Krishnamurti Subtitles home


BR75DSS1.10 - Death and ending
Brockwood Park, UK - 3 June 1975
Discussion with Staff and Students 1.10



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s tenth discussion with teachers and students at Brockwood Park, 1975.
0:11 Krishnamurti: The usual question: what shall we talk about? Questioner: I wonder if you could tell about death and the fear of death.
0:26 K: Goodness! Do you want to discuss… talk about that? Fear and death?
0:34 Q: Meditation? Could we also talk about meditation?
0:45 Q: Can we continue what we have talked on Sunday about?
0:56 K: I don’t know what… I forgot it. What were we talking about?
1:00 Q: Relationship, I think. You came to the point where you started discussing relationship, and we stopped.
1:11 Q: We were talking the most about silence, and the observer and the observed.
1:16 K: Ah yes, that’s right. We were talking about what is silence; whether there is silence if there is the observer, and what is the art of listening, seeing and learning.
1:39 And do you want to talk this morning about fear? Would it interest you to discuss fear?
1:54 Q: Could we also touch on the point: when we get angry and annoyed at circumstances and other people, what does that tell us about ourselves?
2:12 K: When we get angry about ourselves… about something, what does it tell us, what does that anger indicate?
2:27 Have you been angry? Very angry? What do you mean by that?
2:38 Being very angry—what do you mean? Wanting to hit back, hit somebody?
2:49 Make a violent gesture? Feel out of yourself?
3:07 What does that indicate? What is anger? To be angry—what is the meaning of that word, the root meaning of it?
3:27 I haven’t looked it up; I’m a bit lost.
3:36 Q: Suffering.
3:38 K: To suffer.
3:41 Q: Trouble.
3:43 K: What does it indicate?—that my image of myself has been terribly hurt and I retaliate against that person or that thing or environment or the circumstances which has hurt me, and therefore I feel violently, adrenally furious?
4:06 Q: It can also be that one has suppressed something and then it’s at the top where you cannot suppress anymore.
4:22 K: You suppress something and that bursts out.
4:29 Is that anger? Or is anger something against which you violently react?
4:44 I tell you something which you don’t like, which hurts you, and you retaliate by getting angry with me, which is part of that fear and hurt.
5:08 Right? The fear of getting hurt more, and resisting or building a wall against that… against being further hurt.
5:29 And the reaction to being hurt is anger. Would you call that, would you say that?
5:39 Q: I would, yes.
5:42 K: So fear is involved in it, isn’t there? Fear of being hurt. There is the physical fear of being hurt: being run over by a car, surgery, toothache, and a tooth having to be pulled out, and so on—physical, organic hurt…
6:13 Not organic. And psychologically, inwardly, we get hurt. You may not talk about it, you may not show it, you may not show it even in your eyes, but you get deeply hurt.
6:34 Right? And either you retaliate, hit back, because you don’t want to be further hurt and therefore you’re afraid of getting more hurt—right?—all that indicates the nature of myself, doesn’t it?
7:01 How I resist any form of psychological hurts. All right? Would you go along with that? And you want to discuss the fear of death, and meditation, and something else.
7:24 Do you want to discuss that, fear of death, on a cool, lovely morning?
7:33 Qu’est ce que vous pensez? Ça vous interesse? I mean, does it interest you, seriously, to find out why one is afraid of death?
7:53 Does it really interest you, or you want to be amused by it, or to be informed about it?
8:12 Let’s talk about it a little bit first.
8:21 In India, the Hindus, when there is death – I have never been present at a death, but I have watched from the streets, and I have walked in a procession with one man carrying in a pot, fire, and two people were carrying his father behind.
8:47 He was a Brahmin, walking with his sacred thread, naked except up to here, and carrying a pot, earthenware pot in which fire was burning.
9:03 And behind him was the dead father, washed clean, clean cloth, and carried nothing else.
9:14 You follow? You understand? There was no procession, there were no cars, there were no Rolls Royces, flowers, long procession.
9:27 And I followed them beyond the beach and further along, along the beach.
9:36 There they had a pile of wood they’d already collected. They put the body on that pyre, on that wood, and from the pot the son, who was the eldest son, lit the fire.
9:52 Right? Are you interested in all this? As history, just be amused by it. And also I’ve seen fire… death in Benares. You know where Benares is? On the banks of the Ganga, the Ganges, and everybody thinks if you die there or are burnt there, you are washed away… wash away all your sins.
10:20 So you see them coming from different villages, dead bodies being carried on bicycles, on carts— on camels I’ve seen it.
10:39 And there they burn it. And the poor people generally have to get back home, so they buy wood and they see it being burnt and they leave.
10:55 And the people who own the wood, who sell the wood, throw the body in the river and sell that wood over again.
11:02 (Laughs) You follow? And the ancient Egyptians buried, especially if you are an important person, in caves, in the pyramids, in the…
11:23 Tutankhamen—you’ve heard of him, of course. There, they said, he will live after death, and so they surround him with all the things he’s used to: the chair he sat on, and so on, and everything he was used to, they put that in the cave, seal it up, and most of the caves have been robbed.
11:55 And the idea being that they will live at another level of life, with all the things they were used to.
12:10 And the Christians have their own ideas, which is, that physically you are resurrected, when Gabriel blows the horn, and you’re all up there, sitting next to God on a cloud.
12:22 It’s all—you may laugh at it—they are all part of the same thing.
