The Art of Listening

J Krishnamurti

• Publisher: Krishnamurti Foundation America
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781912875085
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This comprehensive record of Krishnamurti's teachings is an excellent, wide-ranging introduction to the great philosopher's thought. With among others, Jacob Needleman, Alain Naude, and Swami Venkatasananda, Krishnamurti examines such issues as the role of the teacher and tradition; the need for awareness of 'cosmic consciousness; the problem of good and evil; and traditional Vedanta methods of help for different levels of seekers.

Holland, 1933

First Talk at Ommen

If it is possible, I want this camp, during these three weeks, to be different from the other camps that we have held so far. During these three weeks, I will try to make my ideas clear, and please try to understand their full significance; please do not go away, after this camp, with merely a new set of illusions, covering up the old. If what I say is not clear, ask questions, and I shall explain again and again—it does not matter how often.

If we all thought alike, you would not be here in this gathering. But, during these talks, I am going to try to explain the differences, so that we understand each other. Let us be frank; let us not try to agree over things that we do not understand. At present, I feel that you are not sure what I think. But to find out what I think, you must first be sure of what you yourselves think, which is much easier than finding out what I think. During these past many camps, up to now, I feel that we have never tried to find out what each one really thinks. You have never been quite sure of what I think, nor of what you yourselves think.

The important point is not whether you are bound by old traditions or old systems of thought, but that you are really aware of what you are thinking, that you are quite certain of your own thought. Then, if I say something which is opposed to what you think, there can be no compromise; for all compromise destroys the fullness of action. This does not mean that you must adopt my ideas and force yourself to look at life as I do. Please, do not think that in the combination of your ideas and mine, you are going to realize a unified whole. It is in the fulfillment of a true thought that there can ever be completeness. I am afraid most of you are trying to compromise. This, among other things, I shall try to explain during these three weeks.

If you are contented and happy with life, you would not come here. The majority of you are here because you perceive there is so much cruelty, suffering in the world, and as you yourself are a part of it, you want to find out if there is a true and lasting understanding of this terrifying chaos. For without this comprehension, there is a constant dread of utter emptiness of mind and heart. This we can discuss simply, frankly, only when you know for yourselves what you really think; but if you don’t know what you think, then, I fear, you will not understand what I am trying to say.

Many of you come to these meetings with the desire to find a new set of beliefs and systems in which you can take comforting shelter. But I cannot give them to you, as there are no shelters or escapes from life. These beliefs are snares and illusions, destroying utterly understanding. You are unconsciously ever wanting these comforting illusions, and naturally what I say must cause bewilderment, disappointment. You listen to what I say, but my words leave you in great confusion.

Now, before I continue with what I want to say, please let me make one or two points clear. I am not talking to an audience with one mind, one heart, one belief; I am not talking to a group of people who come here for pleasure, or out of habit, or to a nucleus of listeners with sectarian spirit. I am not talking to an assemblage of mere reformers. I am not addressing a group; I am talking to individuals. For only when you are entirely alone, are you able to discern what is true.

Let me repeat that I am not a reformer. I am not here to remake you, to force you to follow a new set of beliefs. Please understand the significance of this. Most of you want to shape yourselves after a certain pattern, to conform to a set of ideas, beliefs. Now, this attempt to force the mind and heart after a belief, a pattern, must inevitably create conflict and suffering. So, I am not creating a new system for you to follow, I am not offering you a new set of beliefs which shall act as your guide.

People want to fit into a mold because they think that living according to a pattern can be easier, safer, and without suffering, than living without one. They struggle to force their mental and emotional lives to fit into the grooves of a set system. Then, having conformed, they try to force others to reshape their lives. And this they call helping and reforming the world, serving mankind, and other fine-sounding phrases.

Now, I do not desire to reform you. But what I want to do is to help you perceive the barriers that surround you, and when you have discerned them, you can be rid of them yourself, and not reshape yourself to fit some other pattern. When you yourself break through these patterns and systems, your action becomes spontaneous. Then it is no longer bound by mere custom, it is no longer born of mere habit. When you free your mind and heart from the many barriers that shut them in, then there is the flow of reality.

Now, your existence may be quite placid and contented, which may be taken for a life of understanding, but in reality you may have merely protected yourself against problems and conflicts through beliefs, ideals, and explanations. But you are conscious of life only when there is conflict, pain, suffering, out of which alone comes the true understanding of life. For instance, a sprained ankle, as long as it is carefully bandaged and not used, it may give you no pain; but when it is used, blood surges through it, causing pain. So, likewise, you have many twisted ideas and perverted judgments of which you are wholly unconscious. They reveal themselves only through conflict and suffering, if you do not escape from them. When you become mentally and emotionally aware of these barriers, without reshaping yourself after another pattern, the freedom from these limitations is a spontaneous and an intelligent progress without self-imposed discipline and control.

