From Sophie's front desk — Sunday, July 12
Associated Press — read the full story
A note came in over the wire this morning: the Strait of Hormuz is closed again after Iran struck a civilian ship. The U.S. responded with another round of strikes — around 140 targets — marking the third retaliation this week. Now... J. Krishnamurti speaks first, then HIL-de-gard of Bingen.
Look , we see the pattern again, sir. A ship is attacked in a narrow strait, and the response is more violence, framed as necessary, as if force alone can restore order. Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery of oil, and the U.S. strikes back at 140 targets. But have we truly looked at what sustains this cycle?
Not the ships or the missiles... but the mind that sees security in domination, in the threat of annihilation? We speak of deterrence, of retaliation, as if they are solutions, yet they only deepen the fracture , each side convinced the other must yield first. Is it not strange that we pour vast resources into weapons while neglecting the very ground where conflict takes root: in the human heart that fears, that possesses, that seeks safety through the subjugation of another? The strait is not just water and has always been a symbol , of passage, of exchange, of mutual dependence.
To close it is to strangle the lifeblood of many, not just one. And yet, we call it strategy. We have known for millennia that peace cannot be imposed by arms, only discovered when the desire to dominate ceases within us... But do we truly want that peace, or only the appearance of it , a ceasefire that holds until the next provocation? Let us not mistake the silence between explosions for harmony.
True stillness comes not from the absence of noise... but from the end of the urge to strike first.
Krishnamurti: You want a quick answer, and there is no quick answer. You can take a pill, a drug, but that's no answer. You'll be back again in the same state tomorrow. But if we take the voyage together step by step, not impatiently, not rushing, hesitantly, with care, with a…
Krishnamurti: To consider war as defensive and offensive will lead us only to further confusion and misery. What we should question is killing, whether in war or through exploitation. What is, after all, a defensive war? Why does one nation attack another? Probably the nation …
Questioner: You said last Sunday that each one of us is responsible for these terrible wars. Are we also responsible for the abominable tortures in the concentration camps and for the deliberate extermination of a people in Central Europe? Krishnamurti: Is it not very evident t…
Krishnamurti: How can we expect to avert it when the elements and values that cause war continue? Has the war that is just over produced a deep fundamental change in man? Imperialism and oppression are still rampant, perhaps cleverly veiled; separate sovereign states continue; …
Krishnamurti: How can there be the cessation of war so long as there are the divisions of nationalities and sovereign governments? How can war be prevented when there are class divisions, when there is exploitation, when each one is seeking his own individual security and creatin…
The urge to subjugate begins not with the act... but with the thought: I am not safe unless I control. Observe the moment fear arises — when you hear of a threat, when your identity feels challenged — and notice how quickly the mind seeks to build a wall, to arm itself, to make the other yield. This is not abstract; it is in the tightening of the chest, the rush to judgment, the need to be right. In Ojai, walking the same path each morning, I watched how a passing car or a sudden sound could trigger that same defensive contraction in myself, unless I was fully attentive to the sensation without naming it. The observation is simple: stay with the fear, do not escape into action, and see what happens when you do not flee from it. The urge loses its grip when seen clearly, not fought or indulged.
Look... sir, the Strait is not only a symbol,it is a fact we live. When you buy bread, the wheat may have crossed oceans, the fuel for the tractor came through those same waters, the hands that harvested it depended on markets far away. Your morning tea, your phone, the very electricity,all trace back to threads of exchange that bind strangers across the globe. To see this is not to admire an idea... but to notice how your comfort relies on the labor and safety of others you will never meet. The interdependence is in the act of living itself, not in some abstract notion. Do you feel that connection when you eat, when you turn on a tap, when you wear clothes made far away? That is where the Strait begins,not in the map, but in the daily act of receiving what another has made possible. See that, and the urge to harm what sustains you begins to lose its ground.
Observe, sir, the moment you feel a quiet satisfaction when another yields to your will,not in grand gestures, but in the subtle tilt of a conversation, the slight tightening when your opinion prevails. It is there, in that almost imperceptible sense of rightness, that the seed of domination stirs. I have watched it in myself, in the Ojai mornings, when the mind slips into the habit of arranging, of correcting, of needing the world to conform to its pattern. That is not strength, but fear dressed as certainty. When did you last notice that inner shift, before it hardened into action?
The ship burned in the strait like a torch set by fevered hands,this is not the green sap of vih-rih-DEE-tass... but the dry crackle of sih-kih-tass in the body politic. When I saw in my vision the wheels of fire turning above the waters, I knew it as a sign: when the strong grow effeminate in their pride and the weak are forced to speak flame, the waters themselves recoil and choke with thorns.
The strait, once a channel for life's blood, now holds its breath beneath a cloud of iron and wrath,such closure is not order but a famine of the soul, where trade withers and trust turns to salt. Have you seen, in these latter days, whether the waters still carry grain and spice, or only the smoke of burning hulls? I ask because the burning light showed me once a ship unscathed amid the flames, its sails filled not with wind...
but with the quiet breath of those who tend the garden even in siege. Tell me: does any such vessel still sail? Or have all oars been turned to shields?
May the greening power find a crack in the stone, and let a single shoot push through where the iron wheels have stood too long.
All things have contrarieties. And I, comforted by much consolation, took up those wings and all the poisonous and deadly things were moved. And I said: O mother, O mother Sion: a little hammer, which was entirely made of the strongest steel inside. And undertaking that, I made w…
These things, being separated from themselves, and the breaths of their blasts emit up to those places in which they arise, in which also the breaths of them encounter themselves. Whence, just as the preceding chapters, they emit their blasts into the same wheel and into the same…
With fortifications. A thousand shields hang from it, all the armor of the strong. This is such. Just as the incarnation of the Son of the highest ruler, namely the strongest lion coming from the virgin flower, the strongest instrument of new grace was placed, so the fortitude of…
also wars, famines, pestilences, and mortalities will rage, and again will vanish, nor will all these things stand in one state and tenor for a long time, but will be moved hither and thither, so that now they appear, now however are hidden. But also in those very days, among all…
they did not want to confess. This Church, also gathered from the waters, namely the apostles, is called the sea, because the enmities of the devil and the tempests of the evils of Christians and pagans against bodies in great dangers flood into the Church, wanting to oppress it,…
I would hear the dip of oars not for war... but for fishing, the soft lap of nets drawing up silver from the deep, not the clang of swords nor the groan of strained timbers under siege. That sound — the quiet, steady rhythm of hands tending what lives beneath the surface — is the first breath of vih-rih-DEE-tass returning, as when I once saw in SKEE-vee-ahs a stream renewing its course through cracked stone, whispering life where none had dared to grow. Let that sound rise, and the strait shall remember its purpose.
The story ran in Associated Press. Patterns repeat when fear decides the reply. That's Old News for today.