Krishnamurti - Why do we seek a method or technique?

Krishnamurti Subtitles

OJ49T12 - Why do we seek a method or technique?
Ojai, California - 21 August 1949
Public Talk 12

0:00	This is J. Krishnamurti’s 12th public talk in Ojai, California, 1949.
0:10	The problems of life do not demand a method, because they are so vital, they are so alive, that if you approach it with a fixed pattern, which is a method, a way, we shall totally misunderstand; we shall not adequately meet that problem.
0:45	And most of us want a technique, a method, because that thing is so alive, so alert, so swift, the problems, the movement of life, that our own minds are so incapable of meeting it rapidly, swiftly, open, with that clarity, that we think we shall be able to meet it if we know how to meet it.
1:17	So we try to learn from another the how, the method, the technique, the way, the means.
1:25	So I’m not at all sure if most of us here are not concerned with the means.
1:34	Don’t deny it, because it’s extremely difficult to be free from the desire for a technique in order to achieve, because when we have a means, we emphasize the end, the result.
2:13	We are more concerned with the result rather than with the understanding of the problem itself, whatever the outcome be.
2:21	So why is it that most of us seek a method - of happiness, of the right way of thinking, of a peace of mind or peace of soul, or whatever it is?
2:41	First of all, we carry over the industrial technology to meet life; that is, we want to meet life efficiently, and to meet it efficiently we think we need a method.
3:17	And most religious societies and most teachers offer a method: how to be peaceful, how to be happy, how to have a tranquil mind, how to concentrate, and so on and so on.
3:43	Now, where there is efficiency there is ruthlessness.
3:54	And the more you are efficient, the more intolerant, the more enclosed, the more resistant, and which gradually develops the sense of pride; and pride is obviously an isolating, destructive process to understand.
4:28	We admire efficient people, and the whole governments throughout the world are concerned with the cultivation of efficiency and the organization of efficiency - efficiency in order to produce, in order to kill, in order to carry out an ideology of the party or of the church, of a particular religion.
5:03	We all want to be efficient, and thereby cultivate the psychological demand for a pattern which will conform to efficiency.
5:23	Efficiency - which means the cultivation of a technique, a method - implies the constant practice of a habit, psychologically.
5:40	We know the industrial habits, but the psychological habit of resistance.
5:57	And I’m not at all sure that’s not what most of us are seeking: a cultivation of a habit which will make us efficient to meet life, which is so swift.
6:09	So if we can understand this, not only at the verbal level but at the deeper psychological levels, states, this whole process of the cultivation of technique, method, means, then we shall be able to understand, I think, what it is to be creative.
6:36	Because when there is the creative urge, it will find its own technique or its own means of expression.
6:51	But if you are consumed, taken up with the cultivation of a technique, obviously you shall never find the other.
7:00	And why is it that we want technique, the psychological pattern of action which gives us certainty, efficiency, a continuity, a sustained effort?
7:09	After all, if you must read religious books, most of them, I’m pretty sure - not that I have read any of them - contain the way; the way becomes important, because the way points to the goal, therefore the goal is separate from the way.
7:47	Is that so? Is the means different from the end?
8:00	If you psychologically cultivate a habit, a method, a means, a way, a technique, is not the end already projected, already crystallized?
8:09	Therefore the means and the end are not separate.
8:17	That is, you cannot have peace in the world through violent methods, at whatever level.
8:27	Therefore the means and the end are inseparable; therefore a mind that cultivates a habit will create the end which is already foreseen, already cultivated, already existent, projected by the mind, and that’s what most of us want.
8:51	The technique is only the cultivation of the known, of security, of certainty, and with the known the mind wants to perceive the unknown, therefore it can never understand it.
9:10	Therefore the means matters, not the end, because the end and the means are one.
9:22	So the mind, which is the mechanism of the cultivation of habit, or the way or the technique, prevents the creative being, the creativeness, that extraordinary sense of spontaneous discovery.
9:42	So our problem is not the cultivation of a new technique, or a new habit, or to discover a new way, but to be free of all that, of the psychological search for a technique.
10:10	If you have something to say, you will say it, the right words will come out.
