Right Endeavour

J. KRISHNAMURTI

In the midst of great confusion and strain we are caught up in the struggle for success and security, and so have lost the deep feeling for life, the true sensibility which is the essence of understanding. We admit intellectually that there is exploitation, cruelty, but somehow there is not that comprehension which leads to drastic action and change. True and vital action can spring only from a comprehensive and intelligent view of life.

There is every conceivable form of exploitation in man’s social, religious, and creative activities.

We see man living on man, making others work for his own personal gain and advantage, buying and selling for his own benefit and ruthlessly seeking and establishing his own personal security. There are class distinctions with their antagonisms and hatreds. There are distinctions in work. One kind is regarded as superior and another inferior, one type is despised and another is praised. It is a system of competition and ruthless elimination of those who are, perhaps, less cunning, less aggressive, and who have not had the fortunate opportunities of life.

We have racial pride and national prejudices which often lead us to war, with all its horrors and cruelties. And even the animals do not escape from the cruelties of man.

Then we have the exploitation by religions, with their cruelties, the competition between faiths, with their churches, gods and temples. Each system of belief and faith is maintaining its own divine right, its own certainty to lead man to the highest, and the individual loses that true religious experience which is not encumbered with beliefs and dogmas of organized religion. There is systematized superstition in the name of reality, the instilling and maintaining of fear with its assertions and doctrines. Thus there is confusion of beliefs, ideals and doctrines.

And, in the field of creative work, there is an immense gap between creative expression and the art of living. In that creative work there is personal ambition, self-conceit and competition, producing a superficial reaction which is often mistaken for creative expression and fulfillment.

In this civilization we are forced, whether we like it or not, by a system which each individual has helped to create, to live without deep fulfillment, and few escape from its cruelties. In every avenue of life there is confusion, misery, and every one as a social and religious entity is caught up in this machine of exploitation and cruelty. Some are conscious of this process, with its sorrow, and although they recognize its ugliness, they continue in the old habits of thought and action, saying to themselves that they must perforce live in this world. There are others who are wholly unconscious of this system of misery.

When you begin to examine the various ideas that are put forth for the solution of man’s misery, you will perceive that they divide themselves into two groups: one which maintains that there must be complete social reorganization of man, so that exploitation, acquisitiveness and wars may cease; the other which asserts and lays emphasis on the volitional activities of man.

To lay emphasis on either is erroneous. Social reorganization is obviously necessary. But if you critically examine this idea of organizing man and his expression, you will perceive, if you are not carried away by its superficial assurances of immediate results of security and comfort, that in it there are many grave dangers. The mere creation of a new system can again become a prison in which man will be held, only by different dogmas, ideas and creeds.

There are those who maintain that we must put bread first, and other things vital to man will then rightly follow. That is, they maintain that there must be control of environment and through this man will come to his true fulfillment. This exclusive emphasis on bread frustrates its own purpose, for man does not live by bread alone.

So then, which shall we emphasize, the inner or the outer? Shall we begin first from the outer, by controlling, directing, and dominating; or shall we lay the emphasis on the inner process of man? To emphasize the one or the other destroys its own end. To divide man into the outer and the inner is to prevent the true comprehension of man. To understand the problem of class distinction, wars, exploitation, cruelties, hatreds, acquisitiveness, we must discern man as a whole, and from that point of view consider his activities, desires, and fulfillment.

To regard man as merely the result of environment or of heredity, to lay emphasis only on bread and discard the inner process, or to concern oneself entirely with the inner and discard the outer, is wholly erroneous, and this must ever lead to confusion and misery. We have to comprehend man as an integral whole, not as an entity with separative functions, as those of a worker, a citizen or a spiritual being, but as an interdependent and interacting, complete being. We must have the insight to know that ignorance of our own being is the previous condition of all sorrow and conflict. As long as we do not comprehend ourselves–the hidden and the conscious–then whatever we may do, in whatever field of activity, we must inevitably create sorrow.

This comprehension of oneself–that is, of the process of the building up of the ‘I,’ with its ignorance, tendencies and cravings–must become actual and not remain theoretical. It can only become actual, real to you, if you discern and comprehend through experimentation that the process of ignorance can be brought to an end. With the cessation of ignorance–ignorance ever being the lack of comprehension of oneself and the ‘I’ process–there is reality and the bliss of enlightenment.

There are two kinds of experience, that of wish and that of actuality. But to experience the actual, the real, the experiences of wish must cease. The experience of wish is the mere continuance of separative self-consciousness and this prevents the comprehension of actuality. Although you may think that you are experiencing the actual, you are really experiencing your own wishes, and these wishes become so real, so concrete, so definite, that you take them for actuality. The experience of wish continues to create division and conflict.

What are the results of the experiences of wish? They are the coverings or masks that we have developed through our own volitional activities, based on fear and the search for security, the security of the here with its acquisitiveness or of the hereafter with its hopes and longings, the security of opinion, beliefs and ideals. These masks and coverings, the product of the volitional activity of craving, continue the beginningless process of the ‘I,’ that consciousness which we call individuality. As long as these masks exist there cannot be the comprehension of the real, the actual.