Most people think only in terms of reform, but not in complete change, revolution. People insist, for instance, on the value of discipline. They believe that they can reform themselves only through rigid self-control. They believe either in an artificial discipline externally imposed, as by society, religion, or economic conditions; or in an inner discipline according to which they govern themselves. Either a man adopts an external standard as a beacon by which he guides his thoughts, or he creates an inner standard which guides his actions. That is the case with the majority of people. I don’t believe in reforming discipline. To me, discipline is merely destructive; it is a narrowing down of the heart and mind. Later on, we shall come back to this point. I talk of it here merely to point out that, from my point of view, there cannot be reformation with regard to discipline. Since you believe in it, since the structure of your thought is based on discipline, on control, on authority, there naturally arises confusion between what I say, and your convictions.

Discovering that former beliefs, traditions, and ideals have no longer any deep significance, you are seeking new ideals, ethics, and new conceptions to replace the old. So you go from one teacher to another, from one sect or religion to another, hoping that by putting together many finites there will be the infinite, like the bee that gathers honey. Either there is a search for a change that will yield a new and further sensation, or else there is a desire for deep, inner security, only through a new system of beliefs, ideals, and through its exponents. Which of these are you seeking? If you are seeking neither of these, sensation nor security, then there is in you a deep longing to understand life itself, realizing that from this understanding alone can there be a new conception of morality and of action. But to fully grasp the significance of this, the mind must be free from the desire for security and sensation. This is one of the most difficult tasks, to keep the mind and heart from conformity and accumulative knowledge which becomes merely a safeguard against the ever-changing present or against the future. The reserve fund of these safeguards creates the limited consciousness of the ‘I’. Between these protective safeguards and the movement of life there must inevitably arise conflict. To escape from this conflict, the mind creates further security and illusions, getting more and more entangled and limited. Take the case of a wealthy man: he is afraid of the emptiness that would exist in his life if he lost his possessions. As he dreads this, he tries to make himself more and more secure by the continual attempt to increase his possessions.

To free yourself from the pursuit of security and power, you mentally create its opposite. But in doing this you are merely creating another set of securities, only calling it by different names. This opposite is nothing more than another form of security, even though it is called love, humility, service, following truth.

To this new opposite, you try to be sincere, glorifying it as peace, humility, service, as opposed to security, power. You abandon a certain set of ideas, a certain group of concepts and create new ones which become your security. And these you safeguard as carefully as the rich man guards his treasure, both by the group as well as by the individual. So you have changed, if this is a change at all, merely from one set of ideas to another with different names, but under the new covering there are the same desires and hopes for security.

To me there is no such thing as security; and yet that is what almost everyone is constantly seeking, even though each one may disguise it by a different word. With conscious or unconscious desire for some kind of security, certainty, you come to listen to me; you take my words and build out of them the structure of your longing. Out of this contradiction, there arises confusion and the appearance of the negative quality of what I am saying.

For this reason, discover what it is you are seeking. If you find that you really want security, then go into it profoundly, with your whole being, completely. Then you will understand that there is no such thing as security. When you discover that, you may turn to the opposite; you may try deliberately to become insecure, which would only be another form of security. The more you delve into your security, the looser and looser it becomes. It has no substance. It would lose its grip on you, but you are afraid to let it, because you dread the emptiness that may then come upon your mind and heart.

To truly find out for yourself what it is that you are seeking, there must be frankness and not sincerity. You can be sincere to an idea but that idea may be an illusion, utterly false. The foolish are sincere to an idea or to something. After all, there is no great difference between the foolish who are sincere to a single idea and those who try to be sincere to many ideas. Sincerity implies duality. It implies the actor, and the thing or person or idea to which he is trying to be sincere. Out of this duality there arises a hypocritical contradiction. Frankness admits no duality, and hence there is not always that striving to be something which again breeds hypocrisy. Sincerity often conceals shallowness, but frankness, that open recognition of what is, uncovers great richness.

Now, in your attempt to find out what your true desires are, do not try to control your thought and emotion. Rather, let the mind be so eagerly conscious that all the impediments, the bonds which now weigh down your thought, will reveal themselves. In discovering these hindrances, you will understand the pursuit of your hidden desires. The man who is held in bondage can be free only when his bonds are destroyed. So the realization of that which is can come about only when the mind is utterly free from the hindrances that it has and is creating for itself.

By being frank you can find out your own limitations, your own complicated illusions. But if you are merely sincere you can never find them out, because you are constantly trying to be true to an ideal which prevents the understanding of the actual. It is only when the mind has disentangled from illusion that there is the ecstasy of enduring life.

July 27, 1933

Second Talk at Ommen

Friends,

To understand the constant movement of life, the mind must be free from the burden of explanatory knowledge; it must be free from the attempt to hold the self-protective lessons of experience. It must meet life anew every day, and in that meeting there is understanding.

Most of us, I think, realize consciously or unconsciously that there is an emptiness, an insufficiency in our lives, and we try to run away from that insufficiency, through sensation, through forgetfulness, or through work. In the search for sensation we go from one experience to another; we desire greater variety in sensation, and this movement of sensation we call experience. Yet that empty void, that loneliness, does not cease to exist. We are simply trying to get away from it through experience, and this attempt to escape, this effort to fill it with experience, with mere knowledge, only creates greater insufficiency. Where there is an emptiness there is always a craving and a grasping.