12:30 Do you remember that joke—two men sitting on a cloud with wings, one says to the other, ‘I just wanted to drive that Cadillac which I bought the other day, but unfortunately before I could drive it I died.
12:52 But here they seem to accept that Cadillacs was all right.’ You understand?
13:04 And so the Muslims bury their dead. And the Parsees—you know, you’ve heard of Parsees, who were driven out from Persia, which is Iran, oh, many centuries ago—by the Muslim invasion, I think; I’ve forgotten now—and they went to India.
13:28 They settled there. They are called Parsees. When a Parsee dies—a Parsee worships fire, earth and air, so he doesn’t want to pollute the things of the earth, air or fire—so when the body dies they expose it in a particular place so that the vultures eat it up.
14:04 Is that all right? You’ve understood all this? So there are these various forms of disposing of the body; disposing the body in various forms, according to various beliefs, various conditionings, various forms of fear.
14:24 Right? Now what do you—you must have seen death, haven’t you?
14:36 Hearse, in a car, and so on—you have seen death. What do you think of death? What does death mean to you? You see a bird being killed by a car, or a stoat.
14:57 Yesterday Whisper killed a stoat which was holding on to a rabbit.
15:04 (Laughs) Yes. One thing living on another. So what do you, when you look at all this, various forms of disposing the body, in India, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Catholics, and the various forms of getting rid of the body, what do you think of this death, what does death mean to you?
15:38 Q: To me there’s a distinction between death when the time is right, in the sense, a person dying of natural causes, of old age, what have you, and the type of death you see, such as a child dying from malnutrition.
15:57 K: Yes, child dying from starvation, child dying from disease, and so on, so on, so on.
16:03 Q: Do you think there’s a difference? There’s a difference, in the… one I feel is in the place of… (inaudible) K: Oh, one is the natural form of death, which really rarely happens nowadays—you die through accident, through disease, through crippled old age, becoming unconscious and dying gradually, or there are a very few that die naturally, easily, happily.
16:41 I used to know a man, he’s dead now; he called his family together and said, ‘I’m going to die on such and such a day.’ This is accurate.
16:55 I’m telling you what happened when I was there in that house; he was a friend of mine.
17:05 And he said, ‘I’m going to die on the 25th,’ or whatever that date was, he called his family together and said, ‘July the 25th I’m going to die.’ And on July the 25th they all gathered.
17:23 In his bed, he was quite healthy; he turned over and died. (Laughs) All that—the child, innocent child killed by a bomb in Vietnam or in the past two wars; there are children dying in Africa of starvation; children dying of disease and all kinds of things happening to them in the East.
17:59 So there is that kind of death, but I’m not talking of the child’s death or the natural death, or the death through disease, but what does it mean to you to die?
18:11 When you see the body being carried in a hearse, covered with flowers in a coffin, expensive, you know, all the business of it, what do you think of death?
18:36 What does death mean to you?
18:37 Q: It’s sort of like a feeling of… just a sort of a morbid feeling.
18:45 K: No, no, no. No, no, you see that person in the hearse, what does it mean to you, how do you react to it?
18:57 Q: You’re just sort of drained, I don’t know… (inaudible) Q: It makes me wonder, what is life all about?
19:16 It makes me wonder what is life, what is this life?
19:19 K: No, no. No, I’m not asking you, what is it all about? You see that person dead, in the hearse, carried out, buried, and all the business of it; how do you react, what does death mean to you?
19:37 Q: Well, that’s going to happen to me one day.
19:41 K: Ah, yes. Proceed. It’s going to happen to you one day. We’re all going to die one day, naturally, happily, or unhappily, unconscious, knocked down by a car, disease, all the rest of it.
19:56 Now, what does it… You’re going to die; what does that mean? Go into it, sir, don’t… Inquire, learn about it.
20:07 Q: You just stop thinking (laughs).
20:12 K: You say, ‘Well, I’ve had a jolly good time in this life, that’s enough,’ and die.
20:19 Or, ‘What a wretched life I’ve had and what awful business it all is, and I’m glad I’m going to die.
20:31 I’ve had long trouble, physical trouble, heart trouble, disease, prolonged disease or senility’—old age when you lose your memory and you repeat and repeat and repeat and you ask them… they ask you something and they ask you the same thing ten times after.
20:55 So there is all this phenomena going on. Right? And you see it. What does death mean to you? Or is it too… you are not concerned with it; it’s too far away, too young, you’re too young even to consider what it means?
21:19 You asked for it.
21:30 (Laughs) My mother dies, my son dies, and I see somebody dying.
21:43 I saw once a man I used to know, they called me to his house and he was dead.
21:54 And there were flies sitting on him, and I wanted to brush them off—you follow?—instinct—I said, ‘For God…’ and I realized he didn’t feel a thing and he was dead.
22:11 What does it mean to you? My son dies, my brother, and I shed tears, I weep—why do I weep?
22:24 Q: You’re never going to see that person again.
22:30 K: You’re never going to see that person, and so you weep.
22:42 Are you weeping for that person or for yourself?
22:45 Q: For yourself. I weep for myself.
22:48 K: Go slowly, think it out. You see, you are weeping for yourself. What does that mean?
22:56 Q: Because I have lost my loved one.
22:59 K: You’ve lost… I’ve lost my son or my brother, I shed tears.
23:08 For whom am I shedding tears? For the brother, for the son, for the mother, whom I shall never see?
23:23 Or am I crying for myself because I’ve lost something?
