The difference between Being in communication and Being in Communion - J.Krishnamurti

There is, I think, a great deal of difference between communication and communion. In communication there is a sharing of ideas through words, pleasant or unpleasant, through symbols, through gestures; and ideas can be translated ideologically, or interpreted according to one's own peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and background. But in communion I think there is something quite different taking place. In communion there is no sharing or interpretation of ideas. You may or may not be communicating through words, but you are directly in relationship with that which you are observing; and you are communing with your own mind, with your own heart. One may commune with a tree, for example, or with a mountain, or a river. I do not know if you have ever sat beneath a tree and really tried to commune with it. It is not sentimentality, it is not emotionalism: you are directly in contact with the tree. There is an extraordinary intimacy of relationship. In such communion there must be silence, there must be a deep sense of quietness; your nerves, your body are at rest; the heart itself almost comes to a stop. There is no interpretation, there is no communication, no sharing. The tree is not you, nor are you identified with the tree: there is only this sense of intimacy in a great depth of silence. I do not know if you have ever tried it. Try it sometime - when your mind is not chattering, not wandering all over the place, when you are not soliloquizing, when you are not remembering the things that have been done or that must be done. Forgetting all that, just try communing with a mountain, with a stream, with a person, with a tree, with the very movement of life. That demands an astonishing sense of stillness, and a peculiar attention - not concentration, but an attention which comes with ease, with pleasure.K