Where there is wanting there can never be discernment. Choice, which is based on want, can never bring about discernment. Choice is the conflict of the opposites. In choosing between opposites, you merely create further opposites. What is considered to be the essential becomes the unessential, and this movement is not progress. Choice creates the opposites. As long as the mind is caught in this system of opposites there can never be discernment. Wanting prevents discernment. Where there is want there is emptiness. You cannot destroy it, get rid of it, but you have to discover the cause that creates want. Now, because there is insufficiency in yourself, you try to fill that emptiness through sensation of various kinds, from the gross forms to the most subtle. Want exists only when there is not the right understanding of values. When you realize this with your whole being, then you will begin to discern the intrinsic value of all things; then you will no longer perceive values as merely the result of opposites.

When there is want, action must be incomplete. Now, that incompleteness further increases the emptiness of mind and heart.

In awareness is discernment, in which there is no choice. Choice is a ceaseless struggle, a constant conflict.

Question: Please explain clearly what you mean by frankness as distinguished from sincerity. Do you mean that we must first be absolutely true in ourselves in what we do, feel, and think in order to understand life in the whole?

KRISHNAMURTI: What I mean by sincerity is this: You have an ideal, a preconception, or a pattern in your mind, in accordance with which you shape your thought and conduct. You try to be sincere to that ideal or principle. So a person who so shapes his life, who holds rigidly to an idea or principle, you call “sincere.” The more closely he lives according to that principle (and principles, ideals must be limited) the more sincere he is. But to me, such a person can never understand the flow of reality.

Now, frankness is openness, which reveals actuality, the present, without any bias. Only by being intelligently frank can you find out your own limitation. You cannot do this by merely being sincere to an ideal, to a hope. You can discover your little vanities, hindrances, and conceits only through absolute frankness.

First you must find out what you are; only then will you know how to act with regard to what you discover. Most people think according to a certain pattern or principle, or their thought is influenced or controlled by environment, which must naturally hinder the flow of reality. To discover these hindrances, mind must become aware of its own thoughts, and in intelligently allowing them freedom, you will then begin to discern the secretive fears and hopes that are constantly throwing up barriers against the full expression of life, which causes suffering. This needs great frankness and awakened desire to understand, but if there is want, intelligent comprehension of the present is destroyed. This lack of discernment creates duality in action, and this incompleteness is the cause of suffering.

Question: I have found that in the process of getting rid of personal barriers one feels the urge for self-discipline. Yet you say that you do not believe in self-discipline. What do you mean by self-discipline?

KRISHNAMURTI: I wonder if you have asked this question really to find out what I think, or are you so strongly in favor of self-discipline that you feel you have to oppose what I have to say with regard to it? If you are steadfastly opposed to what I say, then that is the end of the discussion. Because I talk about the futility of self-discipline, don’t think that you must not have self-discipline. The majority of you assembled here have already made up your minds that self-discipline is essential. You have practiced it for years. Your system and beliefs demand it, your religions insist upon it, your sacred books cry aloud concerning it, and you yourselves hold it to be of great value. But if you want to find out what I think about it, you must try to understand the whole significance of self-discipline and not merely a part of it.

A mind that is being consistent must submit itself to self-discipline. Now, why has it to be consistent? Isn’t it because it cannot understand the swift movement of the present? Isn’t it because it cannot follow the rapid change and significance of experience? Because the mind cannot meet experience, life—completely, wholly—it resorts to a standard, to authority behind which it takes shelter, afraid to meet the unknown. For the understanding of experience, there is no precedent. The mind tries to live in the vibrant fullness of today with the burden of dead yesterdays. Thus, the present action is being forced into the channels of the past. Out of this there arises the dictum, born of fear, “I must,” or “I must not.”

Look to the lack of understanding that demands self-discipline, and not to the best method of discipline. You are one thing today and another thing tomorrow. You are different today from what you will be tomorrow. Yet the mind is forcing and twisting itself to follow a certain rule, and thereby you are creating a conflict. Thus, there is never completeness in action, that true fulfillment.

Consistency involves memory; it involves the remembrance of a certain ideal, a certain pattern which is predetermined, based on self-protection and on fear. The memory of that which is already dead disciplines you. Now, if you are constantly acting in accordance with that memory, how can you live spontaneously, or follow the swift wanderings of truth? There must be the understanding of the significance of the desire to be consistent, the cause, before abandoning self-discipline, the result.

Because one does not meet every incident of life wholly, there arises conflict which creates memory. Mind identifies itself with this suffering, out of which it creates for itself a self-protective principle, and by this measure all experiences are judged and controlled. It is in suffering only that the mind tries to escape, consciously or unconsciously, to the pattern, and from this there arises...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Italy, 1933
• Holland, 1933
• Norway, 1933
• India, 1933-1934
• Questions