To live differently

 

QUESTION: The whole world of nature is a competition to survive. Is it not innate in humans to struggle for the same reason? And are we not struggling against our basic nature in seeking to change?

 

Krishnamurti: Don't change. It's very simple. If you want to remain as you are, carry on, nobody is going to prevent you. Religions have tried to civilize man. But they haven't succeeded. On the contrary. Some religions, like Christianity, have killed more people than anybody on earth. Right? I don't know if you have watched this. They have had two appalling wars, and they have killed millions. Not only Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, these wars have destroyed. Right? And if we carry on this way, not wanting to change, it's all right. But the question is: nature struggles to achieve light, like in a forest, for example. And it is a struggle. Right? The big, the stronger kills the weaker in nature. The tiger kills the deer, the lion kills some other thing, this goes on, this is part of nature. And the questioner says, if it is part of nature, why should we change at all? Because it's intrinsic. Why do we say it's intrinsic? Why do  we say, there it's all right, and therefore it's all right with us too; and so why bother to change. It's part of us, part of nature, part of our existence, intrinsically this is what we are. And if that is so, that it is instinct, that it's innate in us, which one questions very deeply, then I can't change anything. But why should we accept that it's innate in us? Is it my indolence that says, "For God's sake, leave it all alone." Is it my sense of exhaustion? Or we are supposed to be as human beings a little more intelligent, little more reasonable, little more sane, and we are supposed to use our sanity, our intelligence, our experience to live differently? Right? To live differently. Perhaps that difference may be total; and not just remain as a mediocre person which is now being encouraged for human beings to remain mediocre, through their education and all the rest of it.

 

 

Krishnamurti - Ojai 6th Public Talk 21st July 1955