10:18	But if you have nothing, and you cultivate marvellous, eloquent speech and all… you know, go to schools to learn how to speak, what you project, what you say, will have very little meaning.
10:44	So, why is it that most of us are seeking a method, a technique? Obviously, to be sure, to be certain, not to go wrong, not to experiment, over.
11:04	It prevents the discovery from moment to moment.
11:12	And truth, or what you will, is from moment to moment, not a continued, increasing, growing arc.
11:30	So can we be free from the psychological urge to be sure, to cultivate a habit, a practice, which are all resistance, which are all defences?
11:50	And with this defensive mechanism you want to understand something which is rapid, swift. If we can understand it fully, as I’m explaining it, as you are experimenting with me, then it is possible to know what it means to be free so as to meet.
12:12	And is it possible to be free from the desire to be secure psychologically?
12:24	Because technique, a means, offers security: you function within a groove and then there is neither going right or wrong, you are merely automatically functioning.
12:50	And is it possible for a mind which has been trained for centuries to cultivate habit, a means, is it possible for it to be free?
13:03	It is possible only when we realize the whole significance of it, the total process of its momentum.
13:16	That is, as I am talking about it, if you are aware of it, silently observe your own process, how there is the cumulative effect of every desire to succeed, to gain, to achieve, which denies all understanding.
13:43	Because the understanding of the thing, of life, of this total process, does not come through desire; there must be spontaneous meeting with it.
14:03	If one can see this whole process psychologically, inwardly, as well as it’s expressed outwardly in all the governments, all society; and the communities demand efficiency with all its ruthlessness.
14:30	When you see the whole of that, then perhaps the mind begins to loosen, the mind begins to break away from its accustomed habits.
14:44	Then when it is really free, not seeking a means, then when the mind is quiet, then comes that creative something, which is creation itself.
14:57	It will find its own expression; you don’t have to choose an expression for it.
15:04	If you are a painter, you paint it.
15:13	It is that creative understanding that is vital, that gives bliss, that gives happiness, not just the technical expression of something which you have learnt.
15:29	So reality or God, or what you will, is something that cannot come by a technique, by a means, through a long, determined practice and discipline.
15:55	It’s not a course laid out, with a known end. One must enter into the uncharted sea; there must be an aloneness.
16:12	Aloneness implies no means. You’re not alone when you have a means.
16:23	There must be complete nakedness, emptiness, of all these accumulated practices, hopes, pleasures, desires for security, which are all consistently maintaining a means, a method, a technique.
16:46	Then only is there the other, and then the problem is solved.
16:55	A man who is from moment to moment dying and therefore renewing is able to meet life.
17:12	It is not he is separate from life; it is life.
17:19	QUESTIO N: What is the right relationship, if any, between the individual and the collective, the mass?
17:30	What is the right relationship, if any, between the individual and the collective, the mass?
17:46	Do you think there is any relationship between the individual and the mass, between you and the collective?
18:06	The state, the government, would like us to be the citizen, the collective.
18:17	But we are man first and afterwards the citizen, not the citizen first and man after.
18:32	But the collective, the mass, the state, would like us to be… not to be the man, the private, but the mass.
18:45	And the more we are the citizen, the greater capacity, the greater efficiency, we become the tool, which most authoritarian states and governments, ordinary governments, want us to be, the bureaucrats.
18:58	So we must distinguish between the private and the citizen, the man and the mass.
19:15	The private, the man, has his private feelings, hopes, failures, disappointments, longings, sensations, pleasures.
19:41	And we want to reduce all those and be the collective, because then it’s very simple to deal with the collective - pass an edict and it’s done; give a sanction and it’s followed.
20:02	So the more and more organizations come into being and efficiently organized, the more the individual is denied, either in the church or in the state.
20:12	We’re all Christians, all Hindus, not individuals - and with that mentality, with that state, which most of us want, has the individual reality any place with that?
20:42	We recognize there must be collective action, but the collective action, does it come into being with the denial of the individual?
20:58	Is the individual in opposition to the collective? Is the collective not fictitious, the mass not unreal, and, therefore, put in the opposite, and then try to establish the relationship of the individual with the collective.
21:24	If the individual is intelligent, he will cooperate with the other. Surely that is our problem, isn’t it?
