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Life is a well of deep waters. One can come to it with small buckets and draw only a little water, or one can come with large vessels, drawing plentiful waters that will nourish and sustain. While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover... |
To educate a child is to help him to understand freedom and integration. To have freedom there must be order, which virtue alone can give; and integration can take place only when there is great simplicity. From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our out... |
Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can. Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobl... |
While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right k... |
Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one�s relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integrated, there can be no fanatical or unreasonable emphasis on any particular phase of life. It is the und... |
Human beings must be integrated if they are to come out of any crisis, and especially the present world crisis, without being broken; therefore, to parents and teachers who are really interested in education, the main problem is how to develop an integrated individual. To do this, the educator himself must obviously be... |
Teaching should not become a specialist's profession. When it does, as is so often the case, love fades away; and love is essential to the process of integration. To be integrated there must be freedom from fear. Fearlessness brings independence without ruthlessness, without contempt for another, and this is the most e... |
The integrated human being will come to technique through experiencing, for the creative impulse makes its own technique - and that is the greatest art. When a child has the creative impulse to paint, he paints, he does not bother about technique. Likewise people who are experiencing, and therefore teaching, are the on... |
This sounds very simple, but it is really a deep revolution. If we think about it we can see the extraordinary effect it will have on society. At present most of us are washed out at the age of forty-five or fifty by slavery to routine; through compliance, through fear and acceptance, we are finished, though we struggl... |
To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and h... |
Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to "serve" with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to unde... |
When there is love there is consideration, not only for the children but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. Mere technical training inevitably makes for ruthlessness, and to educate our children we must be sensitive to the whole movement of... |
Obviously, then, those of us who are deeply interested in this problem will have to begin to understand ourselves and thereby help to transform society; we will make it our direct responsibility to bring about a new approach to education. If we love our children, will we not find a way of putting an end to war? But if ... |
The bringing up of a child requires intelligent observation and care. Experts and their knowledge can never replace the parents's love, but most parents corrupt that love by their own fears and ambitions, which condition and distort the outlook of the child. So few of us are concerned with love, but we are vastly taken... |
The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration; and if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind... |
The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves. The contradiction which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group creates an endless battle within himself and in his rel... |
This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education, and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very start, which results in personal and social disasters. |
If those of us who love our children and see the urgency of this problem will set our minds and hearts to it, then, however few we may be, through right education and an intelligent home environment, we can help to bring about integrated human beings; but if, like so many others, we fill our hearts with the cunning thi... |
Right education comes with the transformation of ourselves. We must re-educate ourselves not to kill one another for any cause, however righteous, for any ideology, however promising it may appear to be for the future happiness of the world. We must learn to be compassionate, to be content with little, and to seek the ... |
Every profession has its discipline, every action has its direction and every thought has its end. This is the cycle in which the human mind is caught. Being a slave to the known, the mind is always trying to expand its knowledge, its action within that field, its thought seeking its own end. In all schools, discipline... |
To cultivate a good mind, a mind that is capable of perceiving the whole of life as one unit unbroken, and so a good mind, it is necessary that in all our schools a certain kind of discipline must exist. We must together understand the hated and perhaps despised words `discipline' and `rules'. |
To learn, you need to have attention, to learn there must be hearing not only with the ear, but an inward grasp of what is being said. To learn it is necessary to observe. When you hear or read these statements you have to pay an attention which is not compelled, not be under any pressure or expectation of reward or pu... |
So learning demands application and order. Discipline is never conformity, so don't be afraid of the word and rebel against it. Words have become very important in our life. The word god has become extraordinarily important to most people; or the word nation, or the name of a politician and so on. |
The word is the image of the politician; the image of god is built by thousands of years of thought and fear. We live with images created by the mind or by a skilful hand. To learn about these images, which one has accepted or self-created, demands self-awareness. |
Education is not only learning about academic subjects but to educate oneself |
I have been sent many questions. I propose to answer as many of them as possible this evening. All these questions have been re-formed, but the substance has been kept. There are some questions which have been repeated and we thought it would be better to re-form them and we have about 15 or 16 questions here. But, bef... |
What part can education play in the present world crisis? |
First of all, to understand what part education can play in the world crisis, we must understand how the present crisis has come into being. Without understanding that, merely to build on the same values, on the same grounds, on the same foundation, will bring about further wars, further disasters. So, we must first in... |
