9. TRUTH

Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

What are we seeking in life? Is our search based on our inclinations, our tendencies or circumstances? So which of them is our guide, or what shapes our urges, longings? All of us are seeking something – greater satisfaction, more and wider experience, and greater pleasure. Seeking more satisfaction and pleasures bring with its own shares of pains and fears. It is the same with allowing tendencies and inclinations to shape our search, it brings with it more bondage, pain and sorrows.

And there are some who are more serious and say they are seeking the truth. Truth is a dangerous word. Because search for truth cannot be achieved by a casual and intermittent drive. It requires a sustained and continuous looking, not in any particular direction but a total comprehension of life.

But if we are serious about life, then maybe we can start on the path to finding the truth. We must be serious about life – in everything we do – cooking or our relationship with another person, or in our search for the truth. We must be extraordinarily and vitally serious about everything in life, because each one of us is responsible for all the misery, all the wars, all the pain and all the drudgery there is in life.

Because each one of us is responsible for all the misery in life in the world, there is a need for a radical revolution within each one of us. Because each one of us is the individual and the society, both violence and peace, both love and hate and fear, and sometimes there is a great imbalance in us. We are not only responsible for the world, we are responsible for ourselves, in what we do, what we think, how we act and how we feel. Only if we are able to understand this mixture, this contradiction in us, only then would we be able to understand the path towards truth. Unless there is a radical transition in us, seeking anything is of little meaning.

Man has always been in search of the truth, since history can tell. He has been searching for an otherness, which we call God, which we call the timeless state, a thing which is not measurable, which is not nameable. Man has always sought that because his life is very dull, there is always death, old age, there is so much pain, contradiction, conflict and a meaningless-ness to life. We are caught in that and to escape from it, we want to find something more, something that won’t be destroyed by time, by thought, by any human corruption. Man has always sought it, and not finding it he has cultivated faith – faith in God, a savior, faith in an idea. But faith invariable breeds violence. When I have faith in an idea, a concept, I want to protect that idea, that ideology is a projection of myself, I identify with it and I want to protect it at any price. When I defend something, I must be violent. Over a period of time, nobody believes in anything anymore. Either one becomes cynical and bitter, or one invents a philosophy which will be satisfactory intellectually- but the main problem is not solved.

The main problem is – how to bring about a revolution in this world – not only outside but inside each one of us – a world of contradiction, a world of such anxiety. Only when such a radical change happens can we go further and seek the truth and the questions of if there is God, whether there is a timeless dimension, etc. When that transformation takes place inside us, we will be able to answer this question of truth and this seeking ourselves, within us. And this transformation needs to take place in each one of us.

So what can we do to change ourselves? Not the world, but first ourselves? Others have always told us how to over the centuries – kings, priests, thinkers, etc. But we haven’t come far based on that. We cannot depend on anybody, there is no guide, there is no teacher, there is no authority there is only oneself and one’s relationship with another and the world, there is nothing else. When one realizes that, he faces that, then

·       either it brings great despair from which comes cynicism, bitterness and all

·       or in facing this fact, he realises that one is totally responsible for oneself and for the world, nobody else.

When he faces that, all self – pity goes. Most of us thrive on self pity, blaming others, and this occupation does not give clarity.

So what can we do to live in this world, logically, rationally, sanely with a balance inside us, to live without any conflict, hate or violence? To find the answer we need to pay a great deal of attention. It is different from concentration. Concentration is an exclusive process, focussed on one thing blotting out the rest. Attention is not, it means to give complete attention, not a fragmentary or partial attention, that is, listen to the aeroplane going by, listen to the talk, see, hear and feel everything completely without any boundary/frontier (like concentration which puts up a wall).

So the first thing we need to do is to know ourselves completely – no hidden corners, or secret un- trodden recesses of the mind.

·       Either we do this carefully, step by step, through analysis through examination, through opening every layer of one’s consciousness – it means we will take time. To realise that I am angry, jealous, and to understand why, the motive of it, to uncover to unroll the vast and complex me – it will take time. It could take days, months, years and in this process there is always distortion going on because of other influences, pressures and strains.

·       Or I identify myself with something greater, with the nation or the state or the family or the idea of savior, of Buddha. I identify myself with that, a projection of myself, a conformity to pattern and this leads to more struggle.

So man has done this throughout ages – either gone inwards through introspection and analysis or he has identified himself with something or he has lived in a state of total negation, hoping something will happen.

These methods have not helped us know ourselves well. So there is this complex entity called “me” with all its contradictions and mixtures of things – Can I look at this “me” so completely and instantly that I understand the whole thing? We can only see the truth when the mind is not fragmented, when we see with totality. When you see yourselves totally, not just the fragments here and there, but the totality of your being, - that is the truth. So can we look at oneself so completely, so attentively that the whole of oneself is revealed in an instant? Most of us cannot do this because we have never approached the problem so seriously, we have never looked at ourselves. We blame others, we explain things away, we are frightened to look at ourselves and so on. You can only look when you give your whole attention. And in such an attention there is no fear. When you are giving your mind, your body, your nerves, your eyes, your ears, everything to look, there is no room for fear, there is no room for contradiction or conflict. There is no comparing or measuring happening then. I then understand that comparison invariable leads to illusion, of measuring oneself against the other, and trying to be like the other person, and hence creating an illusion by denying oneself as he is. Similarly when I identify myself with something greater like a state or ideology, then I understand that all such comparative thinking leads to greater conformity and hence greater conflict.

So I put all this measuring and comparing away, and pay complete attention to look at myself. Then my mind is no longer seeking, asking, questioning or waiting. It doesn’t mean that my mind is satisfied with things as they are – it means my mind has no more illusion or imagination. It moves to a different dimension, in which we find that the pain, pleasure, fear of everyday life and the limited nature of the mind is all completely gone. Then there is enjoyment, real joy, feeling of great bliss which is not thought.

What will open this door is daily awareness and attention. Awareness, without any choice, of what is going on within, as you speak, what you say, how you walk, what you think. It is like cleaning a room to keep it in order but just because you keep the room clean and in order doesn’t mean the window will open. All you desire or interest will not open the window. You cannot invite it to open. All that you can do is keep the room in order. By being virtuous (not according to the different faiths), by being sane, rational, orderly. Then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open and the breezes will come in – or maybe they will not. It depends on the state of your mind, and that state of mind can only be understood by yourself, watching it yet never trying to shape it, which means watching it without any choice. Out of this choice-less awareness perhaps the door will open and you will know what that dimension is in which there is no conflict, no time, something you cannot explain through words.