23:30 Q: (Inaudible) K: So I’ve lost something, therefore I cry.
23:37 Is that it?
23:39 Q: You lost someone that you really loved.
23:42 K: Yes, I really loved my brother or my son, my mother, father, whatever it is, and I cry, I feel terribly upset, I’m in despair.
23:58 And I begin to feel lost, so I cry.
24:06 I want to find out for whom I am crying—for my brother who could have lived?
24:19 Much more intelligent than I am, much greater capacity, greater… etc., and he was my brother and he died and never lived to do what he wanted to do, therefore I cry for him, as well as for myself?
24:39 Go on, think it out, lady.
24:52 One fact is that he’s gone, or she’s gone.
25:07 When you lose something, what happens to you? When you lose something that you love, that is precious to you, that you want to hold, that you want to keep, that you want to, you know, have with you always, and you lose it, what happens to you?
25:29 Q: A kind of emptiness. It feels sort of empty.
25:35 K: Empty. So you feel empty because you’ve lost something? I’m not saying you’re wrong. You’re quite right, but I want to go into it. I lose my watch and that watch has been given to me by a friend, and I’ve kept it for forty years.
25:58 Which is a fact, I’ve got a watch, forty years. And I lose that watch, somebody takes it away, steals it, or I lose it, by my negligence, laziness.
26:15 And I won’t cry over that, unless I’m silly; I feel I’ve lost it, too bad; I would like to have given it to somebody rather than lose it.
26:36 That’s one kind of loss.
26:44 Then I lose my house, my job. I don’t cry too much about it, I feel, you know, Lord, I’ve built this house, I have to now start it all over again—you follow?—I feel upset, I feel the work which I’ve spent on it is wasted, and so on.
27:07 And I lose my money, and I need money, so I’m again upset about it.
27:17 Right? And I lose my mother. But my mother is different from my wife.
27:32 Right? I weep, I feel very sad, she brought me up, she loved me, she looked after me.
27:44 I cry but it’s a different kind of sadness. Right? Are you following all this?
27:56 But if my wife dies, or my son dies, I’m much more upset. Have you noticed this? Have you?
28:07 Q: Yes.
28:11 K: Why? The watch, the house, the mother, the wife and the son.
28:25 The wife and the son, I’m much more upset than losing a watch, the house, the mother, the father—why?
28:38 Go on, sir, answer it, discuss it.
28:46 Q: Well, you were living with those people and…
28:59 You were living with your wife or your son.
29:07 Q: They were a sense of security, there were… you know, you had something to hold on to. They were there, you loved them, and sort of, this was a feeling of everything was in its right place.
29:15 K: No, my dear chap, you haven’t answered my question. I lost my watch, my house, that’s one thing. I lose my mother. I lose my father—if I lose my father it won’t so much matter. I’m sad, but my mother, I’m a little more sad. Right? But if I lose my wife or my son, daughter, I get much more upset—why?
29:45 Q: Because I’m very much dependent on my wife, for security.
29:51 K: Is that it? Dependence on your wife for pleasure, for comfort, for sex, for carrying on, looking after the house, bearing children.
30:05 So is that the reason why I cry more?
30:09 Q: And for the son, you want the son to be better than you are and to do… (inaudible) K: Is that the reason why I cry more, I’m much more sad?
30:18 Q: You invest much more in that person.
30:23 K: Sir, tell me, why do I…
30:32 It’s a fact, isn’t this? It’s a fact, isn’t it? Have you noticed this? What? Have you noticed this?
30:53 Q: Yes.
31:02 K: Why?
31:11 Is it I’m attached to my wife, all the implications of being a wife or a husband, much closer, much nearer, great habit involved in it.
31:34 Right? Coming home from my work, there she is cooking, all the rest of it, looking after my house—right?—thoroughly domesticated animal.
31:50 Right? And that sense of loss brings a great feeling of insecurity, doesn’t it?
32:02 Right? Are you following all this? Does this interest you? You’re going to be one day a wife, so listen to it (laughs).
32:19 I lost somebody on whom I depended, much more than I depended on my mother, so I feel a sense of void, emptiness, loneliness—right?—a sense of sudden lack of communication, sudden feeling of being cut off from everything.
32:57 Q: But why should that feeling be so much greater for...
33:05 K: I’m going to go into it a little bit. Suddenly cut off, feeling a great sense of loss. Right? Are you following all this? A great sense of utter feeling of having lost all relationship with the world.
33:31 I may go to the office or to the factory or some business, but there relationship is different; this relationship is something… was intimate, strong, dependent, and suddenly I’ve lost.
33:52 And this sudden feeling of loss indicates that I am very lonely.
34:02 Right? This loss shows me how dependent I’ve been and I must go back and depend on somebody else.
34:17 Right? And I feel a great sense of loneliness.
34:28 That loneliness was always there but I covered it up with my wife, with my job, with my golf, with my tennis, with chattering, with worship of God, going to church, reading a lot of books and being able to talk cleverly—I covered it all up, that immense loneliness.
34:54 Right? And the wife dies; I’m suddenly faced with this; I’m frightened.
35:09 My mother dying is different. Right? The cause of my suffering, of my shedding tears with the wife is quite different because I’ve lived with her, depended—she was me and I was her, and she did everything for me and I did things for her—cook and sex and children and worry—we shared things, if we had a good relationship.
35:44 And you take that away from me, death takes it away from me.
35:54 And that is some of the major reasons why I suffer more than when my mother dies or my father dies or my distant uncle dies.