Have ideals any place in education? |
Certainly not. Ideals and the idealist in education prevent the comprehension of the present. This is an enormous problem and we are going, trying to deal with it say in 5 or 10 minutes, a problem upon which our whole structure is based., viz., that we have ideals and on those ideals we educate. Now, are ideals necessa... |
Is education in creativeness possible, or is creativeness purely accidental and therefore nothing can be done to facilitate its emergence? |
The question is, put differently, by learning a technique, will you be creative, i.e., by practice, by learning a technique, say the practice of piano, violin, by learning the technique of painting, will you be a painter, will you be a musician, will you be an artist? Does creativeness come into being through technique... |
Is not the imparting of sex experience necessary part of education? Is it not the only rational solution to the troubles of adolescence? |
Sir, to understand sex demands intelligence, not the ideal of something or other and it is an extremely difficult subject, like every other human problem and the educator if he himself has not understood it, that problem, how can he educate somebody else? If he is himself in the net, in the turmoil, in the extraordinar... |
Is not State education a calamity? If it is, how to raise the funds required? |
Obviously, State education is a calamity, which the governments won't agree. They don't want people who think, they want people as automatons. Because, then they can be told what to do. So, our education is, specially in the hands of governments, becoming more and more a means of what to think and not how to think. Bec... |
What have you to say about military drill in education? |
So, it all depends on what you want the human being to be. If you want him to be a marvellous, efficient cannon-fodder, then military drill is marvellous. If you want to regiment him, if you want to regiment his mind, his feelings, discipline him, then military drill is a very good way to do it. If you want to make him... |
What is the place of art in education? |
I don't quite know what you mean by art. Do you mean by hanging pictures in your school room or do you mean helping the child to draw a picture, according to a pattern because you have learnt a little technique or do you mean by teaching the child to be sensitive not to you as the teacher, to what you say, but to be se... |
Whom would you call a perfect teacher? |
Obviously, not the teacher who has an ideal, obviously not the teacher who is making profit out of teaching or who has built up an organisation, obviously not the teacher who is the instrument of the politician, obviously not the man who is bound to a belief, to a country; but a perfect teacher is one surely who does n... |
What is the place of discipline in education? |
I should say, none. Just a minute. I will explain it further. What is the purpose of discipline? What do you mean by discipline? You, being the teacher, when you discipline, what happens? You are forcing, compelling, compulsion, however nice, however kind, you are compelling, which means conformity, which means imitati... |
Many of us must have considered the problem of disintegration. Almost everything that we touch soon disintegrates. There is no creative, worthwhile action which soon does not end in complexities, worries, miseries, and confusion. It must have occurred to many of us why this should be so, and why at different levels of ... |
We are going to discuss this evening the question of "education." It seems to me that one of the major factors of deterioration everywhere is the so-called education. We are going into that presently as succinctly as possible. But before I go into that very complex problem, I think it is very necessary that you and I s... |
What do we mean by education? Why do we want to be educated? Why do you send your children to be educated? Is it the mere acquisition of some technical knowledge which will give you a certain capacity, with which to lead your life so that you can apply that technique and get a profitable job? Is that what we mean by ed... |
But is that education? Is that an integrating process in which there can be a comprehension of the whole, total process of life? That is, do you want to educate your children to understand the whole of life, and not merely a segment of life like the physical, emotional, mental, psychological, or spiritual; to have not ... |
So, what is this thing that brings about integration in life, that makes a human being intelligent? That is what we want; at least, that is what we intend to find out in our education, if we are at all intelligent and interested in education. That is what we are attempting to do, are we not? Does this subject interest ... |
Now, is it possible through education, the right kind of education, to bring about this integrated human being - that is, a human being who is thinking in terms of the whole, and not merely of the part; who is thinking as a total entity, as a total process, and not indulging in divided, broken up, fractional thinking? ... |
Our problem is how to bring about, through education, a human being who is creative, who is capable, who possesses that intelligence which is not burdened and which is not shaped in any particular direction but is total, who is not belonging to any particular society, caste, or religion so that through that education a... |
Now, that is our problem, is it not? Because we see what is happening in the world and especially here in this industrially backward country, we are trying to catch up industrially with the rest of the world; we think it will take ourselves and our children to catch up with the rest of the world. So, we are concerned w... |
We must create a different human being who is creative. That is important, is it not? And it is not possible to do this in a class where there are a hundred children or thirty or forty children and only one teacher - which means, really, every teacher must have very few children, which means again, the expense involved... |
As things are at present, and with this educational system and the so-called passing of examinations, is it possible to bring about an integrated human being, a human being who understands life or who is struggling to understand life - life being earning a livelihood, marriage, and all the problems of relationship, lov... |
Your immediate reaction to that is: What is the method? You want to know what the method is, how this can be brought about. Now, is there a method? Do please listen to this; don't brush it aside. Is there a method - a system - for the educator which will bring about that state of integration in a human being? Or, is th... |
