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SD74CA8 - Does pleasure bring happiness?
San Diego, California - 21 February 1974
Conversation with A.W. Anderson 8



0:38 Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
0:43 J. Krishnamurti was born in South India and educated in England. For the past 40 years he has been speaking in the United States, Europe, India, Australia, and other parts of the world. From the outset of his life's work he repudiated all connections with organised religions and ideologies and said that his only concern was to set man absolutely unconditionally free. He is the author of many books, among them The Awakening of Intelligence, The Urgency of Change, Freedom From the Known, and The Flight of the Eagle. This is one of a series of dialogues between Krishnamurti and Dr. Allan W. Anderson, who is professor of religious studies at San Diego State University where he teaches Indian and Chinese scriptures and the oracular tradition. Dr. Anderson, a published poet, received his degree from Columbia University and the Union Theological Seminary. He has been honoured with the distinguished Teaching Award from the California State University.
1:51 A: Mr. Krishnamurti, I was wonderfully overjoyed in our last conversation - for myself, just as one who was trying and listening to you - to learn something of this inwardness, to follow along the passage that we had made from fear through the points as we moved, until we came to pleasure. And as we left off we were still talking of pleasure, and I hope we can begin now to move along.
2:36 K: Yes, we were saying, sir, pleasure, enjoyment, delight, and joy and happiness, and what relationship has pleasure with enjoyment and with joy and with happiness? Is pleasure happiness? Is pleasure joy? Is pleasure enjoyment? Or is pleasure something entirely different from those two?
3:19 A: In English we think we make a distinction between pleasure and joy without necessarily knowing what we mean. But in our use, in our employment of the words, we will discriminate sometimes, we think it odd to use the word 'pleasure' rather than 'joy' when we think that 'joy' is appropriate. The relation between the word 'please' and 'pleasure' interests me very much. We will say to a person, 'Please sit down'. And usually that will be thought of as...
3:59 K: Have the pleasure to sit down.

A: Yes. It's not a request.

K: Please yourself to sit down.
4:03 A: It's an invitation, not a request.

K: Not - quite.
4:06 A: Be pleased to sit down.

K: Be pleased to sit down.
4:10 A: It's be pleased to be seated.
4:14 K: Yes. In Italian, French, so on.

A: Right. So within pleasure itself, the word 'pleasure'... there's the intimation of joy, intimation that is not strictly reduced to the word.
4:34 K: I would like to question whether pleasure has any relationship with joy.
4:45 A: Not in itself, I take it you mean.
4:47 K: Or even beyond the word. Is there a line or a continuity of pleasure to joy? Is there a connecting link? Because, what is pleasure? I take pleasure in eating, I take pleasure in walking. I take pleasure in accumulating money. I take pleasure in - I don't know, a dozen things - sex, hurting people, sadistic instincts, violence. They are all forms of a pleasure. I enjoy - I won't use the word 'enjoy' - I take pleasure in and pursue that pleasure. One wants to hurt people. And that gives great pleasure. One wants to have power. It doesn't matter, over the cook, or over the wife, or of a thousand people, it is the same. The pleasure in something, which is sustained, nourished, kept going. This pleasure, when it's thwarted, becomes violence, anger, jealousy, fury, wanting to break, all kinds of neurotic activities, and so on, so on, so on. So what is pleasure and what is it that keeps it going? What is the pursuit of it, the constant direction of it?
6:59 A: I think something in our first conversation is intimated here when we talked about the built-in necessity that one observes in a progress that is never consummated. It's just nothing but a termination and then a new start. But no consummation at all, no totality, no fulfilment - feeling full is what I mean by that.
7:51 K: Yes, I understand, sir, but what is it that's called pleasure? I see something, something which I enjoy, and I want it. Pleasure. Pleasure in possession. Take that simple thing, which the child, the grown up man and the priest, they all have this feeling of pleasure in possession. A toy, or a house, or possessing knowledge, or possessing the idea of God, or the pleasure the dictators have, the totalitarian brutalities. The pleasure. What is that pleasure? To make it very, very simple: what is that pleasure? Look, sir, what happens: there is a single tree on the hill, green meadow, deer, and there is the single tree standing on the hill. You see that and you say, 'How marvellous'. Not verbally - merely you say, 'How marvellous' to communicate to somebody. But when you are by yourself and see that, it is really astonishingly beautiful. The whole movement of the earth, the flowers, the deer, the meadows, the water and the single tree, with the shadow. You see that. And it's almost breathtaking. And you turn away and go away. Then thought says, 'How extraordinary that was'.
9:59 A: Compared with what now is.