36:14 So I realize I am crying not only for my wife, also much more for my own loss, for it is a form of self-pity, it is a form of self-agony.
36:36 Bene? Are we going along together?
36:48 No? So I realize all this and I say to myself: what is death?
37:03 I shall die one day and if I have a son, grown up, he’ll say, ‘Well, poor old Dad, he was a nice boy, he helped me a lot, he put me through school, he beat me up sometimes but that’s all right, but he’s dead.’ And I say to myself: what is death?
37:24 I shall die. We all die. People have been killed by the millions in the war. So what is death?
37:43 Q: The ending of being.
37:52 K: The ending of being. Now, what do you mean—please listen carefully—what do you mean by ‘ending’ and ‘being’?
38:08 Q: Doing...
38:09 K: Tungki, don’t quickly answer; look at it carefully. Look at the question, which is, what do you mean by ending?
38:26 Q: Of ending.
38:35 K: Ah! (Laughs) You know, ending has a great significance. I don’t know if you realize what ending means. It’s got a tremendous significance.
39:01 Ending and continuing. Right? Do you see that? Something that continues, a tradition: being an English, being a Hindu, or I worship God and all… a tradition, which means, ‘tradare’, to hand down, hand over.
39:31 Right? It’s very interesting if you go into this.
39:47 A thing that continues, either horizontally or vertically, it can never receive anything new.
40:09 Right, sir?
40:16 Something new can happen only when there is an ending.
40:28 Right? If I am always a Catholic till I die, I’m a Catholic or a Hindu or a Muslim; that’s continuing.
40:42 A communist—if I am all my life a beastly communist or beastly something else…
40:49 But if I end my dependence or my saying, ‘I’m a communist, I’m a communist,’ something new can… and there can be new perception.
41:05 You understand? So ending has got tremendous meaning. Right? Do you see that? That means, can you—listen carefully—can you end each day, not carry over yesterday to today?
41:33 Q: What is the guarantee that the new will happen?
41:38 K: I’m not guaranteeing; there is nothing guaranteed; it is not an insurance or a...
41:45 Q: Fear of ending is on account of that.
41:49 K: Ah, no. I see—I mustn’t go too much into this—I see the fact that where there is an ending there is a new beginning.
42:11 If I carried on with the propeller engine, piston engine, for flying, and I say, ‘That’s enough, don’t talk to me about anything else’—but the man who invented the jet, he had to say, ‘Yes, that’s all right, the propeller, but let me put it aside and look at something.’ You follow?
42:36 So he discovered something new. So ending has tremendous depth to it. That is, if I can end what I did yesterday, what I thought yesterday, and yesterday evening stop everything, finish with yesterday, then today is something totally afresh, isn’t it?
43:08 I don’t know if you see it. You see it, sir? And can you do that? End with my moods. End it. Yesterday I was moody – finished. Not say, ‘Well, I’m still moody the next day.’ If I am gossipy, if I am something or other, finish with it, end it.
43:38 So each day, as the day dies, so the things of yesterday die with yesterday.
43:52 You understand all this? Poor people, I’m sorry! (Laughs) That’s the way to live.
44:06 And you say, what is being? You said death is the ending of being.
44:17 What do you mean by being? Go on, sir, look at it, go on.
44:31 Q: Being something.
44:34 K: Being. No, not something. No, no, being. No, you people don’t… The tree doesn’t say, ‘I am being.’ The animal, Whisper, doesn’t say, ‘Well, I am being.’ Is there—listen, find out—is there anything that is being or becoming?
45:27 Is this too much? A little bit. (Laughs) Q: (Inaudible) …anything becoming or growing.
45:41 K: Listen. No. (Laughs) That pine tree was very small when it was planted.
45:54 And it was growing, becoming. And you, when you were small, you were growing, and as you grew you were becoming, you say, ‘I must be this, I must be that, I must be…’—becoming all the time.
46:11 You never say, ‘I am being.’ Q: Becoming is the continuity, isn’t it?
46:20 K: I want to go into it.
46:28 Becoming.
46:30 Q: Becoming implies there’s some thing that you’re becoming.
46:34 K: Aha, I’m becoming.
46:35 Q: Becoming what?
46:37 K: I’m becoming noble.
46:40 Q: Well, that’s a thing.
46:41 K: I’m becoming wiser, I am becoming less angry, I am becoming more rich, I am becoming full of words, I am becoming gorgeous, I am becoming more beautiful, I am becoming lovely.
46:59 Right? No, please, this is very important, don’t just accept it.
47:09 I’m not interested in your accepting it, please. You see, becoming and being.
47:24 Is there anything—I’m questioning it; I’m [not saying] there is not—is there anything that says, ‘I’m being’?
47:43 Or we’re always moving, becoming something; a movement forward, or movement from backward to forward.
48:08 So in becoming there is always uncertainty. Right?
48:14 Q: There’s more to it than uncertainty.
48:21 In becoming there’s...
48:24 K: I’ve just begun, lady, I’ve just begun.
48:31 In becoming there is always uncertainty. I may not become the… whatever it is.
48:44 In becoming there is great insecurity. Right?
48:49 Q: Which is fear.
48:55 K: Fear. Uncertainty is fear. Uncertainty, insecurity. And therefore I go off seeking security, and there I say I must be secure, there. I don’t know if you are following all this. Right?
49:16 Q: (Inaudible) …I’m becoming something. I don’t think it’s only people who say, ‘I am becoming something.’ K: I’m becoming a good engineer. Or I may not. And even if I do become a very good engineer, I might not get a job.
