Originally entitled “The Role of a Flower”, this video shown on British television in 1985 as part of “The Human Factor” TV program, features J. Krishnamurti, founder of Brockwood Park School, here interviewed and giving a talk just months before his death in Ojai California. This will also give you some biographical information as well as insights from people who knew him personally, such as Mary Lutyens, as well as people who used to attend the gatherings. Finally, for those of you who don’t know what K’s talks used to look like in those days, this is a good window into the atmosphere of the way it used to be at Brockwood.
Archive for the 'K Quotes' Category
This video originally entitled “Problems of Living” features J. Krishnamurti, founder of Brockwood Park School, walking and going into his philosophy in several locations of the beautiful campus. Those of you who know Brockwood today you may find it interesting to see how the park has changed and improved in the past 37 years since this video.
It is not that there must be an end to seeking, but rather the beginning of learning. Learning is far more important than finding.
As long as education is concerned merely with the culture of the outer… the inner movement with its immense depth will inevitably be for the few and in that there lies great sorrow. Sorrow cannot be solved, cannot be understood when you are running with tremendous energy along the superficial. Unless you solve this with self-knowing you will have revolt after revolt, reforms which need further reformation, and the endless antagonism of man against man will go on.
The heart of the matter is education, it is the total understanding of man and not an emphasis on one fragment of his life… All the enthusiasts for outward change always brush aside the more fundamental issues.
J. Krishnamurti, The Beginnings of Learning, Quotations from Part II
It’s curious, we always want to be perfect in or with something; this gives the means for achievement, and the pleasure of achievement, of course, is vanity. Pride in any form is brutal and leads to disaster. The desire for perfection outwardly or inwardly denies love and without love, do what you will, there’s always frustration and sorrow. Love is neither perfect nor imperfect; it’s only when there’s no love that perfection and imperfection arise. Love never strives after something; it does not make itself perfect. It’s the flame without the smoke; in striving to be perfect, there’s only greater volume of smoke; perfection, then, lies only in striving, which is mechanical, more and more perfect in habit, in imitation, in engendering more fear. Each one is educated to compete, to become successful; then the end becomes all important. Love for the thing itself disappears. Then the instrument is used not for the love of the sound but for what the instrument will bring, fame, money, prestige and so on.
Being is infinitely more significant than becoming. Being is not the opposite of becoming; if it’s the opposite or in opposition, then there is no being. When becoming dies completely, then there’s being. But this being is not static; it’s not acceptance nor is it mere denial; becoming involves time and space. All striving must cease; then only there is being.
J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Notebook, August 26th, 1961
You are caught inwardly in belief, in fear and in those hindrances that prevent the coming together of man and man. That is, if I don’t know how to love you, how to love my neighbour, my wife, how can there be communion between us. We need communion, not communion between systems but communion between you and me without systems, without organizations and that means we must really know how to love one another, our hearts must be opened to one another, but your hearts cannot be open if you belong to an organization, if you are bound by beliefs, if you are nationalistic, if you are a brahmin or a sudra.
So, you can spread even a tiny part of what I have been talking about, only as you live it. It is by your life that you communicate profoundly, not through words. Words, Sirs, to a serious, thoughtful man have very little meaning. Terms are of very little significance when you are really seeking Truth, Truth in relationship and not an abstract Truth of valuations, of things, or of ideas. If you want to find the truth of those things verbally, it is of little importance; but words become very important when you are not seeking Truth; then the word is the thing and then the thing catches you. So, if you want to spread these teachings, live them, and by your life you will be spreading them, you will be communicating them, which is much more true and significant than verbal repetition, for repetition is imitation and imitation is not creativeness and you as an individual must awake to your own conditioning and thereby free yourself and hence give love to another.
J.Krishnamurti, 28 December 1947, 11th Public Talk in Madras, India
