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krishnamurti_discussions

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You can cultivate chrysanthemums or other things, but you cannot cultivate affection - cunningly, unconsciously or deliberately, you can't produce this. So what are we to do? It seems to me that there is something - not to do - but that you can recognise.
When you are looking at somebody, or a situation, and you recognise there is no affection, that takes no time. That can be done. What takes place when you say, "Yes.
I see when I look at you that I really have no affection for you." What has happened? You have faced a fact.
Something happens. Does it? unconsciously, deeply, this idea that there must be affection exists.
I do various things in order to capture it. And it cannot be captured. You are all suggesting methods to capture it.
I was not suggesting a method, I was only recognise that you haven't got it. Yes, I haven t got it, I know that very well. That flame isn't there.
It's quite hard to really see that it's not there, we go on pretending. I like to look at things as they are and face facts; personally I have no sentimentality of any kind in me, I strip away all that. Now I say, "I do not have this thing."
And also I know it cannot be cultivated surreptitiously in a roundabout way. Yet I vaguely see the beauty of it. So what am I to do?
May we move away from that and come back to it a little later? Just listen to what I have to say. Do you feel at home here?
Do you know what a home is? The place where you know you always get support and help. You feel comfortable, you don't feel self-conscious, you move more easily at home than where you are a stranger.
At home you are not a stranger. Is that it? () In that case you have many homes, because you may have many friends and brothers.
I can feel comfortable in many places. () You can have a house and live in it, but that doesn't mean it's a home. What makes it a home?
() To have affection and cooperation between the people who are living there. () A home is a place where you have security. Is that what you call a home?
- where you have security, where you feel comfortable, where you are not a stranger? It's all these things. Tell me more.
() Where you have no fear. () Actually I don't consider I have a 'home; I have a house in California, I go to school here. He said something just then which was slurred over unfortunately.
He said, "Friends and brothers", and also, "Wherever I am I'm at home." You said that - don't withdraw it! Now what is a home to you all?
You said, wherever I am I feel at home. Where I am not a stranger, where I am comfortable, where I am not treated as an outsider, where I can do anything I want to without getting scolded - is that a home? They do scold you, they make you go to bed at a certain time.
So what is a home? A feeling in yourself about being at home? What is that feeling?
Sentimentality? You must be careful here. Please pay attention, I am going to push you into this.
I want to find out what is a home to you, actually, not theoretically. I go all over the world - except to Russia and China - I am put into different rooms, small rooms or big rooms. I have slept on the floor, I have slept on silver beds, I have slept in all kinds of places, and I have felt at home - you understand?
To me, home means wherever I am. Sometimes there is a plain wall in front of my window, sometimes there is a beautiful garden, sometimes there is a slum next door - I am telling you accurate things, not just something imaginary. Sometimes there is a tremendous noise going on around me, the floor is dirty and so on - the mattresses I've slept on!
I am at home as I am at home here. It means I bring my own home - you understand? Is Brockwood a home to you?
In the sense of a place where you can talk to each other, feel happy, play, climb a tree when you want to, where there is no scolding, no punishment, no pressure, where you feel completely protected, feel that somebody is looking after you, taking trouble to see that you are clean, that your clothes are clean, that you comb your hair? Where you feel that you are completely secure and free? That's a home, isn't it?
What brings that about is self-responsibility, so that someone else doesn't have to push you into doing things. No, don't go on to something else. Is this a home to you in that sense?
Yes. Are you sure that you feel you are safe, protected, watched over, cared for, never blamed, being told affectionately not to do certain things? Do we ever feel safe, wherever we are?
Oh, don't theorize. I am asking you, Tungki, if you feel at home here, in the sense which we all agreed is more or less a home. Do you feel that?
Yes, more or less. When I said more or less, it was in the sense that I can add more to it - whether there are good books, good food, whether it is in good taste, where nobody scolds you. Do you understand what I mean?
I think it is such an "ideal" place that nobody dares say that we do scold. Ideals are sentimentality. Yes, but we do scold.
Scold affectionately, that's understood. Now is this a home to you? Don't be casual.