49:37 Right? So in becoming there is this sense of fear, uncertainty, insecurity.
49:40 Q: That only applies for us. I mean, the tree doesn’t say, ‘I’m becoming.’ K: Ah, no, no, I’m talking human beings.
49:54 The trees… don’t bring in the tree when I’m talking about your…
50:04 So we say, ending and becoming.
50:12 This is our life. The ending we call death, becoming we call living. Oh, you don’t understand.
50:32 I have passed from the first grade to the second grade, third grade, fourth grade, school, I’ve finished with school, now I intend to college, and then if I am lucky enough to get into a college, then I go to university, from university on to become a clerk or a lawyer, and then I become the chief justice or the chief executive or the vice president or the foreman, the shopkeeper—you follow?
50:58 – shop-steward—that’s what… they talk a great deal about it.
51:05 Right? So all my life I’m becoming something.
51:14 If I’m pushed in that direction, I go in that direction; if I’m pushed in… and so on—push, influence, pull, driven.
51:30 Right? You poor people. Oh, come on, sirs. So what is death? So death is an ending of becoming.
51:53 And I have learnt a great deal, I’ve accumulated a great deal of wealth, a great deal of knowledge, a great deal of experience, a great deal of technological knowledge; I’ve worked, I’ve saved, I have collected antiques, I’ve collected books, I have collected knowledge—becoming, becoming, gathering.
52:23 And there is an ending when I die, to all that.
52:30 So I’m frightened. No?
52:36 Q: I don’t see why I hold on to anything.
52:46 K: Because I’m used to it, that’s my life, that’s called living. Why should I end it? So the Hindus, the ancient Hindus said, ‘Quite right, you’re always becoming.
53:05 So if you die, next life you will become something.’ You follow?
53:16 Next life, if you have been very good, if you have been kind, if you have been generous, if you have been something in this life, and there is death, which is the ending of this life, and if you have been excellent in your life, you’ll have a better life next life, which is called reincarnation.
53:40 You understand? To reincarnate, to incarnate, to… born.
53:49 Right? The whole of Asia believes this.
53:58 You may laugh at it, say, ‘What silly…’—but there is a great deal of reality in it.
54:08 I’m not using ‘truth’—a great deal of reality in it—which I won’t go into because it’s too complex for you.
54:17 Please, forgive me. And the Christians believe in what they call resurrection, you know, to be re-resurrected.
54:28 So there it is. And the Greeks believed in some form or no forms; the Romans said, ‘This is only one life, let’s have a good time, let’s drink and be merry.’ And so every human being throughout the world is afraid of this terrible thing called ending, which is...
55:01 Q: And also the consequences of what may happen when they die.
55:13 Also the consequences of what may happen after they have died.
55:16 K: Yes, consequences—I left my wife alone...
55:18 Q: Well, no, I mean, when you say that the Christians believe in heaven and hell and things of that sort; when you say the fear of death, doesn’t fear also come into it, that you are wondering: have I done well in this life, will I go to heaven or hell, and all that.
55:43 K: Yes, that’s what we’re saying, sir. That is, Christians believe in heaven and hell. If you have behaved properly, believed in whatever they believe in, and then you’ll sit next to God, in a cloud.
55:54 That’s heaven, whatever it is. Muslims believe heaven is having a very good time with a lot of women and girls, or boys, or whatever it is! And the Hindus say, ‘No’—they are a little more clever, a little more… they had good brains in those days.
56:17 They said, ‘Well, human beings are ugly people, anyhow, and to civilize them there must be fear, and fear is one of the things that will control them,’ so they say, ‘Well, if you behave properly now, next life you’ll have a good time, you’ll have more houses, more whatever it is, or if you are a religious person you’ll get nearer and nearer God.’ Right?
56:47 Now, we have described the whole attitude, the activities, the realities of ending, which is called death.
57:04 Right? Now just listen carefully. Listen, listen. We have described—right? I have described to you the mountain, say, or I’ve described to you how to play tennis.
57:25 Actually I don’t show it to you, I’m describing it to you, how to hold a racquet, how to take left hand, right hand, I’ve shown it to you, I’ve described it to you, in words.
57:43 But the actuality of playing tennis is different—right?—from the description.
57:50 You follow? Now, what is the… after describing it, now you face the reality of it, the actuality of it.
58:09 That is, can you end each day your worries, your jealousies, your hurts, your everything, end each day; your cunningness, your vanity, your—you know?—everything, your moods, your…
58:31 Can you? Do you want to?
58:33 Q: I think we would want to but it doesn’t necessarily happen.
58:51 K: Ah, if you want to do something, it does happen.
59:02 Ah, yes, sir. If I want to find out, if I want to be rich I go at it, I work at it, I deceive, I do everything to get rich, because I want to be rich.
59:20 Q: The thing is, you describe that very strongly, ‘I want that,’ but… (inaudible) …of many things I want but there are other aspects.
59:32 K: Oh, dozens of aspects. Tungki, I have explained to you very carefully the whole picture; I can add more to it, lots more, but that is the picture.
59:50 We said the picture is not the real. The shadow cast by a tree is not the real tree, it’s a shadow.
1:00:03 So I have described to you the whole business of ending and all that, which is generally called death; that is a description, that is the shadow, that is reading in a book how to hold a tennis racquet.
1:00:20 But to play it you have to go on the court, take a racquet, play it.
