To live humanly, sanely one has to change

We need tremendous energy to bring about a psychological change in ourselves as human beings, because we have lived far too long in a world of make-belief, in a world of brutality, violence, despair, anxiety. To live humanly, sanely, one has to change. To bring about a change within oneself and therefore within society, one needs this radical energy, for the individual is not different from society - the society is the individual and the individual is the society.

And to bring about a necessary radical, essential change in the structure of society - which is corrupt, which is immoral - there must be change in the human heart and mind. To bring about that change you need great energy and that energy is denied or perverted, or twisted, when you act according to a concept; which is what we do in our daily life.

The concept is based on past history, or on some conclusion, so it is not action at all, it is an approximation to a formula. So one asks if there is an action which is not based on an idea, on a conclusion formed by dead things which have been.

Talks in Europe 1968 Amsterdam 5th Public Talk 22nd May 1968 Collected Works, Vol. XV
JKrishnamurti.

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ในช่วงเวลาที่สับสนสิ่งที่ต้องการมากที่สุดคือการได้ให้เวลาตัวเองมีสติกับสถานการณ์แต่ละอย่างในชีวิตประจำวัน ได้มองเ็ห็นและเข้าใจตัวเองจริงๆบ้าง เพราะทุกๆวันเราใช้เวลาคิดกับเรื่องงาน เรื่องคนอื่นรอบตัว มากเสียจนไม่มีเวลาที่จะพิจารณาเรื่องของตัวเอง ซึ่งนำไปสู่ปัญหาโดยไม่รู้ตัวจากการที่ปล่อยปละละเลยไว้นาน

งาน ครอบครัว เพื่อน สังคม ทั้งหมดที่อยู่ข้างนอกนั้นคงหลีกเลี่ยงไม่ได้ที่จะปลีกตัวเองออกจากโลกทั้งหมด เพราะเราเองสร้างความสัมพันธ์และเงื่อนไขกับสิ่งเหล่านั้นไว้ด้วยตัวเอง แต่ปัญหามันมาจากเราผูกติดกับมันมากจนเกินไป จนหลงลืมสาระสำคัญของชีวิตไปในที่สุด ว่าอะไรคือความต้องการที่แท้จริงของตัวเอง ?

โจทย์คือเราควรจะมีชีวิตและความสัมพันธ์อย่างไรกับผู้คนรอบข้าง มีปฏิกิริยาอย่างไรต่อสถานการณ์ทางสังคมที่มีผลกระทบไม่ตรงก็อ้อมกับชีวิตประจำวันของเรา และเราควรทำความเข้าใจโลกใบนี้ในระดับไหนจึงจะไม่ทุกข์กับความสลับซับซ้อนของมันจนเกินพอดี มนุษย์เราจะต้องการอะไรมากไปกว่้าการรับรู้ได้ถึง ความสุขอย่างปราณีตที่เกิดกับเรา ณ ปัจจุบันขณะ ซึ่งน่าจะเป็นความมุ่งหมายแท้จริงอย่างที่สุด

Goin home

I’ve spent too long away from home
Did all the things I could have done
Gone are the days of endless thrills
I know I’m not the only one

So long, I’m goin’, goin’ home…

I saw the streets all ripe with jewels
Balconies and the laundry lines
They tried to make me welcome there
But their streets did not feel like mine

So long, I’m goin’, goin’ home…

I want the sun to hit my face
Through oak trees in the open lot
Forget about the things you want
Be thankful for what all you got