You will ask: How can I live, exist, without any craving or wish? You ask this question because for you this conception is only theoretical, and as you have not experimented, you have not proved to yourself its validity, its actuality. If you experiment, you will perceive that you can live without craving, integrally, completely, actually, and so comprehend reality, the beauty and the fullness of life. Whether you can live, work and create without craving, wishing, can be discovered not by another for you but only by yourself.

So long as the process of re-forming the ‘I’ continues through the experiences of wish, there must be confusion, sorrow and friction from which the mind tries to escape into the search after immortality or other comfort and security, thus engendering the process of exploitation. With the cessation of all experiences of wish, which sustains separative individuality, there is the nameless, immeasurable reality, bliss. To be able to experience reality, you must be free of all the masks which you have developed in the struggle for acquisition, born of craving.

These masks do not conceal reality. We are apt to think that by getting rid of these masks we will find reality, or that by uncovering the many layers of want we will discover that which is hidden. Thus we are assuming that behind this ignorance, or in the depths of consciousness, or beyond this friction of will, of craving, lies reality. This consciousness of many masks, of many layers, does not conceal within itself reality. But as we begin to comprehend the process of development of these masks, these layers of consciousness, and as consciousness frees itself from its volitional growth, there is reality. Our conception that man is divine but limited, that beauty is concealed by ugliness, wisdom buried under ignorance, supreme intelligence hiding in darkness, is utterly erroneous. In discerning how through this beginningless ignorance and its activities there has arisen the ‘I’ process and in bringing that process to an end, there is enlightenment. It is an experience of that which is immeasurable; which cannot but is.

How is one to discern this beginningless ignorance with its volitional activities? How is one to bring about its end? How can one become deeply thoughtful, integrally aware of the process of consciousness with its many layers of tendencies, cravings, hatreds and desires? Can any discipline or system help one to recognize and end this process of ignorance and sorrow?

By experiment you will perceive that no system, no guide and no discipline can ever help you to discern this process or bring ignorance to an end. You need an eager, pliable mind, capable of direct discernment in which there is no choice. But as your mind is prejudiced, divided in itself, it is incapable of true discernment. As you are prejudiced you have to become aware of that fact before you can begin to discern what is actual and what is illusory. To discern, there must be awareness. You must become aware of the movement of your thought and its activity. Whatever you do, do it with the fullness of mind and you will perceive that in this awakening process, many hidden and subtle thoughts and cravings are revealed. When the mind is no longer bound by choice, there is the experience of actuality. For choice is based on wish, and where there is wish there cannot be discernment. By right effort of awakened interest, the beginningless process of ignorance, with its self-sustaining activities, is brought to an end. It is by right endeavour that the mind, freeing itself from its own self-created fears, tendencies and cravings, is able to discern the real, the immeasurable.

Question: I have lost all the enthusiasm and zest in life that I once had. I have sufficient for my material needs, yet life is now to me a purposeless and empty shell, an aching existence which drags on and on. Would you put forward some thoughts which might possibly aid me in breaking through this sphere of apparently hopeless void?

Krishnamurti: One loses enthusiasm or the zest for life when there is no fulfillment. As long as one is merely a slave to a system, or trained merely to fit into a particular social mould or to adjust oneself thoughtlessly to an established mode of conduct, there cannot be fulfillment. In merely responding to a reaction and thinking that it is the full expression of one’s being, there must be frustration; and where there is frustration, there must be emptiness and suffering.

If one is deeply conscious of frustration, then there is some hope, for it creates such misery and discontent that one is forced to strip oneself of the many tendencies which one has developed through craving, and free oneself from the illusions and impositions of opinion. This demands right effort, for it is necessary to break away from the old, established custom of thought and action. Where there is frustration, there must be emptiness, an aching void and suffering; but to fulfill is arduous, it needs deep comprehension and an alert mind-heart.

Question: Is not desire for security rather a natural instinct, like that of self-protection in the presence of danger? How then can we get over it, and why should we try to?

Krishnamurti: The search after security indicates frustration and the gnawing of constant fear. Intelligence, which has no concern with the conception of security, arranges the well-being of the whole and not merely of the particular. Now, each one is individually seeking his own security and is thus creating confusion and misery. Each one is concerned about himself, seeking his own individual security here and in the hereafter, and is thus ever coming into conflict with another who is also pursuing his own end. So there is constant friction, antagonism, hatred and strife. Intelligence alone can arrange humanely the necessities of life for all.

This is actuality, and to experience it you must discern the true significance of security. If you consider it deeply, you will perceive that this idea of seeking security has no lasting value, here or in the hereafter. This has been proved over and over again during upheavals. But in spite of it, each one pursues his own security and so continues to live in constant fear and confusion. Where there is no search for security, there alone can be the bliss of the real.

–Reprinted from Triveni, October 1937.

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