JK ON Total Action

Without understanding comprehensively the full significance of action, merely to be concerned with a particular form of action seems to me very destructive. Surely, if we are concerned only with the part and not with the whole, then all action is destructive action. But if we can understand action as a total thing, if we can feel our way into it and capture its significance, then that understanding of total action will bring about right action in the particular. It is like looking at a tree. The tree is not just the leaf, the branch, the flower, the fruit, the trunk, or the root. It is a total thing. To feel the beauty of a tree is to be aware of its wholeness - the extraordinary shape of it, the depth of its shadow, the flutter of its leaves in the wind. Unless we have the feeling of the whole tree, merely looking at a single leaf will mean very little. But if we have the feeling of the whole tree, then every leaf, every twig has meaning, and we are sensitive to it. After all, to be sensitive to the beauty of something is to perceive the totality of it. The mind that is thinking in terms of a part can never perceive the whole. In the whole the part is contained, but the part will never make up the whole, the total.
In the same way, let us see if we can rather diligently and with a sense of humility go into this whole question of what is action. Why does action create so much conflict? Why does action bring about a state of contradiction? And what is the totality of action? If we can sensitively and with hesitancy begin to understand the nature of total action, then perhaps we shall be able to come down to the particular.
But very few of us are sensitive - sensitive to the sunset, sensitive to a child in the street, sensitive to the beauty of a face, sensitive to an idea, to a noise, to everything in life. Surely, it is only a humble mind, a mind which does not deny or accept - it is only such a mind that is sensitive to the whole. The mind is not sensitive if it has no humility; and without humility there is no investigation, exploration, understanding. But humility is not a thing to be cultivated. Cultivated virtue is a horror, it is no longer a virtue. So, if we can, with that natural feeling of humility in which there is sensitivity, go into this whole question of action, then perhaps a great deal will be revealed of which we are now unaware.
You see, the difficulty with most of us is that we want a definition, a conclusion, an answer; we have an end in view. I think such an attitude prevents inquiry. And inquiry into action is necessary, surely, because all living is action. Action is not departmental, or partial; it is a total thing. Action is our relationship to everything: to people, to nature, to ideas, to things. Life cannot be without action. Even though you retire to a monastery, or become a sannyasi, or a hermit in the Himalayas, you are still in action, because you are still in relationship. And action, surely, is not a matter of right and wrong. It is only when action is partial, not total, that there is right and wrong.

J. KrishnamurtiThe Collected Works, Vol. XINew Delhi 3rd Public Talk 21st February 1960

Chattering mind and communion

You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself , soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of something; it is always moving, noisy. And from that noise, we act. Any action born of noise produces more noise, more confusion. But if you have observed and learnt what it means to communicate, the difficulty of communication, the non-verbalization of the mind - that is, that communicates and receives communication - , then, as life is a movement, you will, in your action, move on naturally, freely, easily, without any effort, to that state of communion. And in that state of communion, if you enquire more deeply, you will find that you are not only in communion with nature, with the world, with everything about you, but also in communion with yourself.

J. Krishnamurti Varanasi 2nd Public Talk 22nd November 1964

enquiry ; begin with thyself

So, a man who is really earnest must begin with himself, he must be passively aware of all his thoughts, feelings and actions. Again, this is not a matter of time. There is no end to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.

J. Krishnamurti New Delhi India 1st Public Talk 14th November, 1948

JK on Beauty

Meeting Life
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Questioner: All right. So one observes, one becomes very sensitive, very watchful, and then what? Is that all there is, just marvelling forever at perfectly commonplace things? I am sure that everybody does this all the time, at least when they are young, and there is nothing earth-shaking about it. What then? Isn't there some further step than just this observation that you talk about?

Krishnamurti: You started this conversation by asking about beauty, by saying that you do not feel it. You also said that in your life there is no beauty and so we are inquiring into this question of what beauty is, not only verbally or intellectually but feeling the very throb of it.

Questioner: Yes, that is so, but when I asked you I wondered if there isn't something beyond the sensitive looking you describe.

Krishnamurti: Of course there is, but unless one has the sensitivity of observation, seeing what is infinitely greater cannot come about.

Questioner: So many people do see with heightened sensitivity. Poets look with intense feeling, yet in all this there doesn't seem to be any breakthrough to that infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful something which people call the divine. Because I feel that whether one is very sensitive or rather dull, as I am, unless there is a breakthrough to some quite different dimension what we perceive is simply varying shades of grey. In all this sensitivity which you say comes about through observation it seems to me there is just a quantitative difference, just a small improvement, not something vastly different. Frankly I am not interested in just a little more of the same thing.

Krishnamurti: So what are you asking now? Are you asking how to break through the dull grey monotony of life to some quite different dimension?

Questioner: Yes. Real beauty must be something other than the beauty of the poet, the artist, the young, alert mind, though I am not in any way belittling that beauty.

Krishnamurti: Is this really what you are seeking? Is it really what you want? If you do, there must be the total revolution of your being. Is this what you want? Do you want a revolution that shatters all your concepts, your values, your morality, your respectability, your knowledge - shatters you so that you are reduced to absolute nothingness, so that you no longer have any character, so that you no longer are the seeker, the man who judges, who is agressive or perhaps non-aggressive, so that you are completely empty of everything that is you? This emptiness is beauty with its extreme austerity in which there is not a spark of harshness or agressive assertion. That is what breakthrough means and is that what you are after? There must be astonishing intelligence, not information or learning. This intelligence operates all the time, whether you are asleep or awake. That is why we said there must be the observation of the inner and the outer which sharpens the brain. And this very sharpness of the brain makes it quiet. And it is this sensitivity and intelligence that make thought operate only when it has to; the rest of the time the brain is not dormant but watchfully quiet. And so the brain with its reactions doesn't bring about conflict. It functions without struggle and therefore without distortion. Then the doing and the acting are immediate, as when you are in danger. Therefore there is always a freedom from conceptual accumulations. It is this conceptual accumulation which is the observer, the ego, the "me" which divides, resists and builds barriers. When the "me" is not, the breakthrough is not, then there is no breakthrough; then the whole of life is in the beauty of living, the beauty of relationship, without substituting one image for another. Then only the infinitely greater is possible.

J. Krishnamurti-- "Meeting Life "