So long, I’m goin’, goin’ home…

Action

Without understanding comprehensively the full significance of action, merely to be concerned with a particular form of action seems to me very destructive. Surely, if we are concerned only with the part and not with the whole, then all action is destructive action. But if we can understand action as a total thing, if we can feel our way into it and capture its significance, then that understanding of total action will bring about right action in the particular. It is like looking at a tree. The tree is not just the leaf, the branch, the flower, the fruit, the trunk, or the root. It is a total thing. To feel the beauty of a tree is to be aware of its wholeness - the extraordinary shape of it, the depth of its shadow, the flutter of its leaves in the wind. Unless we have the feeling of the whole tree, merely looking at a single leaf will mean very little. But if we have the feeling of the whole tree, then every leaf, every twig has meaning, and we are sensitive to it. After all, to be sensitive to the beauty of something is to perceive the totality of it. The mind that is thinking in terms of a part can never perceive the whole. In the whole the part is contained, but the part will never make up the whole, the total. In the same way, let us see if we can rather diligently and with a sense of humility go into this whole question of what is action. Why does action create so much conflict? Why does action bring about a state of contradiction? And what is the totality of action? If we can sensitively and with hesitancy begin to understand the nature of total action, then perhaps we shall be able to come down to the particular. But very few of us are sensitive - sensitive to the sunset, sensitive to a child in the street, sensitive to the beauty of a face, sensitive to an idea, to a noise, to everything in life. Surely, it is only a humble mind, a mind which does not deny or accept - it is only such a mind that is sensitive to the whole. The mind is not sensitive if it has no humility; and without humility there is no investigation, exploration, understanding. But humility is not a thing to be cultivated. Cultivated virtue is a horror, it is no longer a virtue. So, if we can, with that natural feeling of humility in which there is sensitivity, go into this whole question of action, then perhaps a great deal will be revealed of which we are now unaware. You see, the difficulty with most of us is that we want a definition, a conclusion, an answer; we have an end in view. I think such an attitude prevents inquiry. And inquiry into action is necessary, surely, because all living is action. Action is not departmental, or partial; it is a total thing. Action is our relationship to everything: to people, to nature, to ideas, to things. Life cannot be without action. Even though you retire to a monastery, or become a sannyasi, or a hermit in the Himalayas, you are still in action, because you are still in relationship. And action, surely, is not a matter of right and wrong. It is only when action is partial, not total, that there is right and wrong

J Krishnamurti
The Collected Works, Vol. XI New Delhi 3rd Public Talk 21st February 1960

Across the Universe

Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter shades of life
are ringing through my open ears
exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Jai guru deva
Jai guru deva

I carry your heart with me, E.E Cummings

I carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

I fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
I want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Love at first sight, Wislawa Szymborska

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?

I'd like to ask them
whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door
ever being face to face?
an "excuse me" in a crowd
or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver.
But I know their answer:
no, they don't remember.

They'd be greatly astonished
to learn that for a long time
chance had been playing with them.

Not yet wholly ready
to transform into fate for them
it approached them, then backed off,
stood in their way
and, suppressing a giggle,
jumped to the side.

There were signs, signals:
but what of it if they were illegible.
Perhaps three years ago,
or last Tuesday
did a certain leaflet fly
from shoulder to shoulder?
There was something lost and picked up.
Who knows but what it was a ball
in the bushes of childhood.

There were doorknobs and bells
on which earlier
touch piled on touch.
Bags beside each other in the luggage room.
Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,
suddenly erased after waking.

Every beginning
is but a continuation,
and the book of events
is never more than half open.

...................

อย่ากลัว

ความจริงสามัญที่เรามักหลงลืมเสมอเมื่ออยู๋ในห้วงความทุกข์ คือเรื่องจริงรอบตัวที่เกิดขึ้นเป็นประจำทุกวัน พระอาทิตย์ขึ้น-ตก ฝนตก-หยุดตก กลางวัน-กลางคืน ทั้งๆที่เราอยู่กับสิ่งเหล่านี้ทุกลมหายใจ แต่แทบไม่เคยสังเกตุความจริงสามัญเหล่านั้นเลย

เมื่อมีความทุกข์ เศร้า ผิดหวัง อ่อนล้า เหมือนจะมีม่านบังตาปิดกั้นไม่ให้เราเห็นความจริงบางอย่าง และกดทับสมองและหัวใจไม่ให้เราเข้าใจและยอมรับความเป็นไปธรรมดาของโลกใบนี้ เรายังดื้อรั้น ยังยึดติด จนในที่สุดก็ไม่หลุดพ้นจากวงจรของความทุกข์ไปได้

เหนื่อยล้า หลงทาง ไม่เข้าใจตัวเอง และไม่ยอมเข้าใจคนอื่น เป็นช่วงเวลาที่ยากลำบาก แต่ขณะนี้ได้สติแล้ว ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน เช้าวันใหม่จะมาถึง