21 July

Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade

Madras (Chennai) 1983/84  – 4th Public Talk

9     So what has religion to do with your daily life? If religion is something in the temple and all that, and your life is entirely different, what takes place? Theories, concepts, conclusions, which are entirely divorced from one’s activity, business, science and so on. Naturally one becomes hypocritical. May I use that word without insulting? This is what we have become. Say one thing, which is to pray or worship, and do exactly the opposite. And such people call themselves religious, idealists, and they miss the enormous quality of straight thinking and acting.

10    So what is religion? Please ask yourselves as two friends talking over together this question, what is religion? Man from time immemorial has sought something beyond all this, beyond the daily travail, beyond his loneliness and despair, his conflicts and anxieties, his everlasting suffering. He sought to put aside all this to find something which is not put together by thought. The ancient Sumerian, the ancient Egypt, and the five thousand, seven thousand years of Hurappa, you know, in Pakistan and so on, all sought something beyond. Because pain, suffering, one cannot endure too long. It dulls the mind, brain, it dulls the quality of love. But man has sought that. And the priests come along, all over the world they have come, to translate that into daily life. He becomes the interpreter, he becomes the guide, the guru, because we don’t know what that is, but somebody says, ‘I know’, and we are so gullible – and I hope you are not gullible now – we are so gullible because we are suffering, we want comfort, we want safety, we want certainty, and we are caught by them. And this is what is happening throughout the world. If you are dissatisfied with one structure of religion you turn to the other. If you are a Christian, you are fed up with it, it’s not sufficiently intellectual or romantic – no, sorry, it’s very romantic and sentimental – but go to India, there you will find light. All troop round here – you know what is happening here.

11    So this has been the long struggle throughout the centuries to find something which is not of time, which is not of thought, which is not put together by thought, something totally immeasurable. And he has imagined it, said there is heaven and hell, in heaven there is peace, not on earth, not in our daily life, but in heaven there is peace. So you have postponed or put away peace from daily life. So together we ought to investigate this, if you are serious and interested, because it’s your life. And is there something beyond all this? Is there something that is sacred? We are going to investigate that very carefully.