Krishnamurti - Meeting Life: Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path Without Retreating from Society

Meeting Life: Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path Without Retreating from Society

Copyright 1991 by Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.

Meeting Life

Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path

Without Retreating from Society

J. Krishnamurti

Contents

Introductory Note

The contents of this book are taken from the Krishnamurti Foundation Bulletins. The great majority of items were first published in the Bulletin of the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust in England, a few originally appeared in the Indian and American Bulletins, and then were reprinted in the English Bulletin. Issue numbers referred to are those of the English Bulletin.

The book has been divided into three parts. PART I consists of sixteen short pieces dictated by Krishnamurti. All but three of them are undated; they have therefore been arranged in the order in which they appeared in the Bulletins. This part also includes three longer, dated pieces written by Krishnamurti.

PART II contains Krishnamurtis answers to questions put to him at the end of his talks or at small discussions. Since these are dated, except for two, they appear chronologically, irrespective of the dates of the Bulletins in which they were published.

PART III consists of talks by Krishnamurti in Switzerland, India, England and California. These, also being dated, have been placed chronologically.

PART I

Short Pieces

The Lake

The lake was very deep, with soaring cliffs on both sides. You could see the other shore, wooded, with new spring leaves; and that side of the lake was steeper, perhaps more dense with foliage, and heavily wooded. The water was placid that morning and its colour was blue-green. It is a beautiful lake. There were swans, ducks and an occasional boat with passengers.

As you stood on the bank, in a well-kept park, you were very close to the water. It was not polluted at all, and its texture and beauty seemed to enter into you. You could smell itthe soft fragrant air, the green lawnand you felt one with it, moving with the slow current, the reflections, and the deep quietness of the water.

The strange thing was that you felt such a great sense of affection, not for anything or for anyone, but the fullness of what may be called love. The only thing that matters is to probe into the very depth of it, not with the silly little mind with its endless mutterings of thought, but with silence. Silence is the only means, or instrument, that can penetrate into something that escapes the mind which is so contaminated.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

There, as you were standing on the bank watching the beauty of the water, all human problems and institutions, mans relationship to man, which is societyall would find their right place if silently you could penetrate into this thing called love.

We have talked a great deal about it. Every young man says he loves some woman, the priest his god, the mother her children, and of course the politician plays with it. We have really spoilt the word and loaded it with meaningless substancethe substance of our own narrow little selves. In this narrow little context we try to find the other thing, and painfully return to our everyday confusion and misery.

But there it was, on the water, all about you, in the leaf, and in the duck that was trying to swallow a large piece of bread, in the lame woman who went by. It was not a romantic identification or a cunning rationalized verbalization. But it was there, as factual as that car, or that boat.

It is the only thing which will give an answer to all our problems. No, not an answer, for then there will be no problems. We have problems of every description and we try to solve them without that love, and so they multiply and grow. There is no way to approach it, or to hold it, but sometimes, if you will stand by the roadside, or by the lake, watching a flower or a tree, or the farmer tilling his soil, and if you are silent, not dreaming, not collecting daydreams, or weary, but with silence in its intensity, then perhaps it will come to you.

When it comes, do not hold it, do not treasure it as an experience. Once it touches you, you will never be the same again. Let that operate, and not your greed, your anger or your righteous social indignation. It is really quite wild, untamed, and its beauty is not respectable at all.

But we never want it, for we have a feeling that it might be too dangerous. We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselveswith its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely. In the cage you can have anarchy or order, which in turn gives way to disorder; and this has been going on for many centuriesexploding, and falling back, changing the patterns of the social structure, perhaps ending poverty here or there. But if you place all these as the most essential, then you will miss the other.

Be alone sometimes, and if you are lucky it might come to you, on a falling leaf, or from that distant solitary tree in an empty field.

From B ULLETIN 1, 1968

To Die to Every Yesterday

Death is only for those who have, and for those who have a resting place. Life is a movement in relationship and attachment; the denial of this movement is death. Have no shelter outwardly or inwardly; have a room, or a house, or a family, but dont let it become a hiding place, an escape from yourself.

The safe harbour which your mind has made in cultivating virtue, in the superstition of belief, in cunning capacity or in activity, will inevitably bring death. You cant escape from death if you belong to this world, to the society of which you are. The man who died next door or a thousand miles away is you. He has been preparing for years with great care to die, like you. Like you he called living a strife, a misery, or a jolly good show. But death is always there watching, waiting. But the one who dies each day is beyond death.

To die is to love. The beauty of love is not in past remembrances or in the images of tomorrow. Love has no past and no future; what has, is memory, which is not love. Love with its passion is just beyond the range of society, which is you. Die, and it is there.

Meditation is a movement in and of the unknown. You are not there, only the movement. You are too petty or too great for this movement. It has nothing behind it or in front of it. It is that energy which thought-matter cannot touch. Thought is perversion for it is the product of yesterday; it is caught in the toils of centuries and so it is confused, unclear. Do what you will, the known cannot reach out for the unknown. Meditation is the dying to the known.

Out of silence look and listen. Silence is not the ending of noise; the incessant clamour of the mind and heart does not end in silence; it is not a product, a result of desire, nor is it put together by will. The whole of consciousness is a restless, noisy movement within the borders of its own making. Within this border silence or stillness is but the momentary ending of the chatter; it is the silence touched by time. Time is memory and to it silence is short or long; it can measure. Give to it space and continuity, and then it becomes another toy. But this is not silence. Everything put together by thought is within the area of noise, and thought in no way can make itself still. It can build an image of silence and conform to it, worshipping it, as it does with so many other images it has made, but its formula of silence is the very negation of it; its symbols are the very denial of reality. Thought itself must be still for silence to be. Silence is always now, as thought is not. Thought, always being old, cannot possibly enter into that silence which is always new. The new becomes the old when thought touches it. Out of this silence, look and talk. The true anonymity is out of this silence and there is no other humility. The vain are always vain, though they put on the garment of humility, which makes them harsh and brittle. But out of this silence the word love has a wholly different meaning. This silence is not out there but it is where the noise of the total observer is not.