Datasets:

eliwill

/

krishnamurti_discussions

like 2

This leaves me in a strange position, I want to be taught but then I want to expand truth. I haven't understood that question, sir. Sorry.

I'll simplify it. Make it simple. Sometimes when I find myself being aware I find all social inter-reaction meaningless to me.

Now, when I am aware, he is saying all his social interactions, social relationships rather meaningless. Now is that enough? The question of bliss - what is it?

I want to know in this world of complete brutality, if it is possible for a person to live in that state of consciousness all the time? Can a person live in this world with all its brutality, violence, contradiction, social upheaval and so on, in complete bliss. Right?

Now may we begin with that question first, and then bring all the other things into it? What are we going to do with our life? May we begin with that and gradually bring all the other questions into it, which I will try to do as we go along.

Can we also talk about relationship? Ah, he wants to talk about relationship, between human beings, between nature and himself. Let's begin.

What am I going to do if I am young, with my life? Seeing what the world is, I have to earn a livelihood, I can't go around begging - perhaps in India you could, if you put on a sannyasi, a monk robe, it is the tradition in India you can go from village to village to village and they will feed you, clothe you and look after you. Why can't you go round begging?

Why can't you go round begging. All right, if you like it! There's nothing to prohibit you, or prevent you from begging.

Except perhaps in certain countries law, vagrancy and so on, will not allow it. But that's up to you. There is neither right or in India it is the common tradition to go from house to house begging.

And nobody thinks the worst, quite the contrary. That's partly religious tradition there. What about here?

Ah, talking about it here in this country, in Switzerland, try it! I have been living for four years begging. All right.

Perfect! Why don't you do it? Wait a minute.

The question is, why don't I do it. Why don't I go round begging. How do you know I don't?

(Laughter) One moment. Look sir, don't make it a laughing matter. It is quite funny.

I have no money of my own, people give it to me, clothes or whatever it is. And I have lived like that for forty five years, or more - what are we talking about, sixty years. So that's that.

Now let's get going. What am I to do, being young, alive, fairly active physically, and half intelligent, what am I to do in this world? You know this question is being asked right through the shall I become a businessman, a lawyer, a doctor, take some kind of profession, and that profession depending on the demands of society.

Society demands so many engineers, so many doctors, so many businessman, so many politicians, so many crooks, so many this and that. Society demands it. So shall I fit into any of these categories?

So that's the question. What am I to do with my life? Right?

Right, sir? Now you know what vocation means? A call, Latin, vocare, to call out, like when a man says, 'I have had a divine call to join the church', that's a vocation.

Not that you should join the church. The urge to do something with your life right to the end of it, to do something that is true, that is completely worthwhile, that is completely meaningful, that will never bring about bitterness, frustration, anxiety, something that you will do, your vocation. That will be your whole life.

Right. (Inaudible) Yes, I understand, sir. Do please follow this carefully because in answering this question you will answer all the rest of the questions that have been put this morning.

You will see in a minute how it is all related. One need not have a definite vocation, it doesn't mean necessarily drifting, but doing something from moment to moment, some occupation; be a gardener one year, next year something or other, and so on, it will get little money but keep going. Now which is it you think is a life of vocation - you understand the meaning of that word, a call, not necessarily the call of a church, or a business, but the feeling that one has to do this with one's life, and nothing else matters.

When one feels that way there is no question of frustration, there is no question of tomorrow, you are doing the thing that is complete, that is what you want to do, that is your call. Do you understand? One's call.

Probably you have not thought about it that way. Probably you haven't gone into this question of what to do in life. And it is very important to put that question and find an answer, otherwise one wastes one's life.

As you observe, there is such wastage of human life, not only on the battlefield but in the daily living. So one has to find out, at least it seems to me, what is your vocation, what is your - there is a marvellous Sanskrit word, which I daren't use because it has been so misused, the word called dharma, to do something which is true, which is your vocation, your life, you know, job. And therefore being your duty, your responsibility, your vocation, from that you never deviate.

You may do something but it is always in that direction. If you are an artist, in the sense paint pictures and so on, if you are an artist, that's your vocation, a true artist is not concerned if he is going to get a lot of money out of it and so on. It is his, you know, his life, nothing will distract him from that.

And therefore there is no frustration, there is no bitterness, there is no cynicism, there is no failure. I think this is very important to understand. So what is your vocation?

Are you going to become engineers, beggars, a religious person, not belonging to any church, any group, any sect, in the sense of a really religious person, and spend the rest of your life teaching others, not battling with others? So in answering that question you will find what is your relationship with other human beings. So I am answering your question, relationship.

What is your relationship - please listen to this - when you are following your vocation, which is not dependent on the demands of society, when you are following your vocation, what is your relationship with other human beings when you are following that? Go on answer it, sirs, answer it. How can you speak of a vocation which is not thrust upon you by society?

How can you speak of a vocation which is not thrust upon you by society. How do you know it is your vocation? Look, how do you know this is your calling, this is your vocation.

