On Nature and the Environment

Jiddu Krishnamurti

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780062312594
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti shows that the connection between our inner world of thoughts and emotions is inextricably linked to the outer world of humanity and the environment.

From Letters to the Schools Volume 2, 1 November 1983

ONE IS QUITE sure that the educators are aware of what is actually happening in the world. People are divided racially, religiously, politically, economically, and this division is fragmentation. It is bringing about great chaos in the world: wars, every kind of deception politically, and so on. There is the spreading of violence, man against man. This is the actual state of confusion in the world, in the society in which we live, and this society is created by all human beings with their cultures, their linguistic divisions, their regional separation. All this is breeding not only confusion but hatred, a great deal of antagonism, and further linguistic differences. This is what is happening and the responsibility of the educator is really very great.

WHAT IS THIS education doing actually? Is it really helping man or his children to become more concerned, more gentle, or generous; is it helping him not to go back to the old pattern, the old ugliness and naughtiness of this world? If he is really concerned, as he must be, then he has to help the student to find out his relationship to the world, not to the world of imagination or romantic sentimentality, but to the actual world in which all things are taking place. And also to the world of nature, to the desert, the jungle, or the few trees that surround him, and to the animals of the world. Animals fortunately are not nationalistic; they hunt only to survive. If the educator and the student lose their relationship to nature, to the trees, to the rolling sea, each will certainly lose his relationship with man.

What is nature? There is a great deal of talk and endeavour to protect nature, the animals, the birds, the whales and dolphins, to clean the polluted rivers, the lakes, the green fields, and so on. Nature is not put together by thought, as religion is, as belief is. Nature is the tiger, that extraordinary animal with its energy, its great sense of power. Nature is the solitary tree in the field, the meadows and the grove; it is that squirrel shyly hiding behind a bough. Nature is the ant and the bee and all the living things of the earth. Nature is the river, not a particular river, whether the Ganges, the Thames, or the Mississippi. Nature is all those mountains, snowclad, with the dark blue valleys and range of hills meeting the sea One must have a feeling for all this, not destroy it, not kill for one’s pleasure.

NATURE IS PART of our life. We grew out of the seed, the earth, and we are part of all that, but we are rapidly losing the sense that we are animals like the others. Can you have a feeling for that tree? Look at it, see the beauty of it, listen to the sound it makes; be sensitive to the little plant, to the little weed, to that creeper that is growing up the wall, to the light on the leaves and the many shadows. You must be aware of all this and have that sense of communion with nature around you. You may live in a town but you do have trees here and there. A flower in the next garden may be ill-kept, crowded with weeds, but look at it, feel that you are part of all that, part of all living things. If you hurt nature you are hurting yourself.

You know all this has been said before in different ways, but we don’t seem to pay much attention. Is it that we are so caught up in our own network of problems, our own desires, our own urges of pleasure and pain, that we never look around, never watch the moon? Watch it. Watch with all your eyes and ears, your sense of smell. Watch. Look as though you are looking for the first time. If you can do that, you are seeing that tree, that bush, that blade of grass for the first time. Then you can see your teacher, your mother and father, your brother and sister for the first time. There is an extraordinary feeling about that: the wonder, the strangeness, the miracle of a fresh morning that has never been before, never will be. Be really in communion with nature, not verbally caught in the description of it, but be a part of it, be aware, feel that you belong to all that, be able to have love for all that, to admire a deer, the lizard on the wall, that broken branch lying on the ground. Look at the evening star or the new moon, without the word, without merely saying how beautiful it is and turning your back on it, attracted by something else, but watch that single star and new delicate moon as though for the first time. If there is such communion between you and nature then you can commune with man, with the boy sitting next to you, with your educator, or with your parents. We have lost all sense of relationship in which there is not only a verbal statement of affection and concern but also this sense of communion that is not verbal. It is a sense that we are all together, that we are all human beings, not divided, not broken up, not belonging to any particular group or race, or to some idealistic concepts, but that we are all human beings, we are all living on this extraordinary, beautiful earth.

THE EDUCATOR SHOULD talk about all these things, not just verbally but he himself must feel it—the world, the world of nature and the world of man. They are interrelated. Man cannot escape from that. When he destroys nature he is destroying himself. When he kills another he is killing himself. The enemy is not the other but you. To live in such harmony with nature, with the world, naturally brings about a different world.

From Letters to the Schools Volume 2, 15 November 1983

YOU LEARN A great deal by watching—watching the things about you, watching the birds, the trees, watching the heavens, the stars, the constellation of Orion, the Dipper, the evening star. You learn just by watching not only the things around you but also by watching people: how they walk, how they gesture, what words they use, how they dress. You not only watch that which is outside but also you watch yourself, why you think this or that, how you behave, how you conduct your daily life, why parents want you to do this or that. You are watching, not resisting. If you resist you don’t learn. Or if you come to some kind of conclusion, some opinion you think is right, and hold on to that, then naturally you will never learn. Freedom is necessary to learn, and curiosity, a sense of wanting to know why you or others behave in a certain way, why people are angry, why you get annoyed.

YOUR PARENTS, especially in the East, tell you whom you should marry and arrange the marriage; they tell you what your career should be. So the brain accepts the easy way and the easy way is not always the right way. I wonder if you have noticed that nobody loves their work any more, except perhaps a few scientists, artists, archaeologists. But the ordinary, average man seldom loves what he is doing. He is compelled by society, by his parents, or by the urge to have more money. So learn by watching very, very carefully the external world, the world outside you, and the inner world—that is, the world of yourself.