One does feel cared for here. So please tell me if you feel at home - I'm not saying you do or don't, it's up to you to tell me. If you don't want to tell me, that's all right too.
If you feel at home here, are you also responsible? If I'm not, I won't feel at home. That's why I am asking.
I carry a piece of furniture from this room to the next and I bang it and I don't care. If it's my home I am going to take care - you follow? So that is what I mean by responsive, responsible.
When you feel at home you look after things, you look after yourself, you don't want to hurt your mother, make too much work for her. It's a kind of mutual, affectionate, creative movement. Don't you know all these things?
The moment you feel at home, what takes place? Affection. Affection, isn't it?
Then you can say to for goodness sake don't break up that furniture; and because I feel at home I won't get hurt. I wonder if you understand what I am talking about? So where you are at home the seed begins to germinate, you don't have to cultivate it, it begins to flower.
Is that what is happening with all of you? If you don't feel at home here find out whose fault it is, whether it is yours or somebody else's; correct it, don't sit back and say, "Well, I don't feel at home" - do something about it. When you grow up you will leave this place and you will have to face the world.
And if you haven't this seed in you here, the world is going to destroy you. They will trample on you, they are wolves, murderers - don't mistake it. This feeling that you are completely relaxed, completely at home - in the sense I am using that word - that brings about the responsibility which is affectionate.
Do you understand this? Please do. And when you have that seed and it is flowering here, then you will keep it going all your life.
But if it doesn't operate, then the world will destroy you; the world makes you what it wants you to a cunning animal. So let's find out if you are at home here and if you aren't, why not? Affection is non-dependency, I don't know if you realize this.
Some of you are going to get married; you will say to your wife, "I love you, darling." Then you go off to the office or to some other kind of work, and there you are full of anxiety, wanting to further yourself, full of ambition, greedy. Back home you say, "Darling, I love you."
You see the absurdity of it? That's what is going on in the world. In that there is attachment, jealousy, fear, she mustn't look at anybody else except me.
If parents really cared for their children there would be no wars. They would say, "Live, don't kill, live." There would be no army - see what would happen.
So what is generally called home is not a home at all. Therefore this must be your home; you spend eight or nine months of the year here and it's your responsibility - we know what that means - to make it your home, to tell me, or Mrs. Simmons or whoever, "This is not my home because you're not doing certain things" - you follow? Then you share in this.
Are you just listening, or are you taking part? Apply yourself, create, don't let everybody else do all the work and say, "Yes, I am very comfortable here, this is my home." Then it's not your home, because you haven't built it.
You see, from an early age I have been living in other people's houses and I have never had a place of which I could say, "This is my home." But there is the feeling that you are at home wherever you are because you are responsible, you are affectionate. Home is not a creation of sentimentality, it is a creation of fact - the fact that I feel at home.
That is, I am free I am responsible, I am affectionate. Total responsibility is the feeling of being at home. I don't know if you were considering what we were talking about the other how knowledge conditions the mind and whether it is possible to teach facts, give information and so on - all of which is knowledge - without conditioning the mind.
One has given such tremendous importance to knowledge. To some Indian minds knowledge is a way to God. In the East, I think, knowledge represents a way of life in which the very studying of the sacred books - the Talmud, the various Sutras and the Koran - memorising and repeating the texts, brings you nearer to what they call God, or Allah, or Jehovah.
We are saying that conditioning takes place not only culturally, in the sense of religion, social morality and so on, but also through knowledge itself. Is it possible to teach students and ourselves to free the mind from knowledge and yet use knowledge without causing the mind to function mechanically? If I were a teacher here, I would be greatly concerned how to bring about this unconditioning in myself and in the student.
We went into in the very act of teaching I learn about my own conditioning and see the conditioning of the child and learn how to uncondition the mind. Now, can we go into this question of whether knowledge conditions the mind, and if it does, how to prevent it; how not to shape the mind in the very act of teaching and giving information. Knowledge itself doesn't condition your mind.
It's your attitude to knowledge which conditions it; just having the facts in your head doesn't condition your mind. Why should I carry the facts in my mind? They are in the encyclopaedia, in the books - why should I carry all this in my mind?
