Krishnamurti - A Door Open for Anyone: On Study Centres

A Door Open for Anyone: On Study Centres

Copyright 2018 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd & Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Edited by K.K.

a door

open for

anyone

K RISHNAMURTI

On Study Centres

K RISHNAMURTI F OUNDATION I NDIA

CONTENTS

The Very Teachings are Sacred

The Speaker is Anonymous

Like a Mirror

Like a Telephone

The Central Magnet

People Who Have Drunk at the Fountain

A Nucleus of People Soaked in the Teachings

Centres of Light in a World of Darkness

They Become the Living Waters

Entering a Gold Mine

Where the Treasure is

An Ashram and a School Together

A Place of Learning and Austere Living

Where Integrity can Flower

For Sharing Ones Discoveries

The First Stone We Lay should be Religious

What is He Trying to Tell Me?

Relationship between What I Read and Myself

Slow Digestion or Instant Grasp?

Always Together

To have a Living Dialogue

The Question of Interpretation

Asking the Greatest Thing

Are You All Flowering?

The Quality of Respect for the Sacred

You have to Invite the Sacred

The Religious Mind

On Taking a Retreat

On Study Groups

On Discussion Groups

On Learning from Others

On Teaching Others

On Interpreting and Spreading the Teachings

On Living the Teachings

FOREWORD

When Krishnamurti started schools in India in the early 1930s, he said in no uncertain terms that their main intention was not just to impart academic knowledge, but to sow in children the seeds of self-knowledge. Though he refused to spell out an educational philosophy, he went about passionately establishing and nurturing schools in India, England, and America till the end of his life. However, during the last decade of his life, he turned to doing something specific for grown-up people, enjoining on his close friends the need to start Study Centres for those who had been listening to him for long. He discussed with them the question of finding a suitable name for such places, a name that would communicate the spirit of their intention. He toyed with several names: adult centre, ashrama, modern ashram, place of learning, and so on. But he insisted on one thingthe study of his teachings is neither an intellectual exercise, as in an academic institution, nor a theological pursuit, as in a religious organization; divorced from life and a spirit of inquiry, the former would lead to aridity and the latter to bigotry.

Over the decades, as his teachings flowered and took on innumerable hues and shades, Krishnamurti began to state explicitly that he was leaving behind a sacred treasure, a mine where there is immense gold, a wellspring that can never go dry. Dismissing all suggestions that his teachings were only for the elite few, he insisted that it was for all by virtue of the fact that they were human beings. Drawing out the implications of his own statement, he made it clear that those who had come together out of their own seriousness should be soaked in the teachings, intellectually and otherwise, so that by the depth of their own understanding and quality of life they transmit it to others. If you want to spread these teachings, live them, and by your own life you will communicate, he had said as early as 1947.

Krishnamurtis vision of a Study Centre, his concern over its aesthetics as well as its inwardness, the responsibility of the hosts as well of the guests, the quality of dialogues, the nature of the religious mind, all these and many more form the contents of this book. What is of particular interest is the warning he gives serious seekers on what they should watch out for while studying the teachings. With his unerring insight into the human mind, he points out that while reading his books they could get trapped by the words; while listening to audio-tapes, they could be casual; while watching videos, they could get impressed by the man. This constant vigilance, he says, brings about an unbroken link between our own life and the printed and spoken words, so that we establish a relationship with the teachings all the time, subjectively and objectively.

For Krishnamurti, studying his teachings, questioning it, applying it, absorbing it, and living and acting in the world are not separate activities: they constitute the very flow of a truly religious life. The real work of those who are part of the centres is not running efficient organizations, but to have a feeling of responsibility to the sacred. How am I to have the quality of respect for that sacred thing which I have felt and help to see that other people have this sense of respect for that which is sacred? That would be my whole concern when K dies, he says summing up his vision of a Study Centre.

Thus the theme of this book is the study of Krishnamurtis teachings rather than how to start or run Study Centres.

The book falls into two parts. Part I, containing excerpts from Krishnamurtis discussions with the teachers of his schools and trustees of the Foundations, and the dictations he gave to his associates, covers the period from 1977 to 1985, when he was actively emphasizing the importance of Study Centres. Part II brings together his answers to questions, posed at his public talks right from the late 1940s, on issues that relate directly or indirectly to the study of the teachings. A statement by Krishnamurti about the Foundations is included, as an Appendix, in view of its importance in defining the role of the organizations that grew up around him.

part I

1. THE TEACHER AND THE TEACHINGS

The Very Teachings are Sacred

The very teachings are sacred, holy. The investigation of that teaching leads to, or brings about, the truth, which is holy. And if we are committed to that, to the investigation of the teachings and the discovery of, or coming upon, that truth which is holy, then we are responsible to that.

The Speaker is Anonymous

The speaker is anonymous, he has no authority. He, as a person, doesnt exist. We are both observing together what is happening. So please dont pay any attention, or give any importance to, the personality.

Like a Mirror

The speaker has written a great many books, unfortunately. He has talked a great deal throughout the world for the last sixty years. So they have invented a word called his teachings. The teachings are not something out there, in a book. The teaching is, or what it says, is: Look at yourself, go into yourself, inquire into what there is, understand it, go beyond it. You are not to understand the teachings: you are to understand yourself. The teachings are only a means of pointing out, of explaining, not the teachings but the necessity of understanding yourself. Do not try to understand what the speaker says, but understand that what he says acts as a mirror in which you look at yourself. When you look at yourself very carefully, the mirror will not be important: you will be able to throw it away.

Like a Telephone

Please, we are communicating with each other. You are not merely listening to the person who is talking, who is not at all important. What is said is important, not the person. It is like if you have a telephone you dont give great importance to it; you keep it clean, but what is said through the telephone becomes all-important. Similarly, the person who is speaking here is not at all important. I would like to point this out over and over againthe person is not important at all. But what is said is important. So your admiration for the person, or your dislike of the person, all that nonsense is of very little importance.

The Central Magnet

Questioner (Q): Do you think that as we are all together it would be a good opportunity to talk aboutas we have been talking about the [Krishnamurti] Foundations and holding them together in the futurehow we can work together and make this something that goes on, not only while you are here but beyond that? Is this something that we can explore together?