We have not created a beautiful world, but perhaps, if we know how to help the child to grow intelligently, he might create a different world in which there will be no war, no antagonism between man and man. If you are interested in this, is it not the obvious responsibility of each grown-up individual to see that this... |
So if you are interested in this, you will create a right kind of educator and help the child to be free to create a new world. It is not a one man job; it is the responsibility of the educator, of the parent, and of the student. It is not just the teacher alone that is responsible for creating a human being, intellige... |
But if you were really concerned with the right type of education, surely, it is your responsibility as grown-up people to see that through education there is right livelihood, not any old livelihood. Right livelihood implies, obviously, not joining the army, not becoming a policeman, not becoming a lawyer. Obviously, ... |
To create an intelligent human being, there must be a complete revolution in our thinking. An intelligent human being means a fearless human being who is not bound by tradition, which does not mean he is immoral. You have to help your child to be free to find out, to create a new society - not a society according to so... |
Question: Even after the end of the British rule, there is no radical change in the system of our education. The stress as well as the demand is for specialization - technical and professional training. How best can education become the means to the realization of true freedom? |
Krishnamurti: Sir, what do we mean by true freedom? Political freedom? Or is it freedom to think what you like? Can you think what you like? And does thinking bring about freedom? Is not all thinking conditioned thinking? So, what do we mean by true freedom? |
So far as we know, education is conditioned thinking, is it not? All that we are concerned with is to acquire a job or use that knowledge for self-satisfaction, for self-aggrandizement, to get on in the world. Is it not important to see what we mean by true freedom? Perhaps if we understand that, then the training in s... |
Obviously the first necessity for freedom is that there should be no fear - not only the fear imposed by society, but also the psychological fear of insecurity. You may have a very good job and you may be climbing up the ladder of success, but if there is ambition, if there is the struggle to be somebody, does that not... |
So freedom is not possible if there is any form of outward or inward compulsion. Compulsion comes into being when there is the urge to conform to the pattern of society or to the pattern which you have created for yourself as being good or not good. The pattern is created by thought which is the outcome of the past, of... |
So, as long as the mind is seeking any form of security - and that is what most of us want - as long as the mind is seeking permanency in any form, there can be no freedom. As long as individually or collectively we seek security, there must be war, which is an obvious fact, and that is what is happening in the world t... |
We really do not seek true freedom. We seek something different from freedom, we seek better conditions, a better state. We do not want freedom; we want better, superior, nobler conditions, and that we call education. Can this education produce peace in the world? Certainly, not. On the contrary, it is going to produce... |
Instead of being integrated human beings, you are thinking separatively; your activities are fractioned, broken up, disintegrated - you're Maharashtra, you're Gujarat, you're Andhra, you're Tamil - you are all fighting; that is the result of this so-called freedom and so-called education. You say that you have unity re... |
Your present way of living indicates that you really do not want to have freedom; what you want is merely a better way of living, more safety, more contentment, to be assured of a job, to be assured of your position - religiously, politically. Such people cannot create a new world. They are not religious people. They a... |
Freedom is something entirely different. Freedom comes into being; it cannot be sought after. It comes into being when there is no fear, when there is love in your heart. You cannot have love and think in terms of a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, a Parsee, or God knows what else. Freedom comes into being only when the m... |
It is the responsibility of the educator to create a new human being, to bring about a different human being, fearless, self-reliant, who will create his own society - a society totally unlike ours because ours is based on fear, envy, ambition, corruption. True freedom can only come when intelligence comes into being -... |
Question: Modern life has become abjectly dependent on highly trained persons; what are your views on university education? How can we prevent the misuse of higher technical knowledge? |
Krishnamurti: Sir, surely it all depends on for what you are being educated. If you are merely being educated to a particular specialized job through university education in which there is no consideration of the total process of existence - which is love, concern for your neighbor, the problem of what is truth, death,... |
Now, how are you going to prevent it, sirs? How are you and I going to prevent it? Sirs, is it not your responsibility? Or do you say, "It is our karma, we do what we can to live, but life is too much for us," and leave it at that? Do you not feel this is your responsibility? As parents, do you not feel that the darkne... |
The understanding of the whole process of thought which builds the 'I', the 'me', and the dissolution of that - is not that true education? And if it is, should not universities help towards that end and at the same time give students the right opportunity to cultivate capacities? But now, we are concerned with the cul... |
Real revolution does not come merely at the superficial level, at the economic level. Real revolution lies in our hearts and minds, and it can only come when we understand the whole total process of our being from day to day, in every relationship. And then only is there a possibility of preventing technical knowledge ... |
Question: Educationists all over the world are troubled by the question of moral education. How can education evoke the deeper core of human decency and goodness in oneself and in others? |
Krishnamurti: The good is not the "respectable." The respectable man can never know what is good. Most of us are respectable, and therefore we do not know what it is to be good. Moral education can only come, not with the cultivation of respectability, but with the awakening of love. But we do not know what love is. Is... |