A great deal of the function of the mind is on a level where knowledge as a tool is necessary. If I want to build a bridge I must have a certain knowledge and experience, I need technical information. I use that knowledge to build a bridge.
I see the necessity of a certain knowledge being held in the mind, but how am I to prevent that knowledge being misused by the engineer who says, "I am going to use this for self-advancement?" Is that the problem? () Yes, it's the misuse.
() Isn't it also that the mind can't keep still? One goes for a walk and one is thinking about building the bridge, not looking at the trees. But if I have got to build a bridge I have to think a great deal about it.
It would seem that the more knowledge and information I can comfortably carry in the mind the better off I am, because I don't have to look it up in a book. I can refer to it very easily. So what is the function of knowledge?
Here you are, teaching mathematics, geography, biology and so on; what is the function of it in life? It is a tool which the individual may use in his action. Action in a particular direction.
It's the background you draw from in your action, whether it's knowledge from experience or from a book. I was talking yesterday to some parents in London. Their son is nineteen.
When he was eighteen he was going to university and suddenly he dropped it all, took to drugs and gave whatever money he had to a particular guru, and he is meditating for an hour a day. The parents are concerned, they ask, "What is going to happen to him?" What is going to happen to these boys and girls we have here after you have taught them, given them all the information about art, music, geometry, history and English, whatever it is?
They have acquired all that marvellous technical knowledge and then what happens to them? Will it make them glorified clerks in a rotten society? What for?
If a boy does not go to university and get a degree, he finds it very difficult to get a job unless he has got some particular quality. So what is it we are trying to do? We give them all that knowledge and then leave a vast field, the other part of life, completely disregarded.
Do you know what I mean? () I don't know if it's disregarded completely. The students find out in the course of this what they enjoy doing, where they can put their energy.
They are finding out gradually what they can spend their life doing. () They are also coming into contact with other values because we listen to your talks together and as far as we can, we bring those to bear on our relationship with the student. () But the student has to get a sense of purpose in life that goes beyond the intellectual accomplishments which will take care of his daily living.
He has to see the whole picture of " What am I living for?" () Can a young person answer that question? () We can begin to enquire... () There is a great deal of uncertainty in young people and in other people's minds too, about the area where knowledge is good and useful and where it is irrelevant, where it goes wrong.
I think the confusion between these two is constantly coming up among young people, among people who listen to you and have read your books. In a way it is clear and yet there is confusion about where the frontier lies between the two. Can I put the question differently?
What is the function of a teacher? To indicate a way of living. Apart from, "The teacher is the taught" - what is the function of a teacher?
Could it possibly be to inspire the student with the kind of energy which he can then continue on his own? Do you inspire your students? I dislike that word 'inspire'.
I don't want to inspire somebody - who am I? You don't inspire them, you release them to their own energy. You remove the thing which is impeding them.
Is that the function of a teacher? - to make them study, to inspire them, encourage them, or stimulate them to study when they are not interested? You say that we have to help them to find their purpose in life.
To find out what life is about in the sense of where I, as an individual, fit into the whole of life. Look at what is happening in the world. Thousands of boys are leaving university, taking to drugs, having individual sex or group sex, they run away, join appalling communities, sects, shave their heads, dance in the streets, give all their money to some guru.
It's happening because they haven't had the right education. Are we giving them the right education? If we are, they won't do these things.
No, not that they won't do it. What are we trying to do as teachers? We give them vegetarian food, ask them to get up in time, to be clean, keep their hair tidy, try to tell them to adjust themselves.
What is it we are basically attempting to do here? The primary thing is to be aware of our conditioning in our relationship with the child. No.
As it is, we have to spend so much time in relationship with the children, pointing out all these things which they do daily, like running along the corridors. In that way you are almost bound to spoil your relationship with the child. You see, a child here hasn't got one mother, he's got twenty, thirty mothers - all take it in turn to point out to him what he is doing wrong.
What I want to know is, what kind of education, what approach do we have to the child that would make him not want to run down the corridor any longer. No. I would like to look at it this way - I may be wrong.
You know what's happening in the world; politically all governments are corrupt, really corrupt, not superficially but deeply. And there are all these gurus going round the world, collecting money and followers, distorting the minds of young people; there are the drugs of various kinds, there is the army, there is business. Seeing what is going on, not abstractly but actually, what are we trying to do with these children?
