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Word Gems

self-knowledge, authentic living, full humanity, continual awakening

Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895 - 1986

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Public Talk 2, New York - 23 May 1954

Question: I have always tried to be sincere to my ideals, but you say they are destructive. What have you to offer in their stead?

Krishnamurti: There are several things involved in this problem: sincerity, ideals, and if there are no ideals, whether there is something to put in their place. Let us go into the problem slowly and look at it.

What do we mean by sincerity? To be sincere to something. If I have an ideal, I try to live according to that ideal; and if I live as much as I can according to that ideal which I have set for myself, I am considered a sincere person.

Now, the ideal is the creation of my mind in seeking its own security, is it not? Please follow this, don't resist it. You will go on with your ideals, you will go on with your particular pattern of action, unfortunately, so you don't have to resist what is being said; but you can at least listen to find out.

You have an ideal because it gives you comfort. It may be a difficult ideal for you to live up to but the very struggle to live up to that ideal gives you satisfaction, it gives you a sense of conformity, a sense of well-being, a sense of respectability. In essence, the ideal gives you security, and that is why you project these ideals. If I am violent, I do not like that state of violence, so I project the ideal of non-violence and pursue it. The ideal and the pursuance of that ideal give me security, a sense of well-being. I am being sincere to my own desire, I am being sincere to what I want; and such a man, who is pursuing what he wants, you call noble.

So, ideals are destructive because they are separative; they are the projection of our own desires; they bring about a conflict between what I am, which is the actuality, and what I should be.

The ideal creates a duality between what I am and what I should be, and this struggle between what I am and what I should be is called living according to the ideal. We are afraid not to struggle because, being conditioned to struggle everlastingly between good and bad, between the evil and the noble, we say, "If I do not struggle, what will happen?" If the ideal is taken away we feel completely lost, and the questioner wants to know what can be placed in its stead.

To me, the idealist is one who is caught between what is and what should be, and is therefore in a state of hypocrisy; because what should be is not. Why should I turn my attention to what should be? I can only understand what is.

If I am violent, can I not resolve my violence rather than try to become non-violent? Instead of pursuing the ideal and thereby creating a conflict between what is and what should be, this conflict of the opposites which creates innumerable problems, can I not look at what is? Instead of projecting the opposite and creating the conflict, can I not look at what I actually am? But that is the very thing we avoid, is it not? Because most of us do not want to know what we actually are. Either we are ashamed of it and we condemn it, or we are afraid of it, or we want to change it into something else.

So we never look at what is; and before we can change what is, must we not know its structure, what it is in actuality? And how can I know what it is when I am all the time concerned with trying to change it, to rearrange it, to run away from it? We are so afraid of being naked, empty, without a thing. We want to fill our emptiness with something. If I am lonely, I run away from that loneliness, I turn on the radio, read a book, go to church, pray, plunge into social activities, do anything to escape from it; but if I do not escape from it, I am afraid of it.

So, fear prevents us from understanding what is, fear makes us carry on various forms of activity which act as an escape from the reality of what is. Therefore, is it not important for each one of us to put away all ideals, since they have no meaning, and see what is actually taking place in us from moment to moment? And if we are aware of ourselves from moment to moment, choicelessly, without condemning, without judging, without yielding to that which we have considered before as fearful, ugly, bad, evil, will it then exist? Fear exists only when we are running away. The very process of running away is fear; and when, without running away, we can look at the thing that we have condemned before, the thing from which we have run away, the thing which we are struggling to change, when we can look at it without doing any of these things, will not the very thing from which we have been trying to escape, cease to exist?

If you really go into this question you will see that when a mind is violent, because it has the ideal of non-violence, because it is escaping from the state in which it is, because it wants to alter that state, therefore it is resisting violence. This does not mean that the mind must yield to violence; but when the mind is free from all resistance with regards to violence, does the problem exist at all? Surely, the problem exists because the mind resists.

Please, as I said, this thing has to be thought over, or, which is much better, directly experienced; and then you will see that when the mind has no ideal, when it is not trying to become something, there is a state of being in which time is not.

For time is the problem. Old age, the sense of frustration, the fear of not achieving, not becoming, not fulfilling - all that involves time, and that is all we know, in that state we live and function, we struggle.

So, this conflict between what is and what should be is a never ending process; and when the mind realizes that, then is there not a freedom of being in which there is no becoming?

Therefore you don't need any ideal, and I think it is very important to understand this. Surely, this is the real revolution, not the process of creating the antithesis, and then struggling with the antithesis to produce a synthesis.

If you can think in these terms, not of becoming, but of being - which is astonishingly difficult and subtle to understand - , then you will find that the many problems which involve time completely cease. Therefore the mind is free to uncover and to find out what is the real, and the blessing of it.