:00am - Morning Tea/Coffee
In the Main House
10-10:25am - Hello/ Welcome/ Music
In the Student Center
10:30am-12:00pm - Morning Programs
In the Student Center
Caught Between Freedom and Conformity: Empowering Students To Take Charge of Their Learning with Will Hornblower and Aaron Gardner
This is the world the young people have to face, and naturally they are really frightened. They have an idea that they should be free, independent of routine, should not be dominated by their elders; and they shy away from all authority. Freedom to them means to choose what they want to do; but they are confused, uncertain and want to be shown what they should do. The student is caught between his own desire for freedom to do what he wants and society’s demands for conformity to its own necessities, that people become engineers, scientists, soldiers, or specialists of some kind. This is the world students have to face and become a part of through their education. It is a frightening world. We all want security physically as well as emotionally, and having this is becoming more and more difficult and painful. -J. Krishnamurti
Join Will and Aaron as we explore these guiding questions:
– How can we provide the scaffolding and support to help students design and execute their own journeys of learning, while still giving them opportunities for meaningful choices and autonomy?
– To what extent are the students aware of the conditioning and pressures that create a paralysis of choice?
– How can we create experiences that prepare students for the pressure of the many choices they have to make during these major transitional periods in their lives (8th graders choosing to stay or leave OGS, transition into young adulthood; 12th graders life after OGS, choosing a college/career, living independently, adulting etc)?
In the Reflective Classroom
Understanding Comes with the Awareness of What Is, dialogue facilitated by Terry O’Connor
We invite 15 participants for each dialogue. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
Understanding comes with the awareness of what is. There can be no understanding if there is condemnation of or identification with what is. If you condemn a child or identify yourself with him, then you cease to understand him. So, being aware of a thought or a feeling as it arises, without condemning it or identifying with it, you will find that it unfolds ever more widely and deeply, and thereby discover the whole content of what is. To understand the process of what is there must be choiceless awareness, a freedom from condemnation, justification, and identification.
When you are vitally interested in fully understanding something, you give your mind and heart, withholding nothing. But unfortunately you are conditioned, educated, disciplined through religious and social environment to condemn or to identify, and not to understand. To condemn is stupid and easy, but to understand is arduous, requiring pliability and intelligence. Condemnation, as identification, is a form of self-protection. Condemnation or identification is a barrier to understanding. To understand the confusion, the misery in which one is, and so of the world, you must observe its total process. To be aware and pursue all its implications requires patience, to follow swiftly, and to be still. There is understanding only when there is stillness, when there is silent observation, passive awareness. Then only the problem yields its full significance. The awareness of which I speak is of what is from moment to moment, of the activities of thought and its subtle deceptions, fears, and hope. Choiceless awareness wholly dissolves our conflicts and miseries. -J. Krishnamurti – Collected Works, Vol. IV – 143
Is it possible to see without judgment, without identification? How might that come about? What does it mean to observe the total process? How do we see what we’re not seeing? Dialogue is an earnest inquiry into the fundamental issues of life and self. It is a laboratory in which our own thoughts and reactions are revealed in the mirror of relationship. It is not a debate where thought is paramount, but a deep, unhurried listening to ourselves and others. In this safe and respectful space, awareness can arise.
In the 1st Grade Classroom
Oak Grove School Workshop: Metacognition in Early Childhood with Laurie Cornell
We invite 15 participants for each workshop. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
Laurie Cornell will lead a discussion on how Oak Grove supports inquiry and metacognition with the youngest students. One example of how this is done is through documentation work. Participants will have the opportunity to visit an Early Childhood classroom, to explore how the teachers inquire with students, and to see examples of documentation.
12:15-1:30pm - Lunch
Collect your pre-ordered lunch ticket or purchase one at the information hub. Lunch will be available at the Main House servery.