Make them fit into that? Partly to make them see all that as well; it's partly reflected in our own environment. No.
Do let's be a little more concrete, a little more direct about it. What are we trying to do? () I want to encourage them to look at life with a greater seriousness.
They seem very casual and relaxed, particularly the young ones. () When education was most significant to me it was in moments when my mental horizon was suddenly expanded through the influence of a teacher or through some cultural impact. There was an expansion of a sense of values which put things into perspective.
() The keynote is the sense of values in a world where anything goes. () Aren't we trying to find out how to live differently? Ways have started which are so ugly, the ways of doing whatever you want, which is so shallow and pointless.
Maybe there is another way for the child in which there is infinite depth. () The personality of the person who brings something to the child has to be acceptable to him. The child feels we are rather ordinary - I don't see why he should listen to us.
I feel we have to bring into being a new quality in ourselves, primarily. () Do we, Doris? Primarily for ourselves?
() Yes. I think so. Surely not.
() Not in a self-centred sense, but primarily to find out, certainly for ourselves, a better way of actually living together. () Well, if we find that out for ourselves, aren't we finding it out as a whole, not just for our own selves? () Nothing is for our own, of course; we are not subtly trying to glorify our individual selves, on the contrary.
But I feel that the quality of the being of each one here needs to be immensely more vital. 'It should be' - now we are lost! But what are we to do?
I want to tackle it. Here I am, a teacher - what am I trying to do? So many of the students are already aware of the happenings in the world outside, I think that's why some of the older ones are questioning the corruption of the government.
Yes, then what? When they are faced with all this, when they go out into the world, will they be absorbed by it? Or just say, "Sorry, I won't have anything to do with that", and move away from it?
They have to find out for themselves. How will they find out, what will give them the light, the insight to say, "I won't"? () That is what we are attempting to do here, and that is what they are also challenging.
() That is why some of them came here. Now let's be clear - is that what we are trying to do? Helping them to see 'what is', the corruption and all the rest of it, and not to enter into that trap at all?
That is only one part of it. What is the other part? Giving them knowledge?
Helping them to have courage to battle? I asked the principal of one of the schools in India. I said, "You have been doing this for nearly forty years, you have spent your life in this, has it been worthwhile?"
He answered, "Yes." So I asked, "In all those forty years has there been a boy or girl who was outstanding, who did not enter into this terrible morass of iniquity?" He answered, "I don't know, very few were."
So I said, "You mean in all those forty years you spent here only one or two have kept out of it?" Where does the trouble lie? - with the teacher or the taught?
Both. You haven't got the material. If you want to make a good suit you must have good material.
() I'd say the material is pretty warped already. () It's no good at all if you don't take any material you can find anywhere; the whole thing goes by the board if you are only having the best. But pick the first child you can from the slums of London.
If it can be done at all, it can be done with that child. () I wouldn't use that phrase - good material or bad material - I would just say they are all human beings. () Then it has the implication that society is human beings all of whose intention is to do the right thing, to act intuitively, to be sensitive, aware, to be conscious of their actions.
If that is so, then it seems to me that it defeats the purpose of having such a school, if we just take the mass of humanity and say everyone's intention is to be awake and to be sensitive, that influence plays such a small part. I think there is certainly a difference. I think it is a question of who comes here, who is here - whether it be staff or student - and what is their intention in being here.
() There are some who have shown a predisposition to live in a different way, they have shown interest. There is an intelligence already. Now what part does knowledge play in that?
A flower, a dog, has no knowledge and therefore it lives the sort of life it does. You need knowledge; how you use that knowledge gives the measure of you. So you are saying, how a human being uses knowledge is the really important thing.
No, that can't be it. Why not? () Knowledge doesn't play a part in actual being.
() Living properly does not depend at all on any sort of knowledge. () But living itself depends on knowledge. () What kind of knowledge are we talking about?
Let's talk about what kind of knowledge we mean. Knowledge which is academic knowledge, which is scientific knowledge; it is part of what we are. At this moment we are using it for insight, if you like.