Our Study Centre in Kolkata organised a three day East India retreat on 5,6,7 October at the Study Centre in Varanasi.
We had a three day retreat at Varanasi in early October. The theme for the retreat was ‘Can we live without identifying?’.
Interestingly, the theme was the same as our 2018 retreat at Varanasi and so all the earlier prepared reading material came in handy. We had 12 residential participants and some local participants in Varanasi joined some sessions. The residential participants came from Kolkata, Kolaghat, Asansol, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Santiniketan.
Our annual retreats are intended to provide solitude as well as informal interactions in a natural environment. The Study Centre at Rajghat, Varanasi is on the banks of the Ganges and there are plenty of trees all around. So, if anyone is able to let go and be free from a mechanical routine, the beauty of the environment and inquiry into truth can be very touching.
In many ways, it appears that the issue of identification is really important. It inevitably leads to exploration of the whole structure of self, a structure that is put together by the movement of thought and identification. Why is there this almost compulsive need to identify with something or the other. Is it because we find security in that identification?
At our discussions, it was pointed out by some that factual identification is obviously not an issue. The fact that people are born in different geographical areas and in different socio-cultural-religious contexts and have to state this fact of physical identity in different ways is not a problem. However, when that identity intrudes into the psychological domain and becomes a source of division among human beings, conflict is inevitable. This is something we are seeing all over the world.
An interesting quote sums up quite simply the fact that identification is the root of division and violence.
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
J Krishnamurti