1:45-3:15pm - Afternoon Programs 1st slot
In the Student Center
Discovering the Teachings in a Busy World with Leah Luong
What is consciousness? Does God exist? Can the brain be quiet? The Krishnamurti Foundation provides spaces and opportunities to explore the essential questions of life’s existence. Through online and offline dissemination efforts, the KFA aims to reach as many people as possible worldwide. Our goal is not to push Krishnamurti’s teachings but to present his words and allow individuals to engage with them at their own pace.
In this presentation, Leah Luong will discuss how the Foundation disseminates Krishnamurti’s work in a busy world. Following her talk, former Residential Scholars Seamus Morrison and Francesca Gold will join the discussion and share their experiences in the program at the Krishnamurti Center.
At the Main House
Tea and School Tour (1:45-2:45)
Accompany Jodi Grass, Head of School, for a leisurely walk about the campus.
In the Art Building
Poetry and Krishnamurti, Workshop with Karen Hesli
We invite 12 participants for each workshop. Please sign up to hold your place at the Information Booth.
The backdrop for the poetry workshop will mostly be Krishnamurti’s writing and discussions related to learning and education.
K’s invitation to see ‘the whole of life as learning’ lends itself to the lyrical dance and fluid nature of poetry… rather than the stark contrast of writing a paragraph with its topic sentence and supporting details. As a teacher for 5+ decades, I have come to see poetry as essential equipment for life, where students and/or teachers are invited to slow down long enough to witness and decode their observations, existential confusions, and regulated/unregulated thoughts.
Poems that we will read together may invoke awareness, may unleash new questions or considerations, may birth insights or connect dots. Participants will be asked to read poems aloud from Karen’s poetry collection that will touch on one or more themes such as conditioning, flowering in goodness, listening, learning, self-understanding, the nature of the psyche, the mirror of relationship, and you are the world. As Mary Oliver said, ‘when you step inside a poem, you may become cooled and refreshed, less yourself than part of everything.’ The hope is that in this 2-hour window of interactive reading and writing, we excavate some elements of human understanding and are warmed and moved by the beauty of well-used language.
2:45-3:15pm - Piano Concert
Piano Concert at the Student Center
Performance by Karolina Rojahn
3:30pm-5pm - Afternoon Programs 2nd slot
In the Student Center
State of the KFA presented by Jaap Sluijter, Francisco Mazza, Cory Fisher and Leah Luong
This is a presentation of the different projects at the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. You will hear about the latest projects that KFA is working on, as well as the online and in-person programs.
We invite you to our Annual May Gathering, May 6th and 7th, 2023, taking place at Oak Grove School (OGS) in Ojai. Friends both local and from around the world come to listen to speakers, participate in discussions and dialogues, attend workshops, and enjoy the beauty of our campus while hanging out with friends old and new. Choose from different programs or engage with teachers from our schools and scholars of Krishnamurti’s teachings who share their understanding.
For this year, we have chosen the theme, Choiceless Awareness
Truth is not the result of choice, nor is it made up of opposites. There is no choice when there is integrated attention. This attention is not to be realised through weighing, balancing, choosing. Through meditation & understanding each thought as it arises is there the tranquility of attention.
What is chosen is not lasting, continuous choice wearies the instrument that chooses.
-Krishnamurti
The focus of this Gathering will also be to have speakers and dialogues aiming at exploring this theme in a wide context.
For two days we have speakers plus organized dialogues.
Laurie Cornell is the Director of Early Childhood Programs, Preschool through 2nd Grade, at Oak Grove School. She started her career as a Preschool teacher and has over twenty years’ of experience working with young children. Laurie was drawn to Oak Grove out of a deep commitment to the intent of the school – a belief in educating the whole child and trusting the natural intelligence of children. She is also the parent of an Oak Grove middle schooler and a high schooler. Laurie is currently completing her tenth year at Oak Grove and her fifth year as Program Director.
