"We find ourselves living in fear of war, of losing a job, if we have one, in fear of terrorism, of the violence of our children, of being at the mercy of inept politicians. How do we meet life as it is today?"
Question: We find ourselves living in fear of war, of losing a job, if we have one, in fear of terrorism, of the violence of our children, of being at the mercy of inept politicians. How do we meet life as it is today?
Krishnamurti: How do you meet it? One must take it for granted the world is becoming more and more violent, it is obvious. The threats of war are also very obvious – South Africa, Middle East and so on. And also it is a very strange phenomena that our children are becoming violent too. One remembers a mother coming to see us one year, in India. The mother was horrified because in the Indian tradition mothers are considered with great respect. And she came to see us and said, ‘My children have beaten me’ – an unheard of thing in India. You understand? So this violence is spreading all over the world. And there is the fear of losing a job, as the questioner says. Facing all this, knowing all this how does one meet life as it is today?
I don’t know. One knows for oneself. I know how to meet it for myself but one doesn’t know how you will meet it. First, what is life, what is this thing called existence, full of sorrow, overpopulation, inept politicians, all the trickeries, dishonesty, bribery that is going on in the world, how does one meet it? So one must first, surely, enquire: what does it mean to live? What does it mean to live in this world as it is? How do we live our daily life, actually, not theoretically, not philosophically or idealistically, but actually how do we live our daily life? If we examine it, or are aware of it seriously, it is a constant battle, constant struggle, effort after effort, even to get up in the morning is an effort. What shall we do? It comes down to that. We cannot possibly escape from it. I used to know several people who said the world is impossible to live in, and they withdrew totally, completely into some Himalayan mountains and to the Sierras of California and disappeared. That is merely an avoidance, an escape from reality. Or to lose oneself in a commune, or join some guru with vast estates and get lost also in it. Those people do not obviously solve the problems of daily life, or enquire into the change, into the psychological revolution of a society. They escape from all this. And we, if we do not escape and are actually living in this world as it is, what shall we do? Can we change our life? To have no conflict at all in our life, is that possible? Because conflict is part of violence. This constant struggle to be something, both in the world, economically, socially, morally and inwardly, to be something is the basis of our life – to struggle, to struggle.
Can we, as human beings living in this world, change ourselves? That is really the question. Radically, psychologically transform ourselves, not eventually, but not admitting time. For a serious man, for a really religious mind, there is no tomorrow. This is rather a hard saying: but there is no tomorrow, there is only the rich worship of today. And can we live wholly this life? And actually, daily, transform our relationship with each other? That is the real issue. Not the world, what the world is, the world is us. One more and more sees the actual reality that the world is us. Please, this is so: the world is you and you are the world and the world is you. That is an obvious, terrible fact. And if we don’t meet that challenge completely, that is to realise that we are the world with all its ugliness, we have contributed to all this, we are responsible for all this: what is happening in the Middle East, in Africa and all the craziness that is going on in the world – we are responsible for it. One may not actually be responsible but our grandfathers, grandmothers and great grandfathers have been responsible for all this – slavery, thousands of wars, Empire, the brutality of empires, of which we are a part. And if we don’t feel very responsible for all this, which means responsible utterly for ourselves, what we do, what we think, how we behave, then it becomes rather hopeless, knowing what the world is, knowing that we cannot individually, separately, solve this problem of terrorism, which is the problem of governments: to see that its citizens are safe, protected. They don’t seem to care. If each government was really concerned that its own people must be protected there would be no wars. But apparently governments have lost sanity too, they are only thinking party politics, their own power, position, prestige – you know the whole game of it.
So can we, not admitting time, that is tomorrow, the future, live in such a way that today is all important? So one has to become so extraordinarily alert to our reactions, to our confusion – you know, work like fury on ourselves. And that is the only thing we can do apparently. And if we don’t do that there is really no future for man. I do not know if you have not followed some of the headlines in the newspapers, they are all preparing for war. And if you are preparing for something you are going to have it – like preparing a good dish. And apparently the ordinary people in the world don’t seem to care. And those who are intellectually, scientifically involved in the production of war don’t seem to care. They are only interested in their careers, in their jobs, in their research. And those of us who are fairly ordinary people, so-called middle class, if we don’t care at all, then we are really throwing up the sponge. And the tragedy is that we don’t seem to care either. We don’t seem to get together, think together, work together. We are only too willing to join institutions, organizations, hoping organizations, institutions will stop wars, will stop butchering each other. They have never done it. Institutions, organizations will never stop any of this; it is the human heart and the human mind that is involved in this. Please we are not talking rhetorically but we are facing something really very, very, very dangerous. We have met some of the prominent people who are involved in all this, they don’t care. But if we care for our life, daily life is lived rightly, if each one of us was aware of what we are doing daily, then I think there is some hope for the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwvkmFzGPYc&feature=youtu.be
