A JOURNEY TO SAANEN

In the summer of 1971, I went to see Jiddu Krishnamurti at Saanen.



Saanen Valley, Switzerland



Through the lens of memory, I see a train pulling into a picture postcard Swiss valley, sloping to steep grassy hills, and tree clad mountains beyond. Walking from the station through a quaint village, the afternoon is radiant, the landscape painted in vivid greens, the sky a brilliant blue, dotted with puffy clouds of the purest white.

On reflection, the clouds are perhaps not perfectly white, and the village is perhaps not utterly quaint. The prices at the inns are high; the shopkeepers’ gaze is guarded. Krishnamurti’s annual gatherings have been held at Saanen for a number of years by now, and the locals have come to terms with them. For those, like myself, who can’t afford the inns, a campground is provided by the river.

In the campground, strolling past rows of comfortable looking tents, I find a spot by the river. There I unroll my sleeping bag and tie my humble tarpaulin to a tree – more fitting than a tent, it seems to me, for a serious seeker after truth. And that is how I see myself in these halcyon days: a seeker, a wanderer, owning nothing he does not carry on his back; one who has paid the price, renounced the world in quest of something higher. There is more than a little pride in this, though it is utterly invisible to me, safely hidden behind the wall of my identity. If it is true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then I am a dangerous man.

*      *     *

“Shaeffer ....” A voice floats into the cluttered room. I look up.

“Telephone.”

It is March, 1971, I’m sitting in the Editors’ Room at Gannett House, Harvard Law School, reading the New York Times. There is a saying at the law school in those days: “The first year they scare you to death, the second year, they work you to death, the third year they bore you to death.”  The saying has come from simpler times. 

In the Spring of 1971:

• Alan Shepard is hitting golf balls on the moon.
• The Manson family is on trial in sunny California.
• The Weather Underground is bombing public buildings (most recently a men’s lavatory at the U.S. Capitol).
• Nixon is trying out dirty tricks for his reelection campaign.
• Second Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr. is on trial for the massacre of 500 civilians at My Lai Village.

In a week or two, Calley will be convicted on 22 counts of premeditated murder, and sentenced to life at hard labor. Ultimately, he will serve only 3 ½ years, and that under house arrest at Ft. Benning. No one else will be convicted. Not Calley’s immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina, who is alleged to have given the order to obliterate the village; not the officers who attempted to cover up the massacre; not the officers who established the “free fire zones” that invited the sort of killing Calley and his men engaged in; and not the experts who designed the training regime that created and enabled these people. On the contrary, these people are awarding each other medals. They are retiring on pensions with which they can live out their lives in military enclaves without having to give their conduct so much as a casual thought.
I have made myself something of an expert on such things in March of 1971. My Lai is the focus of my senior thesis, dealing with chain of command responsibility for human rights violations. Not that I’ll have more than theoretical involvement with the issue myself.  In the year prior, after years of successful angling for draft deferments, I crap out in the lottery.  I get called in for my physical at the Boston Navy Yard where, to my shock, awe and amazement, I am found physically unfit to die for my country – leaving me free to practice law in safe and righteous indignation.

As an officer of the Harvard Law Review, soon to graduate magna cum laude, I am sitting on top of the world of the liberal establishment. If the truth be told (it is not told), I am immensely proud of this. But in these days, were  you to ask, I would tell you I feel like I’ve been elected president of an insane asylum. But then, Rejecting what I have given my life to achieve is an important part of my identity in these insecure years. (I reject you first, so your rejection of me, when it occurs, won’t be all that important.)

In the hallway outside the Editors’ Room, I am trying to place the voice on the other end of the line.

“Hank?”

“Yeah.”

“Tom Harper.” (not his real name)

"Harper?"  Why on earth would Harper call me? I hardly know the guy. Yeah, he had my job at the Review a year earlier, but he's long gone ... clerking for a big time judge on the D.C. Circuit.

“Listen,” Parker goes on, “I heard you don’t have anything lined up for next year. Is that true?”

It’s common knowledge I’m not interviewing, on a sure and certain course for near term career destruction.   I assume Harper knows this, so I don’t deny it.

“Here’s the thing,” he says. “The Judge finished his last interview this morning, and he’s less than underwhelmed with the material. I told him about you, and he said to get you down here.”

“You told him about me?” Again, a disconnect. Around here, I am the enfant terrible.

“Can you get on a plane this afternoon?”

“This afternoon?”