How do you know it? It may be imposed unconsciously by society and you think that it is your vocation, your calling. Or you may deceive yourself, saying this is my line, my direction, my vocation, and I am going to follow it to the end, and you may be deceiving yourself.

At the end of ten years you say, 'My god, what a mistake I have made. I ought to have been a butcher. I ought to have been a soldier, I ought to have joined the church.'

So look, look, please investigate that question. He says, how do I know that I am following my vocation, which is true, which is not imposed by society, or responding to my unconscious conditioning? So you have to be alive, sensitive enough, free enough, to investigate, search your own structure, and find out if what you call your vocation may be thrust upon you by the society, or your own personal inclination which you call vocation.

So you have to investigate. And you say, 'I have no time'. On the contrary you have plenty of time.

You can investigate, search out, if you are really serious and honest, to find out what your line is in a day if you give your whole mind to it. Observe all your conditioning, all the influences that have been imposed upon you, your own desires, your own inclinations. Observe all that.

It's only the serious person can find out his vocation, not just the man who drifts about and says, 'Well, I'll do this and that'. I wonder if it is a real serious problem because I am not a butcher, or an artist, or a politician, I am a man. All these things are just restrictions.

No, wait. You are a man - you are not a butcher, you are not this or that. You are a man.

But you have to do something in life. Why? Why?

Wait a minute, sir. Why should you do anything in life? Just live?

Wait. What does that mean? Live according to the edicts of society, live according to your own inclination, according to your own pleasure, according to your own changing moods, fancies, imaginations, and suppositions and formulations?

Why not? Why not. Wait.

Why not? What are you at the end of it? Just a driftwood, aren't you?

How do you know? How do I know? I'll show it to you.

I am not trying to convince you. Let's be clear on that point. I am not trying to persuade you to accept what I say.

A man who says, 'I don't care what happens, I'll live a life from day to day, casually.' What's going to happen to me? It may be all right when he is very young, go on, have a good time.

When he gets a little bit older it will begin to tell. Doesn't it? His teeth begin to fall out.

Go into it, sir. Look, most people are living this way, drifting - they get caught in a job and when that job doesn't suit them they change to something else. Most people are drifting in life.

Perhaps all people are drifting. Perhaps all great people are different. Are you drifting?

I say so sir. The gentleman asks, are you drifting, me. I mean it very are you drifting?

Why do you ask that question, sir? Perhaps there is no difference. Between what?

You and me, or between me or any other person. I don't know anything about you, sir. We are talking of a person, human beings who are drifting.

Their life is very shallow. Right? They are unhappy people, divorce, remarry and divorce, and remarry, children, responsibility, alimony, god knows what else.

And that's most people are doing, and they are thoroughly frustrated, unhappy, bitter human beings. But these people refuse to drift. They keep holding on to things.

Wait, sir, look at it. Then what will I do, what will you do? Can we decide such a thing now?

Can you decide such a thing now. Right? Yes.

Not decide. There is no decision. You see.

Not drifting means imposing a discipline, right? Not at all sir. Not at all sir.

All right. Is there a vocation apart from the human mind? I don't think you have listened to what I have been saying, sir.

Forgive me for saying so. You don't take my question? I get your question, but it has already been answered.

No. What I said was that perhaps all people are drifting, and what you are doing is introducing some sort of discipline, like, if I do not drift, then I have to impose a discipline upon myself. Not to drift.

Not at all. I think you have completely misunderstood what I have been saying. Sir, it is no good keep on repeating this over and over again.

I have explained very carefully the whole nature of discipline, the other day. What is involved in it. We are not going to go back into it now.

I think he is just explaining how he is reacting. No, but sir we must go ahead, we can't go back to something that we have discussed ten times. Now let's go back.

What is one to do? What will you do? You say, I am too young, must I decide now?

It's not that you must decide, one must be aware of what is going on in the world, and your role in the world, your responsibility in the world. You must be aware of you and your relationship to the world, your relationship to other people. Right?

Now what is your relationship with other people? Actually what is it? Has one a relationship with others?

And if you have, what does that word 'relationship' mean? Go into it, sir, please. You are related to your wife, you are related to your girl, or boy friend, or whatever it is.

What does that mean to you, actually, not theoretically, but actually what does that relationship mean between you and another? Is it based on pleasure? Is it based on your feeling of loneliness?

And therefore a demand for companionship. A feeling of frustration, and therefore you depend on another for fulfilment? You may have a conclusion, and act according to that conclusion in relationship.

Or you may have an image about yourself and the other, and act, feel through that image. All that is involved in relationship, isn't it? Right?

Now which is it? Relationship means to be related, to be in contact, to be not only blood relationship, but physical, intimate, in contact, minds working together, feeling together, creating together, working together. Which means a constant communication between each other, not one person isolated and in his isolation trying to establish a relationship with another.

So one has to find out for oneself when you ask, what is relationship, whether you are isolating yourself in your activities. Do you follow? If you are ambitious to reach a certain goal, position, prestige, your relationship is really non-existent, because your whole purpose is directed in one direction.