K: How extraordinary. I must have it again. I must get that same feeling which I had then for two seconds or five minutes. So thought - see what has taken place - there was immediate response to that beauty, non-verbal, non-emotional, non-sentimental, non-romantic, then thought comes along and says, 'How extraordinary, what a delight that was'. And then the memory of it, the repetition, the demand, the desire for the repetition.
10:55 A: When we go to performances this happens with what we call the 'encore', doesn't it?

K: Of course, encore...
11:02 A: And with encores there's a creeping embarrassment. Because with the first reappearance this is a sign of adulation, praise, and everybody is happy. But then, of course, there's the problem of how many more encores can be made, maybe the last encore is a signal that we are fed up now. We don't want any more.

K: Quite, quite.
11:25 A: Yes, yes, I understand. I think I am following you.
11:29 K: So thought gives nourishment, sustains it and gives a direction to pleasure. There was no pleasure at the moment of perception of that tree, the hill, the shadows, the deer, the water, the meadow. The whole thing was astonishing, there was real non-verbal, non-romantic perception. It has nothing to do with me or you - it was there. Then thought comes along and... memory of it, the continuing of that memory tomorrow, and the demand for that, and the pursuit of that. And when I come back to it tomorrow it is not the same. I feel a little bit shocked. I say, 'I was inspired, now I must find a means of getting again inspired', therefore I take a drink, women, this or that. You follow?

A: Oh yes, yes, yes. Do you think, in the history of culture the establishment of festivals would be related to what you say?

K: Of course, of course. It's the whole thing, sir.
13:05 A: We live for... well, in English we have this saying, to 'live it up'. The rest of the time we are living it down.
13:16 K: Down, yes. Mardi Gras, the whole business of it. So there it is. I see that. See what takes place, sir. Pleasure is sustained by thought, sexual pleasure, the image, the thinking over it - all that - and the repetition of it. And the pleasure of it, and go on, keep on - routine. Now, what is the place of pleasure, or relationship, to the delight of the moment? Not even the delight, it is something inexpressible. So is there any relationship between pleasure and enjoyment? Enjoyment becomes pleasure when thought says, 'I have enjoyed it, I must have more of it'.
14:34 A: It's actually a falling out of joy.
14:38 K: Yes. That's it, you see, sir... So pleasure has no relationship to ecstasy, to delight, to enjoyment, or to joy and happiness. Because pleasure is the movement of thought in direction. It doesn't matter what direction, but in a direction. The others have no direction. Pleasure and enjoyment - you enjoy! Joy is something you cannot invite. Happiness you cannot invite. It happens, and you don't know if you are happy at that moment. It is only the next moment you say, 'How marvellous that was'. So, see what takes place: can the mind, the brain, register the beauty of that hill, and tree, and the water, and the meadows, and end it? Not say, 'I want it again'.
15:57 A: Yes. What you've just said now would take us back to that word 'negation' that we spoke of before, because there has to be a moment, when we are about to fall out, and what you are saying is: the moment that 'about to fall out' appears something must be done.
16:29 K: You will see it in a minute, sir, you will see what an extraordinary thing takes place. I see pleasure, enjoyment, joy and happiness, I see pleasure as not related to any of that, the other two, joy and enjoyment. So thought gives direction and sustains pleasure. Right? Now, the mind asks: can there be non-interference of thought, non-interference of thought in pleasure? I enjoy. Why should thought come into it at all?
17:24 A: There's no reason at all.