“If you're going to repeat everything I tell you, this going to take more time than I have.  Yeah, this afternoon.  Now or never.  Look, I don’t know if anybody told you, but I’m moving over to the Court starting Fall Term and I’m already under water --”

"Court" meant the Supreme Court. “Oh, right, congratulations ....” my voice trailed off.

“Yeah, well the thing is, I can’t promise ....  What I'm saying is, if get your ass down here, there’s a good chance, the job is yours.”

  * * *

The first time I heard of Jiddu Krishnamurti was in 1970.  

At the time, I wasn't interested in spiritual things at all . I was interested in psychotherapy, and particuarly the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls:

I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I,

And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

My sentiments at the time, exactly.


Jiddu Krishnamurti


I had also been exposed to Rinzai Zen, with its iconoclastic meditation koans. (What is the sound of one hand clapping?)  Krishnamurti was different. 

A guy I knew from a therapy group gave me a book called, “Freedom from the Known”.  It started out this way
"Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?"

It so happened I’d been to a Law Review banquet a few weeks before where a middle aged Wall Street lawyer spent the night telling me how lucky I was because, while I might not think so now, someday I’d look back and realize, these had been the best years of my life. I remember looking at the guy and thinking that he may have been drunk, but he was also serious. This I found deeply troubling.

"We human beings are what we have been for millions of years – colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. ... There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals."

Krishnamurti’s history also appealed to me. He had been born in India, but through a strange set of circumstances, he was identified by a bunch of European Theosophists as their prophesied world teacher. Though the Theosophists more or less worshiped Krishnamurti for years, and constructed an entire organization around him, he eventually rejected the notion of his exalted destiny and dissolved the organization. He wrote:

"For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. … The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviors. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself." At first, “know yourself” seemed a bit hackneyed. Inscribed at Delphi, that sort of thing. But Krishnamurti gave it a meaning. As I understood it, the idea was somewhat akin to what the Buddhists called “mindfulness,” – observing the thoughts and emotions in ordinary daily activities, and doing this without any sort of naming or judgment. "Most of us walk through life inattentively, reacting unthinkingly according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and such reactions create only further bondage, further conditioning, but the moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally." Freedom from conditioning – freedom from family, education, culture; freedom from authority, freedom from professors, from precedent, from the establishment; freedom from conflict, freedom from conformity, freedom from fear. Looking back, I am not so much struck by the word, “freedom” as the word, “from”. I was young, I suppose, and more concerned with what I was NOT than what I WAS. I didn’t know how I was going to live my life, but I did know what I was NOT going to do. I was NOT going to wind up like that Wall Street lawyer, looking back on my time at the Law Review as the best years of my life.
I began to form a vague idea in my mind that after graduation I could visit Krishnamurti in Saanen, but it was only when Harper called that day and I saw a fork in the road, that I realized I was actually going to do it.

* * *

I’m checking out my tarpaulin, in response to some friendly warnings about evening showers when I catch the buzz going around the campground, “Krishnamurti’s not here. … Basel, Bern, Zurich … went somewhere. … No talk tonight.”

I’m disappointed, wondering what I’m going to do alone without a flashlight, when, out of the blue, a woman calls from a group passing by, “We’re going to Valentine’s. Do you want to come?”

The question seems odd it me. “What’s at Valentine’s?” I ask.

There’s some laughter; a man says, “The other Krishnamurti.”

The woman motions, “You’ll see. Come on.”

We drive for some time toward Gstaad, climbing to a chalet overlooking the Saanen Valley. As we pull into the drive, the sun is golden, the colors deep and rich. A small group is gathered outside, under a tree. As we approach, they seem much like those who have brought me here from the campsite – open faced, curious, middle class, a mix of Europeans and Americans. At the center, sitting in a lawn chair, is a small, fine featured man, with longish black hair graying at the temples, and a thin, serious face, punctuated with disturbing brown eyes. This is U.G. Krishnamurti, though at the time, I don’t know his name. Not that it matters. His name means nothing to him, either.

The chalet belongs to Valentine de Kerven, a Swiss lady who, for some years, has been U.G.’s companion. U.G.’s history is that he was born into a wealthy Brahmin family, and raised by his grandfather, a lawyer, who happened to be a Theosophist. U.G. became a seeker, traveling throughout India to meet various spiritual teachers.

In 1967, he had a certain spiritual experience. Though U.G. knows Jiddu Krishnamurti, and has had a number of dialogues with him, he does not follow his path (or any other) and, in fact, has nothing to do with him in any way He is at Saanen not because of the gatherings, but because Valentine has a chalet in Gstaad, and has had for many years.

