23 July

Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade

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

14    So we are going together examine whether it is possible to live in the modern world without any conflict. What is conflict? Please, bear in mind all the time that you and the speaker are having a friendly conversation and as they are friends talking about life, you are asking the question, not the speaker. So you are asking the question, what is conflict, why do we live in conflict? Are we aware that we live in conflict? Or we have become so hardened, so callous, indifferent, that we accept everything – the squalor, the poverty, the misery, the confusion, and naturally conflict, we put up with it. But if you begin to enquire whether it’s possible to live without conflict then you have to ask – I hope you are asking – what is contradiction? And also you have to ask, as long as there is measurement, which is comparison, there must be conflict. Right? Are we meeting each other? Our life is always based, most of our life is based on comparison – in school, colleges, universities, you are always comparing. Your degrees are the result of comparison. And where there is comparison there must be conflict. Measure – you are tall, I am short, or I am black and you are white, or pink. It’s always comparison. You are bright, I am not; I want to be bright like you. You look so nice and I am not nice looking. So there is this conflict of comparison. So can you live without a single movement of comparison? Do it, sirs, you will see. Then you will see that what is important is what you are, not what you should be or what you want to become.

15    And also conflict arises when there is separation, when there is duality, the opposite: I am this, I will be that; I am violent but I will pursue non-violence, which is the opposite. So, is there opposite at all? Are you following all this? Does it interest you, all this? Or you have gone to sleep? It’s a comfortable place – I hope you are all comfortable. And you have been challenged, questioned, asked. You have to respond. Of course, there are so many people you can’t all respond at once. There would be too much noise. But if you respond to yourself, find out, is there opposite at all. There is the opposite: man, woman, dark, light, sun rising, sun setting, but psychologically, inwardly is there an opposite? I know – no, I don’t know – people have told me, there are some theories that only the enlightened have no opposites. I don’t believe it. No, I question it rather – not believe. I think that’s nonsense. There is only ‘what is’. That is, violence is the fact, non-violence is non-fact. So the brain has created the non-fact because it is incapable of dealing with the fact. Right? If you know how to put an engine right then there is no problem, but if you don’t know how to deal with ‘what is’, your violence or whatever it is, then you must invariably invent its opposite, because through the opposite you hope some day to achieve or change ‘what is’. I hope you are following all this.

16    So, we are saying there is no opposite, except you are tall, I am short and all that – physically we are different, but psychologically, inwardly there is only the fact, and how to deal with the fact. If you know how to deal with it there is no opposite. So we are going to investigate together whether we can look at the fact, the fact being violence, fear, sorrow, callousness, concern with oneself. These are all facts. Whether there is heaven, whether one day you will be enlightened – all that is non-fact, it has no meaning. But if that has a meaning and you hold on to, and you are avoiding ‘what is’ there must be conflict because there is duality. Right? There is conflict when you say one thing and do another, think one thing and act totally differently to what you think. It’s what you’re all doing.