22 July

Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade

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

12    And also we ought to consider together, what is peace? The obvious meaning is not to have conflict, not to have pain, not to suffer, not to have everlasting struggle from the moment you are born till you die. That is, to have no problems at all and no conflict. Is that possible? Is it possible to live in this world, not run away from the world, is it possible to live a life, daily life without a single shadow of conflict? If you say it is not possible then you have shut the door. Or if you say yes, it is possible, you have also shut the door. But if you begin to enquire, if you begin to explore, neither saying it is possible or not possible, to learn, to go very deeply into this question, whether man, you, living in this town, married or unmarried, family and so on, job, responsibilities, whether you can live completely at peace with yourself. Of course you can if you are neurotic, psychopathic. You can imagine you are in heaven or believe in some fantastic thing and you live with that. And so you have closed yourself in a belief and imagine in that belief you are living at peace. But all that is rather childish, immature and mediocre.

13    The word ‘mediocre’ means, the root meaning of that word, is never going to the top of the hill but always part of the hill. That’s the meaning of the word ‘mediocre’. You may be good at your business, as a great scientist, as a philosopher, as a professor, as a good carpenter, but your life may be mediocre. We are not talking about good professional careers, which you are all good at, but we are talking about mediocrity, the mediocre mind… brain. And having a mediocre brain… Which is to live at your highest capacity, not your capacity expressed in some business or in some profession, but to live inwardly a life of great austerity, integrity. The word ‘austerity’ comes from Greek, which means to have a dry mouth. Which is, those people who are austere generally are very dry, hard, stern, one or two loin cloths. That is not austerity. Austerity is the quality of a brain that is whole, not broken up, that has great depth and integrity, and there is no shadow of conflict.