21 November
- Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade: 1976 – 1986
Fourth Public Talk at Madras : 1978/79
1 Should we sit quietly for a while or do you want me to talk? I have never attended meetings. I once went to a political meeting in this country and Dr. Besant said ‘Keep out of it’. And I wonder often why we come together like this, listening to a speaker, half-serious, curious and not really wanting to change one’s life totally. One has become rather mediocre, without a flair, without any quality of genius. I am saying ‘genius’ in the sense not of any particular talent or a particular gift, but the genius of a mind that comprehends the totality of life, which is our life – a vast complex, contradictory, unhappy existence. And one listens to all this, to what the speaker has to say, and one goes away with partial understanding, with no deep intention and serious attention to bring about a deep psychological revolution. And one wonders often why human beings tolerate the kind of life one leads. You may blame the circumstances, the society, the political organisation, but blaming others hasn’t solved our problem. We drift, and our life seems such a waste, either going to the office from morning till night for the next fifty years or so and then retire to die or vegetate or grumble or fade away quietly.
2 And when one looks at one’s own life with all its extraordinary beauty, the vastness of what man has achieved technologically, and one wonders why there has been so little beauty in our life. I mean by that word not merely the appearance of beauty, the decoration of the outer, but that quality of great communication with nature. If one loses contact with nature, one loses relationship with other human beings. You may read poems if you are so inclined, you may read all the beautiful sonnets and the lyrical swing of a lovely poem, but imagination is not beauty. The appreciation of a cloud and the love of light in that cloud, and a sheet of water along a dry road, or a bird perched on a single branch – all that enchantment, we rarely see or appreciate or love because we are occupied with our own problems, with our own worries, with our peculiar ideas and fixations. We are never free. And beauty is this quality of freedom which is totally different from independence. When you listen to all this, I wonder what you make of it. Whether we see a dog and love that dog or a rock or a stray cloud passing by, when we have not that sense of extraordinary communication with the world which brings about great beauty, we will become small human beings, mediocre, wasting our extraordinary life and losing all the beauty and the depth of existence. But I am afraid we must get back to realities. Though that is also real, extraordinarily real – the branch, the shadow, the light on a leaf, the fluttering parrot, that’s also actual, real. And when we understand the swaying palm tree and the whole feeling of life, then there is a great sense of depth to beauty. But we are not interested in all that. Are you? I am afraid we aren’t. We will listen, let it slip by. It may sound romantic, sentimental, but beauty is not romantic nor sentimental nor emotional. It is something very, very solid, like a rock in the midst of a fast flowing stream.