Alison “Ali” Danch is the Pastoral Care Coordinator and School Counselor at Oak Grove School. She supports students and staff in their self-examination and the examination of what it means to be human. Ali has both a Master of Social Welfare and a Master of Public Health from UC Berkeley and has 20 years of experience working with individuals and groups to think about how we can more clearly see and relate to one another.
Cory Fisher has been involved with the work of the Foundation for six years. He was one of the first batch of Residential Scholars at the Krishnamurti Center and lived on the campus. Currently, he is the Director of Publications and Archives as well as the Director of the Sonoma Center for the KFA. Cory has facilitated several programs. His other main passion is fine art.
Jerry Flexer currently lives in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, but for much of his life he has been a peripatetic sojourner, with occasional stays in many different locales. His life has been characterized by continuous learning, and he has adopted – mostly – an attitude of open-mindedness and intellectual humility. Following a psychologically transformative event in 1998, at the age of 42, and while living in Vancouver, he gave up his position, his home, and most of his belongings, and set out on a worldwide search for community with like-minded folk.
While spending time in Australia, in January 2001, a kind elder gentleman gave him a copy of Krishnamurti’s Freedom From The Known. He then read this book with great interest, and, as was his habit in those days, he carefully highlighted in bright yellow those portions of the text that appealed to his personal outlook on life and that intrigued him most. With this particular book, he noticed, as he was reading the last few pages, that he had highlighted what seemed like ninety percent of the text. He was hooked. Later, in 2015, he chose Krishnamurti as his master’s degree field of study. His master’s thesis, titled Krishnamurti and the Dance of Dialogue: Instigating Insight in Higher Education, completed in 2019, describes his close reading of the transcript of a one-hour dialogue Krishnamurti had in California in 1981 with six American college students. His study included a thematic content analysis, and Jerry discovered that Krishnamurti, while improvising, had, through his skillful facilitation, conducted an inquiry into many of the themes that are most essential elements in K’s own ‘curriculum.’ Also, his study described certain unique features that Krishnamurti applied in his dialogic approach, with specific examples from the transcript. He concluded that Krishnamurti’s dialogic approach could be adapted for higher education. This work was followed, in 2019, with doctoral research that has taken him in a different direction, with a historical focus on how people had engaged with Krishnamurti’s teachings in California in the middle part of the twentieth century.
Aaron Gardner teaches middle school Humanities and high school Poetry Performance and Composition classes at Oak Grove. He also coaches the school’s Condor League champion basketball team. He received his B.A in English from the University of California, Berkeley and his teaching credential from CSU East Bay. He has been teaching at Oak Grove since 2016.
Jodi Grass has worked at Oak Grove School and the Krishnamurti Foundation of America in different capacities for the past 18 years. Currently, Jodi is in her sixth year as Head of OGS. In her words, “I don’t feel as though I ‘work’ at Oak Grove. I spend my days here out of a deep devotion to the Intent of the school as originally shared by Krishnamurti in 1975.”
Before Oak Grove, Jodi worked for several nonprofits, community organizations, as well as K-12 schools and a community college. She has also served on the boards of three nonprofit organizations and two schools over the past 33 years. Jodi has taught students of all ages through community education agencies that provided compensatory content to local public schools. Just before joining Oak Grove in 2005, Jodi was the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization that provided information technologies through NGOs in developing countries.
Jodi will be hosting two tours of campus with an emphasis on listening with great care, attention, and affection.
Karen Hesli, Karen’s first job after college was teaching in Minneapolis Public Schools in 1970, where she envisioned a vibrant and happy learning environment with 42 Fifth graders. Eventually, the large classes and cumbersome rewards and punishment systems took their toll, and she wondered if the underlying conformity culture would ever change. After becoming acquainted with Krishnamurti’s writings, Karen moved to Ojai in 1980 and started working at Oak Grove School, where the arts of listening and inquiry became a source for renewal as a teacher, now a learner. She acknowledged the gift of her ignorance. With that, a lifeblood of asking questions nourished an exploration of what it truly means to be educated. That learning has no end is a truly, magnificently active insight: whether one is measuring a garden or in the action of just being, noticing, observing, or listening.
