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What Are We On Earth For? Krishnamurti: You are on this earth to live fully, happily with your whole being, free of ambition, greed and fear. If you are greedy or ambitious, you cannot live fully, because greed and ambition dissipate your energy. To live fully is to live without fear, without sorrow, without asking a thing of the gods, because you would be a light onto yourself. When you live fully - a light onto yourself - you will not follow anybody, you will have no nationality, or belong to any religious or political group. As you would be a free human being it would, therefore, be possible to live in this world richly, whether you have little or much and, in that very active living you would beautify the earth. Krishnamurti: A Timeless Spring, 23 November, 1963,Talks With Students |
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Next Sydney Seminar: 'Challenge of Change' 25th October. More info soon. Krishnamurti Australia Gathering at Springbrook 12 - 19 November 2008 |
Krishnamurti - The essence of his observations
."The core of
Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929
when he said: 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through
any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or
ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological
technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through
the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation
and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man
has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious,
political, personal.
Krishnamurti said that these manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images
dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These
images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His
perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his
mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This
content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the
form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment.
The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete
freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all
mankind. So he is not an individual.
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. Krishnamurti said
that it is man's pretence
that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation
without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is
without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but
lies in the first step of his existence. Krishnamurti encouraged observation
where one begins to
discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless
awareness of our daily existence and activity. Thought is time. Thought
is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and
the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on
knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past.
Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and
struggle. There is no psychological evolution.
When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see
the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the
observed, the experiencer and the experience. Krishnamurti observed that
you will discover that this
division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is
insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight
brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.
Total negation is the essence of the positive. Krishnamurti said when there is negation of
all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only
then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence."
Awakening Intelligence: Krishnamurti’s Work In His Schools
I suppose you won’t be surprised to learn that a child’s mind struggles to understand the Teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti! But perhaps you will be surprised to find out why it struggles so? If we understand the main area of contention for children then the community will be in a better position to improve upon the work begun by Krishnamurti in his schools. Krishnamurti ventured into the unknown by directing all children to observe the nature of thought. For this he relied upon their natural curiosity and intelligence. Krishnamurti simply asked the children to observe the fact that “The word is not the thing!” He then made sure that we would not lose sight of this fundamental fact throughout our years at school. Returning each year he explored the nature of thoughts, words, and ideas with us. By sharing our views about the world and our affairs Krishnamurti threw caution to the winds and made sure that we were free to have our say! This way, single handedly, he harnessed our interest in the ways of words!
Krishnamurti’s role as a teacher did not conform to the traditional model. Abandoning all authority he engaged wholeheartedly in dialogues with us. Krishnamurti was different from other teachers because he was genuinely interested in what we had to say, even when we spoke randomly! He took our views seriously and spent time exploring them with us. We learned from him that every thought deserved our full attention. There was no question of thinking simply to while away time! With this kind of inquiry there is no question of taking thoughts lightly. Sure we day dreamed, but we also caught ourselves day dreaming, and were stunned into realizing how unrelated dreams could be from one’s living environment! Once this is clear during childhood, imagination tends to take a back seat, and the danger of being carried away by imagination is less likely.
Observing the impact of labels upon the mind throughout childhood provides the opportunity to watch the gradual transition of an open inclusive mind to one that labors under the pressure of conditioning. Krishnamurti encouraged us to watch this transition. He begged us to observe the forces of conditioning, warning us of the dangers of falling asleep in our journey through life! “This is your life!” he would say. “It deserves your full attention! Watch and find out for yourselves the nature of your thoughts, your views! Find out why there is conflict, greed, envy, why are you jealous or sad? What makes you happy? Find out for yourselves. Don’t wait for anyone else to tell you!” Listening to him urging us on it was clear that Krishnamurti meant everything he said. He was deeply passionate about the need for each one of us to watch the realm of words pan out before our eyes. For many of us the difficult part was not observing the mechanics of thought but understanding why the whole world was driven by thought! Having seen the whimsical nature of words, few of us understood why the rest of the world took them so seriously! It took me years to admit that the word is not the thing for fear of rejection from the most beloved thing for a human being: the community! Currently, the fear of controversy and rejection is the nightmare that inhibits us from realizing the truth about ourselves. When the community relaxes its attitude to words the process of self inquiry will be freed from this anxiety! Krishnamurti realized this during his work at the schools and brought the whole community together to investigate the nature of thought. At last I understand why he emphasized the word “together” so often! Geetha Waters 6/2007
