Autumn in Korea is truly lovely. It's mid-November and still our high during the day is 15C, lows at night around 7C. If there were a place where it was perpetually autumn, that's where you'd find me. It's clear, cool, refreshing. There's no effort, no sweating, no heaviness. Summer's a splash; autumn is a slow ripple. It's a content and thought-filled time for me. Everything is cooling, slowing, and dying...beautifully.

Along the walls of the US Army base:
And looking up:
Glass art in the underground tunnels of the subway stations:
And a walk to meet a friend for coffee on a cloudy day:
The solitary life agrees with me. I am not alone; I spend time with so many beautiful little humans every day, and I have lovely friends here. But my time alone at night in my apartment is quite agreeable. It's only then that I have time to read properly, though even then I really don't do it as much as I'd like, simply because here is also my computer, and cyberspace often sucks me in.

Anyway, the author I love the best right now is Krishnamurti. I feel like quoting his entire book to you. I suggest borrowing, "Think on These Things," or "The Awakening of Intelligence," from your local library. He's very readable and thorough and the most clear thinker I've ever read.

Everywhere around you there is birth and death, the struggle for money, position, power, the unending process of what we call life; and don't you sometimes wonder, even while you are very young, what it is all about? You see, most of us want an answer, we want to be told what it is all about, so we pick up a political or religious book, or we ask somebody to tell us; but no one can tell us, because life is not something which can be understood from a book, nor can its significance be gathered by following another, or through some form of prayer. You and I must understand it for ourselves--which we can do only when we are fully alive, very alert, watchful, observant, taking interest in everything around us; and then we shall discover what it is to be really happy.

Most people are unhappy; and they are unhappy because there is no love in their hearts. Love will arise in your heart when you have no barrier between yourself and another, when you meet and observe people without judging them, when you just see the sailboat on the river and enjoy the beauty of it. Don't let your prejudices cloud your observation of things as they are; just observe, and you will discover that out of this simple observation, out of this awareness of trees, of birds, of people walking, working, smiling, something happens to you inside. Without this extraordinary thing happening to you, without the arising of love in your heart, life has very little meaning; and that is why it is so important that the educator should be educated to help you understand the significance of all these things.