The Beauty of Death by J. Krishnamurti

Author:J. Krishnamurti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.

Paris, France, 1966

First Talk in Paris

Though one must distrust similarities, there is not much difference between the Orient and the Occident, the people who live in Asia and those who live in the West. Though they may have different philosophies, different beliefs, different customs, habits, and manners from the West, they are human beings like the rest of the world—suffering, with innumerable problems, anxious, fearful, often in great despair over disease, old age, and death. These problems exist throughout the world. Their beliefs, their gods are not different from the gods and beliefs of this country or of other countries in the West. These beliefs have not solved any of our human problems fundamentally, deeply, radically. They have brought about a certain culture, good manners, a superficial acceptance of certain relationships, but deeply, radically, man has not changed very much in the last two million years or so. Man throughout these ages apparently has struggled, has swum against the current of life, always in battle, in conflict, striving, groping, searching, asking, demanding, praying, looking to someone else to solve his human problems.

This has been going on century upon century, and apparently we have not solved our problems. We still suffer; we still are groping, searching, asking, demanding that someone tell us what we should do, what we should not do, how we should think and what not to think, exchanging one belief for another, one outlook, one idiotic ideology for another. We all know this; we’ve all been through the varieties of beliefs. Though we react, change our positions in the same field of life, somehow we remain fundamentally what we are. Perhaps there is a little change here and there. There are little modifications, different sects, different groups, and different outlooks, but inwardly there is the same fearful struggle, anxiety, despair.

Perhaps we can approach these problems differently. There must be—and I think there is—a different approach to our whole existence, a different way of living without this battle, without this fear, without these gods that have really lost their meaning altogether, and without these ideologies, whether communist or religious, which have little meaning anymore. Probably they never had much meaning. They helped to civilize man, make him a little more gentle, a little more friendly, but basically man has not been tamed or changed fundamentally. We are still brutal, at war with one another, both outwardly and inwardly. There have been fifteen thousand wars in the last five thousand five hundred years—two and a half wars every year. Mankind has been venomous, hating, competing, striving for position, prestige, power, and domination. This we all know, and this we accept as the way of life—war, fear, conflict, a superficial existence. That’s what we have accepted.

It seems to me that there may be a different way of living, and this is what we are going to talk about during these five gatherings: how to bring about a revolution, not outwardly but inwardly, because the crisis is in consciousness; it is not economic or social.

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