Since retiring five years ago, Karen has had time to sift and sort through the mysterious curricula of life and share them in new forms with herself and others. One of these forms has been a deep review and collation of the poems that have been significant to students, parents, and/or teachers during these decades. Together we will read some of these poems aloud, sit with/reflect upon them and perhaps comment on and discuss them.
Will Hornblower teaches high school history at OGS, as well as serving as the Parent Education Coordinator. Next year, he will be taking on the role of Dean of Studies at Oak Grove, coordinating the school’s academic initiatives and curricular development. He received his B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago and his M.Ed. and teaching credential from UC Santa Barbara. He has been teaching at OGS since 2011.
Deborah Kerner and Richard Waxberg live in Ojai, California. They are both practicing artists. They taught several art and design courses at the Rishi Valley School in rural Andra Pradesh, India, a school based on Krishnamurti’s teachings located near his birthplace. Both Richard and Deborah had successful careers in New York City as designers. Richard taught art and design, aesthetics, and art history at the prestigious Parsons School of Design. They created the Explorations into Freedom Intensive Retreats for the KFA and offer two 8-day retreats yearly at the Krishnamurti Center in Ojai in June and October. They have also facilitated retreats in British Columbia, Canada, and Denmark.
Leah Luong has a B.A. in Political Science (Global Politics) from California State University, Long Beach. She has been involved in the dissemination of Krishnamurti’s teachings with the KFA after attending a retreat in Ojai. Raised amongst communities of dogmatic institutions and groups, Leah’s interest in questioning the truth from a young age was inevitable.
Francisco Mazza is originally from Argentina and has a B.A. in Marketing, Design, and Digital Media. He worked for the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust in England for many years before moving to Ojai. He is currently the Director of the Krishnamurti Center in Ojai and the Fundraising Director for the KFA.
David Moody is the author of Krishnamurti in America: New Perspectives on the Man and his Message. This full-scale biography gives special attention to the crucial events in Krishnamurti’s life that occurred in the United States, events that have been neglected or overlooked by previous biographers. The book also describes Krishnamurti’s teachings as they have changed and developed over the course of several decades.
David previously wrote An Uncommon Collaboration: David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. He served as teacher and as educational director of the Oak Grove School during its early years, and he was appointed director of the school in the final years of Krishnamurti’s life. He holds a PhD in Education (UCLA, 1991), and he remains deeply engaged in the study of Krishnamurti’s work. Additional information about David and his background is available at DavidEdmundMoody.com.
Terry O’Connor is a retired psychotherapist who found Krishnamurti’s teachings invaluable in his work. He and his wife have hosted a monthly dialogue in their home since 1992, and have organized the annual Memorial Day Krishnamurti Dialogue and Gathering in Maryland since it began in 1995.
Karolina Rojahn is a Los Angeles-based classical pianist and multidisciplinary artist who has dedicated the last decade and a half of her career to premiering and recording contemporary classical repertoire. She is a founder of a cross-disciplinary concert series in Los Angeles that brings together various disciplines of art and mindfulness into salon-style performances. Karolina has collaborated with various classical music labels and has released over 40 albums of solo piano and chamber music, in addition to recording for television and film.
Karolina was born in Warsaw, Poland, and was educated in Boston, Massachusetts. She received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Piano Performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she later served as a faculty member. Karolina’s mission as an artist and performer is to reach beyond the traditional constructs of classical music performances: to invite mindfulness, cross-disciplinary collaboration and soulful dialogue.
Jaap Sluijter has a long-standing interest in the questions raised by J. Krishnamurti. Currently, Jaap is the Executive Director of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Previously, he lived and taught for nine years at Brockwood Park School in England. He has an MA in Mechanical Engineering and worked as a design engineer in the field of camera systems and musical instruments.
more to come
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