The Gift of Simplicity -- 
At last night’s Silicon Valley Awakin Circle, listening the reading from J. Krishnamurti, “Simplicity of the Heart,” the message seemed paradoxical to me. We can’t attain true simplicity of the heart by desiring it and trying to do it; it has to come on it’s own.

I was reminded of my little brother Ronald, who died at age 58 of lung cancer. He was diagnosed at a young age with schizophrenia. He spoke with angels and devils in ways that “ordinary” people don’t. I and other family members tried enlisting psychiatrists and therapists to “cure” him, but none of it worked, and eventually we all gave up. If he could live with the help of medications at a nice facility in relative peace and comfort, that would be enough.

In his final years he lived in Florida, at a place called “Merriment Manor,” an assisted living facility where schizophrenia patients lived in little huts around a central eating and meeting hall. My brother and Paul and I were in charge of his finances.

Each month Ronald wanted a lot of money for cigarettes, and for Coca Cola. I tried to encourage him to cut back on smoking, and maybe drink a little less soda. “Don’t you want to live a long time?” I asked. “That doesn’t matter too much to me,” he said. “When it’s my time to go, I’ll go.”

“I advise backing off on his smoking,” his psychiatrist advised me. “With schizophrenics, they often have high levels of anxiety, and cigarettes are a way of self-medicating, of relaxing. It’s very hard to change that. And as far as the sodas go, it’s one of their small pleasures in life.”

So I backed off, and sent him the ever increasing amounts he wanted each month for cigarettes and Cokes.

After he passed away at the cancer ward at the hospital, I made a last visit to Merriment Manor to say goodbye to the staff & patients. Some patients came up to me and asked if I had any cigarettes or Cokes for them.

“Why?” I said, “don’t you have your own money for that?”

It was then that I learned what everyone who lived there knew: that if they ever ran out of money before the end of the month, they could always ask Ronald for a cigarette or a Coke. And as long as he had something for himself, he would never turn anyone down. He just didn’t have it in his heart to say no.

What I realized last night: Ronald is my teacher for simplicity of the heart. And the reason he possessed this gift of simplicity: it wouldn’t have occurred to him to desire it.