A person who is ambitious, competitive, cannot possibly have relationships, he may get married, have children, all the rest of it, but that is merely a social convention. So when you talk about relationship all this is involved. This seeking for love, because you yourself have no love, seeking companionship because you cannot stand alone, finding a fulfilment in another, because in yourself you do not know how to live completely, wholly.

So all these things are implied when you talk about relationship. So are you related to the world, or to another? Bearing in mind relationship means no barrier, intellectual, emotional, no barrier, no wall, no separation, no you with your problems, and ambitions and worries, and despairs, and she, or he with hers.

Then only you have a relationship. You see how difficult it is, sir. Therefore that being very difficult we are satisfied with superficial relationship which leads to a great deal of misery.

Yes sir? In an occupation, a vocation, we seem to be caught in a kind of conflict, in which one part says, first liberate yourself and then do what you will do, and the other part says, do what you will do and in that way you will liberate yourself. There are two parts in me, one says liberate yourself first and then do, and the other part says, the very doing is the way of liberation.

Now listen to the question. First liberate yourself from all the chaos, mess, confusion within yourself; and the other, in the very understanding of the confusion, misery, strife, struggle, despair, in the very understanding of it is liberation. The very understanding of that is liberation.

Why do you divide the two? He said 'action'. I have understood that.

Look, why do you divide it? Is this action, which is, first liberate yourself, is there any action in that at all? Because you are only concerned about yourself.

But action is not only understanding. Which means what? I can only understand in relationship, not in isolation.

I can't go to the mountain top, sit cross-legged, and understand myself. I understand myself in action, in relationship, in movement, I then observe my reactions. Right?

I observe the way I think, feel, act. So isolation, or saying to myself, first I must liberate myself, is out because that way leads to isolation, and therefore exclusion. And in isolation, exclusion you cannot possibly understand relationship, or understand yourself.

You understand yourself by watching your reactions. Your reactions produce certain actions, and you watch those actions. So it is a constant watching of the movement of the brain and the mind, which is thought.

Watching your feelings, and in that way, that is the only way to free the mind from its own conditioning. That is liberation. Right.

Now what is your relationship? Please, sir this is very important, because in putting this question you become aware. You follow?

You become aware of what you are doing, what your state is, what your mind is playing with. About this problem of relationship, I think in the old times there was the structure of the family, there was the structure of the village, there was the structure the tribe, but nowadays society gets anonymous, the cities are too big. And that's maybe also where we lose a certain quality of relationship.

We should find a new society where we can recreate this relationship. Sir, we'll go back. There was a time when the family was important, the tribe, the nation, the group.

Then - what was it sir? The cities got bigger and bigger. Then the cities get bigger and the individual becomes anonymous, he is squashed out.

And so one has to find a way of living which is not tribal, which is not anonymous, which is not suppressed by society, anonymous, one has to find a way of living which is neither. A new society. First, you see you are more concerned with the new society.

The new society only comes when you have found right relationship with another. Society is relationship. Now it is based on isolation, contradiction, each one's despair, purposes, the ambitions, strife and so on.

Therefore the society which exits now is corrupt. And to create a new society you must find out for yourself the right relationship between you and another, and out of that comes a new society. Right?

Which is not bureaucratic, and all the rest of it. So in asking this question, look at what it is leading up to, first you asked the question, what am I to do. I suggested what is your vocation, find out, not drift, enquire into it, spend time, give your thought, your energy, your vitality, your passion to find out, which doesn't mean you discipline yourself - you become something else.

Uncover, awaken. Now from that you realise one has to be aware of one's relationship, therefore you become aware. So you are finding out what it means to be aware, not only in your relationships but aware the way you behave, the way you think, the way you are escaping, and so on.

You are beginning to understand yourself in relationship and through relationship. Right? So awareness is not a matter of practice, following a particular system in order to be aware, but aware in what you are when you cut bread, when you are looking at yourself in the mirror, to be aware during the day, watch your face, your gestures, your movement of thought, just watch it, not correct it, so that this awareness becomes extraordinarily potent.

Right? Now the next question from can one live in this world with this awareness? That was one of the questions asked.

Which is, can one have this strange sense of bliss - one has to go into the whole question of pleasure and bliss. Just go ahead with bliss. Can one live with this quality of awareness in this world.

Now who will tell you whether you can or cannot? Now who will tell you? I say one can.

I say that it is perhaps possible for another to live this way, but won't you have to find out for yourself? Yes, but I'm trying to see if you can do it, at the same time not desensitising yourself from all others. Like, supposing you say you are completely different, and that's why by your side you see some people who are killing one another.

And one is crying, you see it. Then what shall I do, sir? Look, what shall I do with the war that is going on in the Middle East, in Vietnam and other wars, what shall I do, as a human being, who is aware, who is sensitive, who has watched this phenomena of butchery, of the last two dreadful wars, what shall I do?

Tell me! What have you done during the last war? What did you do during the last great war, daddy!