Final Part -- J. KRISHNAMURTI - A Biography by Pupul Jayakar

It is strange how we want freedom and we do everything to enslave ourselves. We lose all our initiative. We look to others to guide us, to help us, to be generous, to be peaceful; we look to the gurus, masters, saviours, meditators.

Someone writes great music, someone plays it, interpreting it in his own way and we listen to it, enjoying it or criticising it. We are the audience watching the actors, football players, or watching the cine-screen. Others write poems and we read; others paint and we gape at them.

We have nothing, so we turn to others to entertain us, to inspire us, to guide or save us. More and more, modern civilisation is destroying us, emptying us of all creativeness. We ourselves are empty inwardly and we look to others to be enriched and so our neighbour takes advantage of this to exploit, or we take advantage of him. (p.271-272)

It is odd how most people want to impress others, by their achievements, by their cleverness, by their books – by any means to assert themselves. (p.272)

What is important is to have the right kind of exercise, good sleep, and a day that has significance. But one slips so easily into a routine, and then one functions in the easy pattern of self-satisfaction, or in the pattern of self-imposed righteousness. All their patterns invariably lead to death – a slow withering away. But to have a rich day, in which there is no compulsion, no fear, no comparison, no conflict, but to be simply aware, is to be creative.

Don’t try to be simple. This trying only breeds complexity and misery. The trying is becoming and the becoming is always desire, with its frustrations.

It is so fatally easy to get used to anything, to any discomfort, to any frustration, to any continued satisfaction. One can adjust oneself to any circumstances, to lunacy or to asceticism. The mind likes to function in grooves, in habits, and this activity is called living.

A quiet mind, but very alert, watchful, is a blessing; it is like the earth, rich with immense possibilities. When there is such a mind, not comparing, not
condemning, then only is it possible for the immeasurable richness to be.

Have done a great deal of meditation and has been good. I hope you are doing it too – begin by being aware of every thought – feeling – all day, the nerves and the brain – then become quiet, still – this is what cannot be done through control – then really begins meditation. Do it with thoroughness.

He said that he had been speaking in India for thirty years and nothing had happened. “There is not one person who is living the teaching”. (p.284)

It is necessary to ask questions. Questions to which there are no answers. So that the question throws man back of himself and the way the structure of thought operates. The hand that seeks to throw away or reject is the same hand that itself holds.

He spoke of the tenacity of the Hindu mind, which despite conquest and repression had kept alive the ancient teachings.

Without understanding the structure and nature of thought you will not come upon this silence naturally. (p.305-306)

Do you see that doubt in religious enquiry is one of the most extraordinary things that existed in India ? Christianity was based on faith; doubt,scepticism, questioning were denied. They were regarded as heresy. In India and in the Asiatic world doubt was one of the principles of religious investigation. (p.399-400)

Because it is only through doubt that you come to the Brahman, not through acceptance of authority. (p.400)

I want to find out if in India the mind is being caught and carried away by the materialistic wave. That wave is threatening the Western world, expressing itself through technology, materialism, nationalism. The Western mind is moving in the direction of the outer, and it dominates the world.

India moved from a center and that center spread all over the Asiatic world through inner search, dance, music, and cultural expression. The Western world was centered in belief, which is so superficial. That superficiality , that materialism, is that conquering this ?

Can one see the outer manifestation of this in India, through its bureaucracy, technology, science, nuclear energy; following the ways of the West; and so is
the pristine, original core of this country gradually withering away ? India was centered on one thing. And therefore she had a fire which spread throughout
the world. Now what is happening to the Indian core ?

I want India to be that. So I say I hope she is not going to lose it. If it is lost, it is lost. I don’t want her to lose it, because then it is the end of everything. (p.401)

I am talking about the Indian mind that has produced the Upanishads, the Buddha. India has been the storehouse of something very very great. The West, with its emphasis on faith and its materialism, is destroying that greatness.

The whole world believes in God. In Ceylon they were very upset when I said the word God is put together by thought.

The whole world believes in God. Unfortunately, I don’t know what God is. Probably I can never find out.

And I am not interested in finding out. But what I am concerned with is whether the mind, the brain, can be totally free from all accumulated knowledge,experience ? Because if it is not, it will function always within its field, expanding – contracting – vertically, horizontally – but always within that area. It does not matter how much one accumulates, it will still be within that area. And if the mind moves from that area and says, ‘I must find out’, then it is still carrying the movement, the mind, with it. (p.420)

A cup holds water. A pond is a receptacle that holds water, a holding without any wave, without any motive or movement, without any sense of trying to find
an answer. (p.422)

A meditation in which there is no state of achievement, there is nothing. That may be the ground, the origin of all things, a state in which the meditator is not. (p.423)

In India the concern with religion has been deep. Indian tradition has maintained that the understanding of the Self, of the Universe, of the Highest Principle, is the most significant pursuit. (p.444)

Are we aware that we are prisoners of our own fantasies ?

If we are aware – they are burnt out. (p.451)

Just be aware, not hold it. It is like a perfume – it is there. You don’t hold it. That is why I think one has to understand the whole conditioning of our consciousness. I think that is the real enquiry. The real exploration is into consciousness, which is the common ground of all humanity. And we never enquire into it. We never say, ‘I am going to study this consciousness that is “me”.’

Time and thought have divided the world. (p.456)

We offer a hundred commentaries, but the actual fact is, we are ‘nothing’ except a lot of words. Can one grasp that the zero contains all the numbers ? So in
‘nothing’ all the world exists. (p.459)

If you want to end sorrow there has to be an ending of the ‘me’. (p.460)

Do you see that you are a human being related to all human beings ? the body does not divide. It never says, ‘I am’. It is thought that separates.

Look what religions have done: concentrated on the teacher and forgotten the teaching. Why do we give such importance to the person of the teacher ? The teacher may be necessary to manifest the teaching, but beyond that, what ? The vase contains water: you have to drink the water, not worship the vase.Humanity worships the vase, forgets the water. (p.488)

The human tendency is to center everything around the person of the teacher – not on the essence of what he says, but the person. That is the great corruption. Look at the great teachers of the world – Mohammed, Christ, and the Buddha too. Look what their followers have made of it ? Buddhists monks are violent, they kill. Contrary to all that the Buddha had said. (p.488-489)


Source: http://www.celextel.org/jkbooks/biographyofjk.html