Krishnamurti - Dont Make a Problem of Anything: Discussions with J Krishnamurti

Sources

Foreword: Archival Typescripts of Dictations

Discussions: Archival Transcripts made from Audiotapes

Dont Make a Problem of Anything: Discussions with J Krishnamurti

Copyright 2007 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd

Dont Make

a Problem

of Anything

DISCUSSIONS WITH

J KRISHNAMURTI

KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Contents

Is there a group of people soaked in the teachings?Commitment not to the person of KForming a nucleus of people who are not disciples, but who will study the teachingsNot a closed or secret bodyWhat is the intellectual, aesthetic quality of such a group?Having a feeling of responsibility to the teachings and to humanityThe teaching covers the whole of human lifeWhat is your relationship to the world?It is a wrong question because you are the world.

Taking the initiative to form a nucleusOn trustAre we of the same mind, the same intention?You are both the teachers and disciples of the teachingsNo status, only functionIs our relationship based on function?If it is based on an activity, an ideal, it has no meaningHow do you convey all this to the student?I want to help the student, through mathematics, to come to have such intelligenceAttention, love, compassion, and intelligence go togetherOn disagreement and learning.

This place is not only a school but a centre of a religious peopleWhat is a religious mind?It has no belief, no ideal, no concept towards which it is workingNo sense of becoming something, of having a futureNeed for a group of people who are totally free of idealsPutting aside the concept of non-violenceHow will you study the violence in you?Being free of ideals and beliefsYour immovable state and what it does to the students.

Find out if one can lead a life without a single conflictQuestioning the divisive process of agreement and disagreementFor a religious group to be, there must be no conflictImages give a sense of identity, a sense of stability, a sense of isolationI live on something dead and therefore my brain also diesSeeing the divisive nature of images, which brings conflictOn loveBuilding together a religious centreCooperation not around a person, an ideal, but the spirit of cooperation.

Are we teachers first or human beings first?As human beings, are we flowering?The human being is more important than the professionBoth teachers and students are a bundle of instincts, emotions, contradictionsThere is the feeling that we must bring about good human beingsWhy have I made it a problem?I approach this problem as a professionalMind is trained to look at life from a professional viewpointInwardly I am not going to make anything into a problem.

Are we aware that we are trained to solve problems?Moving away from this tendencyAre you approaching a human problem as a professional?Envy and the machinery that makes it a problemStopping the machinery which creates the problemIt can stop only when you realize that it is a problem-solving machineryThe machinery is the real trouble, not the factThe feeling of not making anything in life into a problemWhen the machinery ends, the mind undergoes a tremendous change.

What is a religious mind?The place of belief in religious lifeWhy do you believe in a future life, in principles, in ideals?You never achieve the good by allowing timeA religious mind has no feeling of reward and punishmentHas a religious mind a future?There is no such thing as evolution apart from the biologicalThe religious mind has no evolutionThe good has no relationship to the badHelping the student to listenIn attention, watching is most important.

The creative movementThe religious mind is the most creative mindA mind that has never been hurt and has the quality of pristine originalityHelping to free the students and teachers from hurtOn examinations and fearIn a place where there is no fear, what happens to the student?The feeling of being at homeThe difference between being a guest and being at homeThe true meaning of Vedanta as the end of knowledgeOn there being no duality and no evolution.

Introduction

In 1929 when Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star in the East, symbolizing his breakaway from all spiritual organizations and belief systems, he spelt out clearly his one-point mission: to set men absolutely, unconditionally free. It was a mission that seemed to fulfil itself wherever he was and wherever he went, its intensity remaining undiminished by time and circumstance and, in fact, gathering new energy and momentum as his age advanced. He stated and restated his vision in different contexts and in different wordsthat he, the teacher, was not important, that the institutions he founded were not important, and that even his material legacy to the worldhis books and tapeswas not important. Living the teachings, and not living on the words of his teachings, was perhaps the only thing that he expected of those who flocked to his talks, read his books, or joined his institutions.

When Krishnamurti came to India in the winter of 1982, he set for himself a hectic schedule of talks and discussions. After a series of four public talks in Calcutta, he went to Rishi Valley School, the first school he founded, and later to Vasanta Vihar, which was his home and the venue of his public talks in Madras and which he wanted to become a study centre for serious seekers. In these two places, he called meetings of his close associates, the staff of his schools, and others interested in his teachings, and held what came to be called the Nucleus Group Discussions.

At the very outset of these discussions, Krishnamurti takes care to emphasize that the nucleus group he envisages is not a closed body or a secret body and that, on the contrary, the door is open to anyone who has a feeling of responsibility to the teachings and to humanity. Stating unequivocally what this responsibility means, he asks: Is there a group of people who are completely involved in this, not in the school, not in being acquainted with a particular subject, but in this thing? ... Could we form such a group who will carry on, not as disciples of K, or as disciples of an idea or a theory, a concept, and so on, but actually study the teachings, live it, flower in it, be passionate about it? It was always the teachings and never my teachings.

Special mention must be made of the first two discussions in Madras, which represent a classic confrontation between the conditioned mind that looks at life as one huge problem to be solved and the unconditioned mind that flows freely with the currents of life. In these two long discussions Krishnamurti goes deeply into the question of problems, drawing, in the process, a most interesting distinction between the professional and the human being. He asks whether we do not regard ourselves as professionals first and as human beings afterwards. Our education, he points out, generally makes us professionals in the sense that right from childhood we are trained to solve physical and intellectual problems. The brain thus gets conditioned to solving problems, and it carries over the same mentality to the psychological realm, the realm of relationships and emotions, and so comes to look upon any human situation, any thought, any emotion, any feeling as a terrible problem to be solved. The very nature of the problem-solving mind is its inability to see itself as the problem-creating mind, and so it never comes to the end of problems. In different contexts, through various examples, Krishnamurti returns again and again to the need for freedom from this problem-solving mind and strikes a most passionate note when he sums up his insight: All that we are saying is: Dont make a problem of anything in life. I wonder if you have got this in your blood?

Though in all these discussions Krishnamurti is addressing mostly teachers, there is something here for everyone: for those interested in a new kind of education, for parents, for the pundits in Vedanta or Buddhism, for psychologists, for those in the ordinary workaday world, for religious seekers...