1:00:32 Right? So will you do it, will you go out and play tennis, will you go out… will you say, ‘That’s a shadow and I’m going to find out what the tree is like.
1:00:55 I’ll climb it, I’ll look at it’?
1:01:03 (Pause) So this morning I am learning a great deal about what human beings call living—right?—and why human beings, including myself, which are all human beings, all of us, why we are so frightened of ending.
1:01:40 And we have never said, what does it mean to end, what does it mean to become, become, become, become—more beautiful, more this and more that—you follow?—consumer society?
1:01:59 So I’ve described all this to you.
1:02:06 Will you be satisfied with the description? Will you say, ‘Yes, that’s very nice; I like the shadow better than the tree’ (laughs)?
1:02:27 I cling to the shadow, I’ll hold on, and I insist the shadow must be that, and when the sun goes in the other direction I’m lost.
1:02:41 (Laughs) You follow? So what will you do?
1:02:53 This is part of your education, part of your learning what life is.
1:03:06 They won’t talk to you about all this if you go to a school, to a college, to a university, or to a church or to a guru, to a psychologist.
1:03:17 This is your life.
1:03:18 Q: It’s a natural thing. First of all, how would you end, because… how would you end a day, because...
1:03:38 I said it’s quite interesting but first of all, how...
1:03:43 K: What do you mean, interesting? (Laughs) I want to trip you up—you’re full of… What do you mean, interesting? It’s a real thing, this, not to be… If it is interesting, what do you mean, how to end?
1:04:01 Are you asking that, Tungki?
1:04:06 Q: Yes, I mean, I notice that at the end of the day, if I still have something in mind I couldn’t do, it seems to want to continue and the next day it comes up.
1:04:20 K: Of course. That’s what I’m saying.
1:04:22 Q: (Inaudible) K: Tungki, suppose you’re vain—I’m not saying you’re vain—or you think you’re a guru, that you’re going to be a guru, or have the feeling that you’re going to be a guru, and see if you can end that feeling this evening.
1:04:40 See what happens.
1:04:42 Q: But once I see… (inaudible) K: Ah!
1:04:52 (Laughs) See what happens. If I set myself as a guru—you know what a guru is, don’t you?—one of those ugly birds, ugly people—if I set myself up as a guru, and I’m full of, you know, I’m enlightened, I’m supreme, I’m the god, I know everything about everything—you follow?
1:05:22 – I am the guru—and I have to go to the guru and say, ‘Old boy, see what happens if you end all your feeling of being a guru at the end of the day.’ Do you know what he would do with me?
1:05:36 He’d throw me out. No? Tungki! (Laughs) You ask why? I’m telling him, or telling you, or telling any of us, or telling… if you’ve vain—you understand, vain, arrogant, feeling of superiority, feeling that you’re somebody—at the end of the day, or any moment, drop it and see what happens.
1:06:22 So learning is not a continuous movement, it’s ending each lesson—ah, you don’t see it—ending each reaction, each experience, each look, so that your eyes when you have seen it, finished, and look again, you’ll see much more.
1:06:57 Q: Can I ask something a little bit off from this?
1:07:11 I have a question but it’s a little bit off.
1:07:21 K: It doesn’t matter.
1:07:23 Q: One thing that’s intrigued me is to see a very old person suddenly take interest in taking care of their body, when you know they’ll be dead in two or three years.
1:07:26 K: I know, poor chap, he’ll… yes.
1:07:27 Q: So what role does the body have?
1:07:29 K: Oh, probably he says… probably somebody has told him he must get well or something or other, I don’t know. I know a man who started doing yoga at the age of 70, who should have done it when he was 30.
1:07:49 And he’s very proud, he can stand on his head. After a couple of years he could stand on his head and he felt terribly proud. I said, what an ass he is, at the age of 70 standing on his head and feeling proud about it.
1:08:06 You follow? So I’m asking you, you learn something—mathematics, two and two, four—you can’t drop that, can you, and say, ‘Well, next morning I’m going to find out if two and two make four’—(laughs) something is wrong with your brain.
1:08:39 Right? So you know you cannot drop technological knowledge. Right? Bene? You can’t say, ‘Well, I’ll drop my cycling and learn all over again cycling’—the next morning you won’t learn all over again because you know how to cycle.
1:09:04 So, we’re talking of something entirely different, which is the psychological inward ending.
1:09:14 I’m attached to you, my wife, my mother, my son, my brother—attached, hold, cling, depend.
1:09:30 And see what happens if I drop my dependency—will I lose my love?
1:09:39 You are following all this?
1:09:42 Q: Sir, this question arises in my mind when you say, see what happens if I drop my dependency.
1:09:57 K: You’re free, that’s all. Nothing happens except you have thrown off a burden.
1:10:01 Q: But it seems this thing is very persistent.
1:10:05 K: Ah, then you haven’t dropped it; then you don’t want to drop it, and you like it.
1:10:09 Q: What makes us not want to drop it?
1:10:13 K: Well, keep it! (Laughs) Q: But what makes us not want to drop it?
1:10:19 K: Because you like it; it’s more pleasurable to have something to cling to.
1:10:25 Q: Yes, but that’s a fact—how is one to look at that fact?
1:10:35 K: Look at?
1:10:36 Q: That is a fact that it is more pleasurable to me to hold on to that image.
1:10:44 K: Yes, why do you hold on to it? Because of pleasure.
1:10:49 Q: And security.