It is love which brings morality. Without love there is no morality. You may be a great man, a moral man; you may be very good; you may not be envious; you may have no ambition, but if you have no love, you are not moral, you are not good, fundamentally, deeply, profoundly. You may have all the outer trimmings of goodn... |
Can love be taught? Please, sirs, this is really an important question; please do follow it. If love cannot be taught, what are the things that are preventing love? The things of the mind, the thoughts, the jealousy, the anguish, the ideas, the pursuits, their suppressions, the motives of the mind - these may be the th... |
Is morality something to be taught - which means, can the mind be conditioned to be moral? Or is morality something that springs spontaneously, joyously, creatively? This is only possible when there is love. That love cannot exist when you cultivate your mind, which is the very center of the 'me', the 'I', the thing th... |
I have said that there is an art in listening, and perhaps I can go a little more into it, because I think it is important to listen rightly. We generally hear what we want to hear and exclude everything that is disturbing. To any expression of a disturbing idea we turn a deaf ear, and especially in matters that are pr... |
Religion, surely, is the uncovering of reality. Religion is not belief. Religion is not the search for truth. The search for truth is merely the fulfillment of belief. Religion is the understanding of the thinker; for what the thinker is, that he creates. Without understanding the process of the thinker and the thought... |
Religion, surely, is allowing truth to come into being, whatever that truth is - not the truth that you want, for then it is merely the gratification of a particular desire which you call belief. So, it is necessary to have a mind that is capable of receiving whatever the truth is, and such a mind is possible only when... |
So, the man who would receive reality - not seek reality - who would hear the voice of the eternal, whatever that eternal is, must understand relationship; because in relationship there is conflict, and it is that conflict which prevents the real. That is, in conflict there is the fixing of selfconsciousness, which see... |
So, the understanding of conflict in relationship is of primary importance and nothing else, because out of that conflict we create the world in which we live every day - the misery, the poverty, the ugliness of existence. Relationship is response to the movement of life. That is, life is a constant challenge, and when... |
So, what is important is not how to escape because any escape is as good as another - the religious escapes and the worldly escapes are all the same - and escapes do not solve our problem. Our problem is conflict, not only the conflict between individuals, but the world conflict. We see what is happening in the world -... |
So, self-knowledge is not the knowledge of the self placed at some high level; it is from moment to moment in daily conduct, which is action, which is relationship; and without that self-knowledge there is no right thinking. You have no basis for right thinking if you do not know what you are. You cannot know yourself ... |
Many questions have been sent in, and naturally it is impossible to answer them all. We have therefore chosen some which seem to be representative, and if your question is not answered, don't feel that it has been overlooked. After all, all problems are related, and if I can understand one problem in its entirety, then... |
Question: What is right education? As teachers and as parents, we are confused. |
Now, how are we going to find the truth of this matter? Merely forcing the mind into a system, a pattern, is obviously not education. So, to discover what is right education, we must find out what we mean by "education." Surely, education is not to learn the purpose of life, but to understand the meaning, the significa... |
Question: What do you mean by living from moment to moment? |
A thing that continues can never be new. Just think it out and you will see - it is not a complicated problem. Surely, if I can complete each day and not carry over my worries, my tribulations, to the next, then I can meet tomorrow afresh. Meeting the challenge afresh is creation, and there can be no creation without e... |
Now, that which is capable of continuing, can that renew itself? Can that be new? Surely, there can be a new thing only when there is an ending. Your thought is continuous. Thought is the result of the past, thought is founded upon the past; it is a continuance of the past, which in conjunction with the present creates... |
So, to understand what is, which is action, which is relationship at every moment, there must be a freshness; therefore, there must be an ending of the past, and this is not a theory. Experiment with it, and you will see that this ending is not as difficult as you think. While you are listening, try it, and you will se... |
So, knowledge which is continued is a barrier to understanding the new. If in listening you bring in your previous knowledge, how can you understand? First you must listen. Sir, an engineer has knowledge of stresses and strains, but if he comes to build a bridge, he must first study the location and the soil. He must l... |
Question: The more I listen to you, the more I feel the truth of the ancient teachings of Christ, Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, and Theosophy. Have you really not read any of them? |
I will first answer the second part of the question and then take up the first part. "Have you really not read any of them?" No, sir, I have not read any of them. What is wrong with that? Are you surprised? Are you shocked? And why should you read them? Why do you want to read others' books when there is the book of yo... |
Then, the first part of the question. Sir, why do you compare? What is the process of comparison? Why do you say, "What you say is like Shankara"? Whether it is or is not is unimportant. Truth can never be the same; it is ever new. If it is the same, it is not truth because truth is living from moment to moment; it can... |
Sir, there is no song in your heart if you merely repeat a song and therefore follow the singer. What is important is not whether I have read sacred books, or whether what I say is comparable to Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Christ, but what is important is why you repeat, why you compare. Understand why you compare,... |
Question: What exactly do you mean by meditation? Is it a process or a state? |
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