As we approach, a middle aged man is asking, “You say there is no such thing as enlightenment? That the thing we are seeking doesn’t exist?”

“You say that you are seeking? But who is seeking? You say you are seeking freedom from the self. But who is the seeker if not the self?  Whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self  is the self.  How can I make you understand this simple thing?” Silence. “Then what … what is the way? How can we ….?” “How can we do it?   What is the ‘way’?  What is the ‘method’?  The hows, the ways, the methods, these things are the ideas, the divisions that separate you from life. And they will remain as long as you think that there can be answers given by others – by me, by Buddha, by Jiddu Krishnamurti. But these are not answers; if they were answers, they would destroy the questions, yet the questions remain. And why do they remain? They remain because you are the question.  Because you are the seeker.  And the seeker must have a quest.  He must have questions or he will cease to exist.  But the seeker wants to seek, wants to exist.  The questions are nothing but your self.  Self-realization – if there is such a thing – can only be the perception that there is, in fact, no self to be realized.”

I look at this man and my mind is still.  I am mesmerized.

“Jiddu Krishnamurti says that by watching the process of thought, the thinking will come to an end, and in that process there is a freedom ….” He laughs.  “So thought divides itself?  The thought that is 'you' watches the thought that 'you' are thinking?  Really, are there two thoughts, or one thought?  And what creates the apparent division between 'you' and your thought?  Is not the division created by thought itself? The thought of mortality creates the thought of immortality. The thought of the known creates the thought of the unknown. The thought of time creates the timeless. The thought of thought creates the thoughtless.” “Then what are we to do?” “You are asking me what you are to do?” U.G. laughs again, this time as though this was the funniest thing he has ever heard. “Please!  Anything I say will only add to your misery. Go home, please!  Stop listening! You only add more misery to the misery you already have by listening to me.” He shakes his head. “You see, my motive for talking is not what you think.  I am not eager to help you understand. Not at all. I am only interested in making it crystal clear that there is nothing you can get from me. Only if you reject all the paths can you discover the path which is your own path. You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up – a complete and total surrender. You must arrive at a state of hopelessness in which there is no way out, nowhere to go .... You must realize that any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, only takes you away from yourself...” He points to a tree, where the leaves are rustling in the breeze, catching the light of the late afternoon sun. “All you want, any of you here, is to tremble like the leaf on that tree. Who can give that to you? Can I give it to you? Can anyone?” I am gazing at the leaves on that tree. Then, for a moment, I look at U.G.  And I am gone ....


* * *

As I write these words now, forty years later, I can still see the leaves on that tree – pure, delicate, perfect. I often see leaves that way, the trees not passive at all, but alive, waving at the world in greeting. The years that have passed since then are now a dream, as the leaves are a dream, as U.G. is a dream, and as are all of you reading this are dreams.

It rained that night, a cold and unrelenting rain. As the ironic saying goes, the heavens opened. I spent the hours shivering under my prideful tarpaulin, soaked to the bone. Finally, what was left of my shelter collapsed, and my campsite succumbed to a tributary of the river that ran through the town of Saanen.

The morning dawned gray and brooding, the rain clouds low in the sky.  And the cold was not a dream to me.  I wanted warmth. Wamth was all I wanted, all I could think about, warmth.

I took the first train heading south, to Italy, then east, to Greece, then further east, then south again. I rested by the seashore, rested until I had forgotten self-forgetfulness.  Then,  I headed north, west, then east, then west again, driven by the whirligig that was my very cherished ego.  My destinations were delusion, self-deception; my modes of travel, intoxicatiion, hope, anger, fear, despair.

Thank God, no more.
U.G. was right. Seeking, striving, the guru, the journey, the path, even the truth -- are unreal.  Just as the mind itself, is unreal.  Just as time and space -- and the particles of individual existence -- are unreal.  But once individual existence is accepted, they're all, also equally real.

U.G. went the way of wisdom.  And wisdom must deny the reality of creation from the start. But I had not the fortitude for that.  When the rains came, I needed the sun.

Yet luckily for me, there is another way: a way that proceeds through creation, down a path created along with the world itself, and as real, and unreal, as the world is.   This is the path of seeking and striving, the guru, the journey, and yes, the truth.  This is the path that expands the heart before dissolving it.  Through family and community, through nationality and humanity, through the husband and the wife and the parents and the children and the dog, finally, through the guru. This is the path that reaches detachment not through a blinding flash of intuition, but through daily tests and trials and disillusionments. 

This is the Journey to Saanen; indeed, the journey to anywhere. As real and unreal, as you are, and --

I am.