1:10:50 K: Why? Security? What do you mean by security? Is there security in some dead thing? And I’m holding on to that. I am a Hindu or whatever it is, I hold on to that, an idea, a formula, a tradition, a conditioning, which is something imposed, held, hold, which holds my mind, and all the rest of it.
1:11:23 I drop it. At the end of that day, I wake up the next morning and say, ‘How extraordinary, I’m none of those things, I’m free, there is a freedom and I can look.’ Oh, you…
1:11:37 Q: Can one deliberately want to drop it or has it…
1:11:44 K: I’m asking you, Tungki, if you have some particular pleasure, can you drop it?
1:11:56 I like, when I am in India, I’m used to Indian food. And, you know, many Indians find it terribly difficult to drop their food and start some other kind of food.
1:12:12 South India, there was a famine at one time. South Indians eat a great deal of rice, and the government, I believe, sent some wheat, and they wouldn’t touch it.
1:12:28 There are several reasons why they wouldn’t touch it, because it upset their digestion, their habits and so on.
1:12:35 I’m just showing you: extraordinarily difficult for people who are, both biologically as well as psychologically, to drop something and start anew.
1:12:56 Have you noticed something? I’ll show you something. When you’re in the kitchen, in the dining room, you’re always licking your fingers—right?—not all the time.
1:13:07 When you touch something, you lick it, don’t you? Right? Have you noticed it? All of you do it. Right? And you pick up something else with that. After licking your fingers, you go and pick up a salad. And I come along and pick up what you have already touched. Right? Right? I pick up your spittle. Right? Have you noticed this? Come on, have you noticed it? So, can you drop that habit? Never do it, because it’s unhygienic, unhealthy, ugly. Right? Or do you think it’s lovely? It’s a beautiful act, lick your fingers and pick up something.
1:14:19 (Laughter) Q: Well, some people...
1:14:22 K: Wait, wait, Tungki, I’m… Tungki’s always with something else; I want to stick to one thing.
1:14:33 Can you drop that habit? See the reason of it: unhygienic—I don’t want to eat your spittle, eat your microbes.
1:14:47 I’ve my own microbes, (laughs) I don’t want… I’ve my own, I want to keep them to myself, I don’t want to give them to you (laughs).
1:15:02 See the reason of it. Right? I see all of you do it. And I, very careful, I will never touch that which you have already… from which you have taken because I don’t want to… etc., etc.
1:15:20 So there is a habit which every human in Europe, especially in this Western world, they do it.
1:15:30 Man picks up a magazine, (inaudible) and flicks his finger, and I won’t touch it.
1:15:39 Right? Will you drop it? (Laughs) Q: Excuse me, but…
1:15:48 K: Not ‘but’, Tungki! (Laughs) Q: I didn’t use to do it, I mean… (inaudible) K: I’m not talking of you.
1:15:59 If you don’t do it, because you’re Eastern-minded. There, because of hygienic reasons and religious reasons, all kinds, which began really for hygiene, said, don’t do it, you can’t do such things.
1:16:12 Q: Also I’ve seen somebody out of friendliness, an apple being bitten from one mouth to the other and...
1:16:22 K: Ah, that… No, don’t talk about it, don’t go into all that.
1:16:27 Q: Well, for them it’s an act of friendliness… (inaudible) K: I don’t… Look, I was once invited by a Muslim family.
1:16:41 You know what Muslims are. They knew I was a strict vegetarian so they didn’t cook… didn’t have meat.
1:16:49 But they invited me and we sat around a table and there was this huge pile—there were about ten of us or fifteen of us—huge pile of rice, vegetables, everything cooked in one big pile, heap.
1:17:06 (Laughter) No, watch it, I’m going to show you something. And there were about ten of us. And no spoons, no forks, we had to eat from that food, put it into our mouth.
1:17:22 Wait. That’s considered brotherliness, equality. They believe in that. So I sat here, another man sat—each of us took carefully a little bit so that there was a wall of rice and vegetables between each person.
1:17:47 You understand? (Laughs) (Laughter) Now, will you drop this habit?
1:18:00 Will you? Drop it, not say, ‘Well, what’s wrong with it, why shouldn’t I do it?’ Q: In this particular case you can explain the reasons—you’ve mentioned hygiene, question of sensitivity to other people.
1:18:13 That seems perfectly clear and easy to drop such a habit.
1:18:21 But in the case of attachment to one’s wife...
1:18:26 K: No, I’m taking that one thing. I’m taking that one thing because I see this at every meal. (Laughs) I remember once living in a French house and there was a cook there and he used to taste it (laughs) and pass it to the other cook, and the same spoon, they put it back, and they brought out the soup, and I couldn’t touch it (laughs).
1:18:55 No, this goes on all… Wait, Tungki! (Laughs) Will you kindly, for me at least (laughs), drop this, this unhygienic habit?
1:19:16 Now wait a minute. If you see this ugly thing, really see it, you won’t do it.
1:19:31 You will catch yourself going… (laughs) your fingers going into your mouth and say, ‘By Jove, I won’t do it.’ Watch it, be aware of it, look at your fingers going up.
1:19:50 You know, I watched a man who resisted smoking. He said he didn’t want to smoke. I used to watch him. And every minute or so he would put his hand in his pocket (laughs), bring it out, and the other hand, matches, and suddenly realize what he was doing (laughs) and drop it.
1:20:17 I’ll watch you at lunch (laughs).
1:20:24 Now, in the same way, you want to find out more serious things, which is, you want to find out what is ending, the ending of something, so that your mind is always fresh.