K: But it does.
17:26 A: It does, it does.

K: Therefore, now the question arises: how is the mind, the brain, to stop thought entering into that enjoyment? You follow?

A: Yes.
17:41 K: Not to interfere. Therefore, they said - the ancients and the religious - 'Control thought'. You follow? Don't let it creep in. Therefore control it.
18:03 A: The minute it raises its ugly head, whack it off! It's like a hydra.

K: It keeps on growing. Now, is it possible to enjoy, to take a delight in that lovely scene and no thought creep in? Is this possible? I'll show you, it is possible, completely possible, if you are attentive at that moment, completely attentive. You follow, sir?
18:47 A: Which has nothing to do with screwing oneself up, with muscular effort to focus in there.
18:52 K: Right. Just be wholly there. When you see the sunset, see it completely! When you see a beautiful line of a car, see it. And don't let this thought begin. That means at that moment be supremely attentive, completely, with your mind, with your body, with your nerves, with your eyes, ears, everything attentive! Then thought doesn't come into it at all. So pleasure is related to thought, and thought in itself brings about fragmentation: pleasure and not pleasure. Therefore now that I haven't pleasure, I must pursue pleasure.
19:56 A: It makes a judgement.

K: Judgement. And the feeling of frustration, anger, violence - you follow?- all that come into... when there is the denial of pleasure, which is what the religious people have done. They are very violent people. They have said, no pleasure.
20:28 A: The irony of this is overwhelming. In classical thought you have that marvellous monument, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, who never tired of saying in his examination of thought and the recognition of the judgement, that one must distinguish in order to unite. And his motive was very different from what seems to have been read. Because we managed to distinguish, but we never see the thing whole and get to the uniting, so the uniting just vanishes; it's terrible.

K: That's the whole point, sir. So unless the mind understands the nature of thinking, really very, very, very deeply, mere control means nothing. Personally, I have never controlled a thing. This may sound rather absurd, but it is a fact.
21:48 A: Marvellous.

K: Never. But I've watched it. The watching is its own discipline and its own action. Discipline in the sense: not conformity, not suppression, not adjusting yourself to a pattern, but the sense of correctness, the sense of excellence. When you see something, why should you control? Why should you control, when you see a poisonous bottle on the shelf? You don't control. You say, quite right, you don't drink. You don't touch it. It's only when I don't read the sign properly, when I see it and when I think it is a sweet, then I take it. But if I read the label, if I know what it is I won't touch it. There's no control.
22:56 A: Of course, not. It's self-evident. I'm thinking of that wonderful story in the Gospel about Peter, who in the storm gets out to walk on the water, because he sees his Lord coming on the water, and he's invited to walk on the water. And he actually makes it a few steps, and then it says he loses faith. But it seems to me that one could see that in terms of what you've been saying, at the point where thought took over, he started going down. That was the time when he started going down. But he was actually... The reason that I am referring to that is because I sense in what you are saying that there is something that supports, there is a support, - that is not a support that's fragmented from something else - but there is an abiding something which must be sustaining the person.
24:15 K: I wouldn't put it that way, sir. That is, that leaves a door open, that opens a door to the idea: 'in you there is God'.
24:30 A: Yes, yes, I see the trap.
24:32 K: In you there is the higher self, in you there is the Atman, the permanent.
24:41 A: Maybe we shouldn't say anything about that.
24:44 K: That's it. No, we can say this: to see... - look what we have done, sir, this morning - to see appetite, desire, to see the implication, the structure of pleasure, and there is no relation to enjoyment and to joy, to see all that, to see it, not verbally, but actually, through observation, through attention, through care, through very careful seeing, that brings an extraordinary quality of intelligence. After all intelligence is sensitivity. To be utterly sensitive, in seeing! If you call that intelligence 'the higher self' or whatever, it has no meaning. You follow?
25:46 A: It's as though you are saying, at that instant it's released.

