Krishnamurti - Where Can Peace Be Found?

Where Can Peace Be Found?

Copyright 2011 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd

Edited by Ray McCoy

Where Can Peace

Be Found?

J. Krishnamurti

Contents

Introduction

What is wrong with us? Are human beings really basically flawed, deeply irrational? From time before we started to measure it, we have had war after war after war, with our neighbor or between tribes, cities, and then nations and alliances of nations. Has there ever been a time when there was not a conflict somewhere on earth? Why, after all our years together in this world of such natural beauty, are we still not in harmony with it? Why, knowing the great potentialities of the human spirit in its most sublime and creative moments, can we not live harmoniously with each other?

Where does the problem begin? In the family, we raise our children to value fairness and to respect others and to care for nature; and we expect our educators and our educational systems to teach the same values. We speak of the equal rights of all human beings to enjoy free and happy lives with decent standards of living and education and ready access to employment. At the same time, we reward competitiveness and assertion of individuality to the point of aggression. We continue to exploit the earths depleting resources for our ease and luxury, simultaneously preaching the need for conservation and preservation of those resources.

This destructive ambivalence is prevalent even in the very institutions we have established to ensure order in society, to protect us from harm, and to inspire and guide our inner growth, which we claim to be our highest and noblest goal.

Political representatives are chosen from candidates who engage in fierce competition for public favor, spending millions on advertising campaignsand not on benefits for the society they promise to improve. Those who win take their seats in assemblies in which they continue to harangue each other with mere rhetoric, determining policies not by reasoned agreement but by weight of majorities gained partly by manipulating political favors, partly a result of pressure from lobbyists.

In the courts, settlements are not arrived at by impartial examination of the facts directly relevant to the immediate case; decisions are based on whatever precedents already established in law can better be argued pro and con by legal experts. These experts do not work together to find the most equitable and humane solution for both the accused and the accuser; more often they are concerned with punishment for the former or some sort of reward for the other. And prisons, then, are designed not for improvement and education but for punishment and exclusion from society, breeding ever more of the criminality they are established to correct. These systems of government and law, originally based on straightforward concerns for justice and order, have become so swollen with administrative bureaucracies that they are undermined by their own inefficiency.

Even in religion, where the professed intent is unity with a highest principle that embodies peace, forgiveness, compassion for all living things, we find contradictions that beggar belief. Fundamentalists of whatever stripe wage verbal and physical war against those who do not subscribe to their particular interpretation of what their God demands in human behavior and values. Every major religion has its history of bloody violenceinquisitions, crusades, fights between sects, persecutions, terrorismwhich continues even today. As we proclaim the aim of peace on earth, we bless regimental colors and hang them in our churches, and we fight wars for God and country. There are actually those, who are not a mere few, who long for the war to end all wars, Armageddon, because that will signal the end of life on earth and they will be raptured to a heaven created from their imaginations. They alone will be saved, not anyone else.

Clearly, basic human physical needs are for food, clothing, and shelter. The resources of the earth are enough, if shared reasonably and not squandered on armaments and refining military technology, to provide for all of us. Yet, the pursuit of individuals, stimulated by expensive advertising underwritten by businesses at our expense, is to use the resources for ever more comfort and luxury for themselves, not for all. The demands of nations are to control more of the worlds resources for their own populations; these resources are seen as a means for power, not for the benefit of all the people of the earth. When we do organize programs to help the poor and disadvantaged, whether at home or abroad, huge amounts are spent on administration and on corrupt payoffs, rather than on providing the goods or services needed. That there is a basic psychological need for freedom from fear is also obvious. Nevertheless, brutal dictators and totalitarian states continue to flourish. However many summit conferences have been held and international accords signed, the fundamental fact is ignored that division breeds conflict, whether the division is within a community or between nations.

What is wrong with us? Can we do anything about it? Can there ever be peace on earth?

In the selections presented here, Jiddu Krishnamurti offers some insights into the reasons for the malaise. The root of the problems is in the self-image that is created by thought. Right exercise of thought has brought great physical benefits through technology, medicine, surgery. But thought, nurtured by human conditioning for countless millennia, has also created fear, authority, divisive beliefs, and insecurity. Above all, thought has created the sense of self, of individuality, that has led to all the props that reinforce that sense and breed competition, greed, isolation, aggression, and self-centeredness and that destroy right relationship between human beings.

Now, we do not use our brains with real creativity because of our conditioning. But Krishnamurti states that freedom from that conditioning is possible and that when freed from conflict and need, human potential is limitless. Recognizing that our consciousness is not individual but common to all humanity, we may, perhaps for the first time, understand the real meaning of cooperation, right relationship, and compassion for all.

During his sixty years of traveling the world giving public talks, Krishnamurti must have encountered most of the divisions that beset society. He saw two world wars, the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, the tensions of the USSR-USA cold war. He saw the never-ending squabbles over resources, boundaries, and territories. He was well-informed through conversations with statesmen, educators, royalty, and specialists in the sciences, religion, and politics about their concerns and dilemmas. He had hundreds of individual meetings with people from diverse backgrounds, discussing their conflicts in relationship and with themselves.

In 1983, the subject of peace was central to many of Krishnamurtis talks. It was the main theme of four talks at Brockwood Park in England, which form chapters 6, 7, 8, and 10 of this book. These are complemented by chapters 1 and 9 from talks in India, 3 and 4 from talks in California, and 2 and 5 from Switzerland. The chapters are not a series of lectures, so there may seem to be a lack of continuity between them. Krishnamurti described his talks as conversations between himself and those listening. He often began with a reminder of what had gone before. This was helpful for those listening, some of whom had not heard a previous talk, but to avoid unnecessary repetition for a reader who can refer back, these recapitulations have been omitted. Talks are arranged following a sequence that Krishnamurti often uses. He first identifies a topic or problem and investigates its causes. In subsequent talks the subject is explored in depth, seeing the many psychological factors involved and going into the nature of the exploratory process itself.