1:20:52 You understand? What time is it?
1:21:08 Q: Ten to one.
1:21:13 K: Oh. We haven’t really gone more deeply into the question of what is death. It requires a great deal of attention, a great deal of understanding yourself, to find out what it means to die.
1:21:47 And you asked what is meditation.
1:21:55 Are you interested in meditation, any of you? Except Shakuntala—I’m careful—except perhaps one or two others, are you interested in it?
1:22:26 You know, have you ever—first of all, have you ever sat very quietly by yourself?
1:22:46 Have you? If you have, have you watched your eyes, whether they are moving up and down, watching flies and watching lizards, watching the birds?
1:23:01 Or your eyes also are very quiet; you can keep them open, but very quiet.
1:23:19 And have you, if you are sat very quietly under a tree or in your room, or lying down on your bed, have you watched your thoughts chasing each other, one thought after another?
1:23:42 Right? Like an endless chain. And have you ever asked why this goes on?
1:23:58 One word after another, one symbol after another, one picture, one image after another, and thought moves, circling, going on and on and on.
1:24:16 Have you? Have you found out why?
1:24:30 And have you found out what would happen if there is a little gap between two thoughts?
1:24:45 This is too difficult, isn’t it? Nelson? Not difficult.
1:24:51 Q: No.
1:24:52 K: All right. Will you… you and I will talk, go into this? Do you want to?
1:25:00 Q: Yes, I do.
1:25:03 K: Have you noticed, if you have an interval, if there is a gap—not one continuous thread of thought as with most people; there’s never a gap, never an interval, always one thought ends and immediately another.
1:25:29 Now, what happens in that gap?
1:25:40 What happens, what takes place in the cessation of one thought, before another thought begins?
1:25:56 Have you ever watched it, Nelson?
1:26:03 Or is your thought like a string, without any break?
1:26:10 Q: How does this gap come about?
1:26:17 K: No, no. Have you watched it, I said, not ‘come about’. First watch it. Have you ever had that space between two thoughts?
1:26:32 Q: It seems as though listening and seeing becomes clearer.
1:26:38 K: I don’t understand. If there is a gap?
1:26:44 Q: Well, if it’s quieter.
1:26:47 K: No, I don’t know—I’m asking you, is your thinking a continuous movement, like a thread in which there is no break, or a knot after knot after knot, one constant movement?
1:27:07 And if there is an interval, if there is a break before the next thought begins, what is that interval?
1:27:21 Q: This space or interval seems to happen; the next thought doesn’t seem to come.
1:27:28 I mean, when a thought comes...
1:27:36 K: That interval may be ten minutes or a second, but what happens in that interval?
1:27:53 Q: Is there always a continuous circle?
1:27:58 K: Tungki, darling. Tungki, find out.
1:28:01 Q: I have more a feeling of hazy… (inaudible) K: I’m asking you, Tungki, whether your thinking is like a piece of thread, horizontal or vertical, without any break, or with a few knots in that thread.
1:28:24 Have you watched your…
1:28:29 Q: It’s a hazy… it is not… when you don’t do anything it is not operating that clearly.
1:28:43 K: Are you daydreaming?
1:28:45 Q: Yes.
1:28:46 K: So you’re daydreaming—right?—which means you’re really thinking but you’re not conscious of it.
1:28:53 You’re dreaming—you sit down and look at the clouds and say, ‘That’s nice, that tree is nice, and oh, that’s a nice car, what car is that, that is a Mercedes or the Ford or this or that; oh, I’ve long hair, short hair, must go to the barber, I must polish my shoes, I must go to bed early, I must…
1:29:26 I’m hurt’—all the time going, going, going. Or watching your thinking, looking at it, not trying to control it, shape it, or trying to find out there is an interval, but just watching it.
1:29:47 First of all, can you watch your own thinking?
1:29:51 Q: What does sitting still without the eyes…
1:29:55 K: Close it, open it.
1:29:57 Q: No...
1:29:58 K: Put a band...
1:29:59 Q: No, what relation does that have with… (inaudible) K: I said to you, because if you keep your eyes open you are apt to look at things.
1:30:09 If you keep your eyes closed, there is… you’re enclosed.
1:30:14 Q: Can’t you do this when you’re walking around?
1:30:18 K: Do it any way. Don’t make… You know, there is a story, which is a rather nice story, of a guru with a lot of disciples.
1:30:28 Every morning the guru sat down with his disciples to meditate, and his favourite cat would come and sit in his lap, because it was nice and warm (laughs).
1:30:45 And the guru said, ‘Nuisance,’ so he used to take the cat out and tie him to a post.
1:30:52 And when the guru died, the disciples had to find a cat and tie it before they could meditate.
1:31:02 (Laughter) Right? (Laughs) I’m asking you, have you watched your thinking?
1:31:19 I watched that car go by; it was a blue car.
1:31:33 Can I watch my thought in the same way as it moves from one thing to another?
1:31:41 And if it does, find out if it can end.
1:31:53 Instead of being a long thread, break it, see what happens.
1:32:03 Can you break a thought and say, ‘Well, that’s enough.
1:32:14 Enough is enough,’ and just end that thought and see what happens before the next thought is waiting.
1:32:29 Before it springs on you, watch it. In that space, in that interval, what happens?
1:32:42 Right? It’s time to stop.
1:32:52 If I was a guru you’d have to pay me fifty dollars or fifty pounds every day!