K: Yes. That intelligence comes in observation.
25:59 A: Yes.
26:00 K: And that intelligence is operating all the time, if you allow it. Not if you allow it; if you are seeing. I mean, I see, I have seen all my life people who have controlled, people who have denied, people who have negated, and who have sacrificed, who have controlled, suppressed, furiously, disciplined themselves, tortured themselves. And I say, for what? For God? For truth? A mind that has made tortured, crooked, brutalised, such a mind can see truth? Certainly not. You need a completely healthy mind, a mind that is whole, a mind that is holy in itself. Otherwise you can't see something holy, unless the mind is sacred, you cannot see what is sacred. So, I say, sorry, I won't touch any of that. It has no meaning. So, I don't know how this happened but I never, for a second, controled myself. I don't know what it means.
27:35 A: And yet, amazingly, you know what it is in others.
27:40 K: Oh, obviously, you can see it.
27:44 A: So this is something that you are able to see without having...
27:49 K: ...gone through it.

A: Without having gone through it. Now, this to me is profoundly mysterious. I don't mean in the sense of mystification.

K: No, no.
27:59 A: But I mean it's... I mean miraculous.
28:02 K: No, not necessarily, sir. I'll show you something, sir. Must I get drunk in order to find out what it is to be sober?
28:12 A: Oh no, no, no.
28:14 K: Can't I see a man who is drunk, I say, for God's sake, see the whole movement of drunkenness, what lies behind it, what he goes through, see it - finished!
28:27 A: But it seems to me that - in my listening to you - that you are doing more than just observing that someone over there has fallen on his face, therefore...
28:36 K: No, no.

A: Right, there's something that is very deep here...

K: Of course.
28:41 A: ...at least to me, that you've said. Control in the very, very deep sense is an activity, not a product, and something that you haven't experienced, that we would call normally intangible is nevertheless acutely present to you.
29:05 K: Yes, yes.
29:06 A: And I take it that what you've said is that intelligence reveals that. Intelligence, if intelligence is allowed to reveal it.
29:16 K: I think, sir, not allowed. That's a danger - to allow intelligence to operate. Which means you have intelligence, then you allow it.
29:27 A: Yes, I see the trap of that construction. Yes, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, because now we've got an observer who's got a new gimmick. Yes, I see what you mean. Please go on, please.
29:42 K: So, you see, that's why discipline has a different meaning. When you understand pleasure, when you understand its relationship to enjoyment and to the joy, and happiness, and the beauty of happiness, beauty of joy, and so on, then you understand the utter necessity of a different kind of discipline that comes naturally. After all, sir, look, the word 'discipline' in itself means to learn. To learn, not to conform, not to, say, I must discipline myself to be like that, or not to be like that. The word 'discipline', as we both see, is to learn. To learn means I must be capable of hearing, of seeing, which means the capacity which is not cultivable. You can cultivate a capacity, but that is not the same as the act of listening. I don't know if I'm...
31:19 A: Oh yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, I follow, very clear, very clear.
31:25 K: The capacity to learn demands a certain discipline. I must concentrate, I must give my time to it, I must set aside my efforts in a certain direction, and all that. That is, developing a certain capacity needs time.
31:53 A: Yes.
31:56 K: But perception has nothing to do with time! You see and act! As you do when you see a danger. You act instantly. You act instantly because you are so conditioned to danger.
32:17 A: Exactly.
32:18 K: That conditioning is not intelligence. You are just conditioned. You see a snake and you recoil, and you run away. You see a dangerous animal and you run. That's all self-protective conditioned responses. That's very simple. But perception-and-action is not conditioned.
32:43 A: You know, we have in the history of the English language turned that word 'fear' upside down in terms of its derivation because, if I remember correctly, 'fear' comes from the Anglo-Saxon word that means danger. That means danger.

K: Danger, of course.
33:01 A: And now we've psychologised that word, and now a fear means rather my emotional response to the danger and not what I ought to be doing.
33:10 K: Yes, not aware of the danger of fear - you follow?