From Talks in Europe 1968, Paris, 25 April 1968

RELATIONSHIP CAN ONLY exist when there is total abandonment of the self, the “me.” When the me is not, then you are related, in that there is no separation whatsoever. Probably one has not felt that, the total denial (not intellectually but actually), the total cessation of the me. And perhaps that’s what most of us are seeking, sexually or through identification with something greater. But that again, that process of identification with something greater, is the product of thought; and thought is old (like the me, the ego, the I, it is of yesterday), it is always old. The question then arises: how is it possible to let go this isolating process completely, this process that is centred in the me. How is this to be done? You understand the question? How am I (whose every activity of everyday life is of fear, anxiety, despair, sorrow, confusion, and hope), how is the me that separates itself from another, through identification with god, with its conditioning, with its society, with its social and moral activity, with the State, and so on—how is that to die, to disappear so that the human being can be related? Because if we are not related, then we are going to live at war with each other. There may be no killing of each other because that is becoming too dangerous, except in faraway countries. How can we live so that there is no separation, so that we really can co-operate?

There is so much to do in the world: to wipe away poverty; to live happily; to live with delight instead of with agony and fear; to build a totally different kind of society, a morality that is above all morality. But this can only be when all the morality of present day society is totally denied. There is so much to do and it cannot be done if there is this constant isolating process going on. We speak of the “me” and the “mine” and the “other”—the other is beyond the wall, the me and mine is this side of the wall. So how can that essence of resistance, which is the me, how can that be completely “let go”? Because that is really the most fundamental question in all relationship, as one sees that the relationship between images is not relationship at all and that when that kind of relationship exists there must be conflict, that we must be at each other’s throats.

When you put to yourself that question, inevitably you’ll say, “Must I live in a vacuum, in a state of emptiness?” I wonder if you have ever known what it is to have a mind that is completely empty. You have lived in space that is created by the “me” (which is a very small space). The space that the “I,” the self-isolating process, has built between one person and another is all the space we know—the space between itself and the circumference—the frontier that thought has built. And in this space we live, in this space there is division. You say, “If I let myself go, or if I abandon the centre of me, I will live in a vacuum.” But have you ever really let go the me, actually, so that there is no me at all? Have you ever lived in this world, gone to the office in that spirit, lived with your wife or with your husband? If you have lived that way you will know that there is a state of relationship in which the me is not, which is not Utopia, which is not a thing dreamt about, or a mystical, nonsensical experience, but something that can be actually done—to live at a dimension where there is relationship with all human beings.

But that can only be when we understand what love is. And to be, to live in that state, one must understand the pleasure of thought and all its mechanism. Then all complicated mechanism that one has built for oneself, around oneself, can be seen at a glance. One hasn’t got to go through all this analytical process point by point. All analysis is fragmentary, and therefore there is no answer through that door.

There is this immense complex problem of existence with all its fears, anxieties, hopes, fleeting happiness, and joys, but analysis is not going to solve it. What will do so is to take it all in swiftly, as a whole. You know you understand something only when you look—not with a prolonged trained look, the trained look of an artist, a scientist, or the man who has practised “how to look.” You see it if you look at it with complete attention; you see the whole thing in one glance. And then you will see you are out of it. Then you are out of time; time has a stop and sorrow therefore ends. A man that is in sorrow, or fear, is not related. How can a man who is pursuing power have relationship? He may have a family, sleep with his wife, but he is not related. A man who is competing with another has no relationship at all. And all our social structure with its unmorality is based on this. To be fundamentally, essentially, related means the ending of the me that breeds separation and sorrow.

From Talks in Europe 1968, Amsterdam, 22 May 1968

As ONE OBSERVES what is happening in the world, the chaos, the confusion and the brutality of man to man, which no religion or social order—or perhaps disorder—has been able to prevent, as one observes the activities of the politicians, the economists, the social reformers, right throughout the world, one sees they have brought more and more confusion, more and more misery. Religions, that is organized beliefs, have certainly in no way helped to bring order, deep, abiding happiness to man. Nor have any Utopias, whether the Communist or those minority groups who have formed communities, brought any deep, lasting clarity to man. And one needs a tremendous revolution right throughout the world; a great change is necessary. We do not mean an outward revolution, but an inward revolution at the psychological level, which obviously is the only hope, is the only—if one can use the word—salvation for man. Ideologies have brought brutality, they have brought various forms of killing, wars; ideologies, however noble, are really quite ignoble. There must be a total mutation in the very structure of our brain cells, in the very structure of thought. And to bring about such deep lasting mutation, revolution, or change, one needs a great deal of energy. One needs a drive, a sustained, constant intensity, not the casual interest or passing enthusiasm that brings about a certain quality of energy, which is soon dissipated …. And that energy man has hoped to come by through resistance, through constant discipline, imitation, conformity…. Yet that resistance, conformity, discipline, mere adjustment to an idea, has not given man that necessary energy and force. So one has to find a different action that will bring this necessary energy.

In this present structure of society, in our relationship between man and man, the more we act, the less energy we have. For in that action there is contradiction, fragmentation, and so that action brings conflict and therefore wastes energy. One has to find the energy, which is sustaining, which is constant, which does not fade away. And I think there is such an action that brings about this vital quality that is necessary for a deep radical revolution in the mind. For most of us, action—that is “to do,” to be active—takes place according to an idea, ...