21:37	We first create the mass and then try to find the relationship of the individual with the mass.
21:47	And let’s find out if the mass is real, in the sense, real - the group of us here can be made into the collective by hypnotism, by propaganda, through various means we can be aroused to act collectively for an ideology, for a state, for a church, for an idea, and so on and so on.
22:25	That is, externally imposed, directed, compelled, through fear, reward, and all the rest of it.
22:38	Having established that theoretically, or on occasions actually, we try to establish the relationship of the individual, which is the actual, with that which is produced.
22:57	So whereas it is not possible for the individual to lose his separateness through definite understanding all the implications of his separateness, and therefore act cooperatively?
23:19	And as that is so difficult, states, governments, churches, organized religions force the individual to become the corporate.
23:41	What place has the individual in history? What does it matter what you and I do? There is the historical movement going on. What place has reality with this movement?
24:04	Probably none at all; you and I don’t count at all.
24:14	This movement is gigantic, it’s going on; it has set into motion centuries, and it’ll go on.
24:23	What is your relationship, as an individual, to this movement?
24:30	Whatever you do, will it affect it? Can you stop a war because you’re a pacifist? But you are a pacifist not because there is a war, not because you have found a relationship to it, but in itself it is wrong - you feel you cannot kill, and there is the end.
24:52	But to find a relationship between your understanding, your intelligence, to this monstrous internal, logical movement of war, seems to me utterly futile.
25:18	I can be the individual and see what creates anti-social actions in me, and be free as a separative entity.
25:31	I may have a little property - surely that doesn’t make me a separate entity.
25:39	But the whole psychological state to be separate, to be isolated, to be something, that is what is calamitous, that is what is so destructive.
25:52	And in order to overcome that we have all the external sanctions and impositions and edicts.
26:00	QUESTIO N: What is the significance of pain and suffering?
26:09	What is the significance of pain and suffering? When you suffer, when you have pain, what is the significance?
26:23	Physical pain has one significance, and probably we mean psychological pain and suffering, which has quite a different significance at different levels.
26:39	What is the significance of suffering? Why do you want to find the significance of suffering? Not that there is not a significance - we are going to find out - but why do you want to find it?
26:57	Why do you want to find out why you suffer? When you put that question to yourself, ‘Why do I suffer?’ and are looking to the cause of suffering, are you not escaping from suffering?
27:20	So when I seek the significance of suffering, am I not avoiding it, evading it, running away from it?
27:38	The fact is I am suffering, but the moment I bring the mind to operate upon it and say, ‘Now, why?’ I’ve already diluted the intensity of suffering.
27:48	In other words, we want suffering to be diluted, alleviated, put away, explained away.
28:01	Surely that doesn’t give an understanding of suffering.
28:13	So if I am free from that desire to run away from it, then I begin to understand what is the content of suffering.
28:27	Now, what is suffering?
28:34	A disturbance, isn’t it, at different levels: physical, at the different levels of consciousness, an acute form of disturbance, which I don’t like.
28:50	I have my son, who is dead; I’ve built around him all my hope - my brother, my husband, what you will - I have enshrined him with all the things I want him to be, and I’ve kept his companion as my companion, you know, all that; and he is suddenly gone.
29:19	There is a disturbance, isn’t there? That disturbance I call suffering. Please, I’m not being harsh; we are examining, trying to understand it. If I don’t like that suffering, then I say, ‘Why am I suffering?
29:41	I loved him so much. He was this. I had that.’ And I try to escape in words, in labels, in beliefs.
29:59	And most of us do. They act as a narcotic. So if I do not do that, what happens? I am simply aware of suffering.
30:22	I don’t condemn it, I don’t justify it - I’m suffering. Then I can follow its movement, can’t I? Then I can follow the whole content of what it means. ‘I follow’ in the sense is merely a verbalization to understand something.
30:42	What does it mean? Then I want to know what it is that is suffering, why there is suffering, not the cause of suffering - actually why it is happening.
30:58	I do not know if you see the difference. Then I’m simply aware of it, not as apart from me as an observer watching suffering; it’s part of me, that suffering; that is, the whole of me suffering.
31:17	Why? I want to follow its movement, see where it leads.
