J Krishnamurthy's Thoughts

Questioner: Otherwise how do I know whether my life is good or bad?

Krishnamurti: Just listen to the question. Don’t we know what conflict is? Do I have to have a concept of non-conflict before I am aware of conflict? I know what conflict is — the struggle, the pain. Don’t I know that, without knowing a state when there is no conflict? When I formulate what is good, I will formulate it according to my conditioning, according to my way of thinking, feeling, my particular idiosyncrasy and all the rest of my cultural conditioning. Is the good to be projected by thought? — and will thought then tell me what is good and bad in my life? Or has goodness nothing whatsoever to do with thought, or with a formula? Where does goodness flower? — do tell me. In a concept? In some idea, in some ideal that lies in the future? A concept means a future, a tomorrow. It may be very far away, or very close, but it is still in time. And when you have a concept, projected by thought — thought being the response of memory, the response of accumulated knowledge depending on the culture in which you have lived — do you find that goodness in the future, created by thought? Or do you find it when you begin to understand conflict, pain and sorrow? So in the understanding of "what is" — not by comparing "what is" with "what should be" — in that understanding flowers goodness. Surely, goodness has nothing whatsoever to do with thought — has it? Has love got anything to do with thought? Can you cultivate love by formulating it and saying "My ideal of love is that"? Do you know what happens when you cultivate love? You are not loving. You think you will have love at some future date; in the meantime you are violent. So is goodness the product of thought? Is love the product of experience, of knowledge? What was the second question, Sir?

Questioner: The second question was about sharing.

Krishnamurti: What do you share? What are we sharing now? We talked about death, we talked about love, about the necessity of total revolution, about complete psychological change, not to live in the old pattern of formulas, of struggle, pain, imitation, conformity and all the rest of those things man has lived for through millennia and has produced this marvellous, messy world! We have talked about death. How do we share that together? — share the understanding of it, not the verbal statement, not the description, not the explanations of it? What does sharing mean? — to share the understanding, to share the truth which comes with the understanding. And what does understanding mean? You tell me something which is serious, which is vital, which is relevant, important, and I listen to it completely, because it is vital to me. To listen vitally, my mind must be quiet, mustn’t it? If I am chattering, if I am looking somewhere else, if I am comparing what you are saying with what I know, my mind is not quiet. It is only when my mind is quiet and listens completely, that there is understanding of the truth of the thing, that we share together. Otherwise we can’t share; we can’t share the words — we can only share the truth of something. You and I can only see the truth of something when the mind is totally committed to the observation. To see the beauty of a sunset, the lovely hills, the shadows and the moonlight — how do you share it with a friend? By telling him, "Do look at that marvelous hill"? You may say it, but is that sharing? When you actually share something with another, it means you must both have the same intensity, at the same time, at the same level. Otherwise you can’t share, can you? You must both have a common interest, at the same level, with the same passion — otherwise how can you share something? You can share a piece of bread — but that’s not what we are talking about. To see together — which is sharing together — we must both of us see; not agree or disagree, but see together what actually is; not interpret it according to my conditioning or your conditioning, but see together what it is. And to see together one must be free to observe, one must be free to listen. That means to have no prejudice. Then only, with that quality of love, is there sharing.