31:29	Surely if I do that, then it opens up, does it not?
31:36	Then I see that I have laid emphasis on the me first, not on the person whom I love.
31:50	He only acted to cover me from my misery, from my loneliness, from my misfortune: I am not this, but he will be that - so that has gone.
32:00	So I’m left, I’m lost, I’m lonely. Without him I’m nothing, so I cry. It’s not that he is gone, but I am left, I’m alone.
32:27	To come to that is very difficult, isn’t it? To really recognize it, not merely say, ‘I’m alone,’ and just… ‘How am I to get rid of that loneliness?’ - which is another form of escape, but to be conscious of it and to remain with it and to see its movement.
32:47	I’m only taking that as an example.
32:56	So gradually, if I allow it to unfold, to open up, I see that I am suffering because I’m lost, or I’m being called to give attention to something which I’m not willing to, something which is being forced upon me, which I‘m reluctant to observe and understand.
33:24	And there are innumerable people to help me to escape, thousands of religious people, so-called religious people with their beliefs and dogmas and hopes and fantasies - you know?
33:44	- ‘It’s karma, it is God’s will,’ and - you know? - all giving me a way out.
33:59	Then if I can still live with it and not put it away from me, not try to circumscribe it, not to deny it, then what happens?
34:14	Then what is the state of your mind which is observing suffering?
34:24	Now, please follow this, from what we discussed previously.
34:38	Is the suffering merely a word or an actuality?
34:56	If it is actuality and not the word, then the word has no meaning now, you are merely…
35:05	there is merely the feeling of intense pain. With regard to what? With regard to an image, to an experience, to a desire which you have or have not.
35:28	If you have, you call it pleasure, if not, it’s pain.
35:42	So pain is in relationship to something.
35:52	Is that something merely a verbalization or an actuality?
35:59	I don’t know if you’re following all this. That is, when sorrow exists, exists only in relationship to something, it cannot exist by itself. And fear cannot exist by itself but in relationship to something: to an individual, to an incident, to a feeling.
36:21	Now, you are observing the suffering - is that suffering apart from you and therefore you’re merely the observer who is suffering, or is that suffering part of you?
36:43	Surely we are trying to understand what suffering, pain is, and to go into it fully, not just superficially.
36:59	Now, when there is no observer who is suffering, is the suffering different from you?
37:09	You are the suffering, are you not? Not you are apart from the pain; you are the pain.
37:20	Now, what happens? Please, follow it up. There is no labelling; there is no giving it a name and thereby brushing it aside.
37:39	You are merely that pain, that feeling, that sense of agony.
37:49	Then what happens when you are that? When you do not name it, when there is no fear with regard to it, is the centre related to it?
38:08	If the centre is related to it, then it’s afraid of it.
38:15	If the centre is related to it, then it’s afraid of it, then it must act and do something about it.
38:28	But if the centre is that, then what do you do?
38:39	There is nothing to be done, is there? Please, it is not mere acceptance. Follow it; you will see. If you are that and you’re not accepting it, you’re not labelling it, you’re not pushing it aside; you are that thing.
38:56	What happens? Do you say you suffer then? Surely a fundamental transformation has taken place.
39:10	Then there is no longer ‘I suffer’ because there is no centre to suffer.
39:20	And the centre suffers because we have never examined what the centre is.
39:31	We just live from word to word, from movement to movement, from reaction to reaction. We never say, ‘Let me look what that thing is that suffers.’ And you cannot look by enforcement, by discipline.
39:52	You must look with interest, with that spontaneous comprehension to find out.
40:04	Then you will see the thing that we call suffering, pain, the thing that we avoid, the discipline, all have gone.
40:12	As long as we have no relationship to the thing as outside of me, the problem is not; but the moment I establish a relationship outside me, the problem is.
40:31	And as long as I treat suffering as something outside, because of my brother, because I have no money, because of that, then I establish a relationship to it, and that relationship is fictitious.
41:02	Then if I am that thing, which is a fact, then the whole thing is transformed, the whole thing has a different meaning.
41:20	Then there is full attention, integrated attention. Then that which is completely regarded, observed, is understood and dissolved, and therefore there is no fear and therefore the word sorrow is non-existent.