A: Yes.
33:18 K: That means, sir, look: ordinary human beings are conditioned - now as they are - by the culture, by the civilisation they are living in. They accept nationalism, - I'm taking that for example - they accept nationalism, the flag, the nationalism, and all the rest of it; nationalism is one of the causes of war.
33:44 A: Oh yes, yes, indubitably.
33:49 K: As patriotism, all the rest of it. Now, we don't see the danger of nationalism, because we are conditioned to nationalism as being secure, security.
34:05 A: But we do see our fear of the enemy.
34:08 K: Of course.

A: Yes, right. And contemplating that fear of the enemy dulls our capacity to deal with the danger.

K: Danger. So fear, pleasure, and discipline. You follow, sir? Discipline means to learn, I am learning about pleasure, mind is learning about pleasure. Learning brings its own order.
34:38 A: Its own.

K: It's own order.

A: Yes. That's what I've been calling 'miracle'. It just asks you to jolly well leave it alone.
34:51 K: It brings its own order, and that order says, don't be silly, control is out, finished. Now wait a minute. I talked to a monk once. He came to see me. He had a great many followers. And he was very well known - he is still very well known. And he said, 'I have taught my disciples', and he was very proud of having thousands of disciples. You follow? And it seemed rather absurd for a guru to be proud.
35:33 A: He was a success.

K: He was a success. And success means Cadillacs or Rolls Royces, European, American followers - you follow? - all that circus that goes on.
35:46 A: His gimmick works.

K: Gimmick works. And he was saying, 'I have arrived because I have learned to control my senses, my body, my thoughts, my desires. I've held them, as the Gita says' - hold something, you are reigning, you are riding a horse, you know, holding them. He went on about it for some length, I said, 'Sir, what, at the end of it? You have controlled. Where are you at the end of it?' He said, 'What are you asking, I have arrived!' Arrived at what? 'I have achieved enlightenment'. Just listen to it, sir. Follow the sequence of a human being who has a direction, which he calls truth. And to achieve that there are the traditional steps, the traditional path, the traditional approach. And he has done it. And therefore he says, 'I have got it. I have got it in my hand. I know what it is'. I said, 'All right, sir'. He began to be very excited about it because he wanted to convince me about being a big man, and all that. So I sat very quietly and listened to him, and he quietened down. And then I said to him - we were sitting by the sea - and I said to him, 'Do you see that sea, sir?' He said, 'Of course'. Can you hold that water in your hand? When you hold that water in your hand, it's no longer the sea.
37:55 A: Right.
37:58 K: He couldn't make out. I said, 'All right'. And the wind was blowing from the north, slight breeze, cool. And he said, 'There is a breeze'. 'Can you hold all that?' 'No'. 'Can you hold the earth?' 'No'. 'So what are you holding? Words?' You know, sir, he was so angry. He said, 'I won't listen to you anymore. You are an evil man'. And walked out.
38:43 A: I was thinking of the absurd irony of that. All the time he thought he was holding on to himself, and he just let go as he got up and walked away.
38:54 K: So you see, sir? That's what I mean. So learning about pleasure, about fear, really frees you from the tortures of fear and the pursuit of pleasure. So there is a sense of real enjoyment in life. Living then becomes a great joy - you follow, sir? It isn't just a monotonous routine, going to the office, sex, and money.
39:30 A: I've always thought it's a great misfortune that in that splendid rhetoric of our Declaration of Independence we have that phrase: 'the pursuit of pleasure'.
39:44 K: Pursuit of pleasure.
39:45 A: Because the child, the bright child, is reared on that.
39:51 K: Oh rather, sir.

A: And when you are very young you are not about to turn around and say, 'Everybody's daft'.

K: I know, I know. So from this, you see, discipline in the orthodox sense has no place in a mind that's really wanting to learn about truth, not philosophise about truth, not theorise about truth, as you say, tie ribbons round to it, but learn about it. Learn about pleasure. It is really out of that learning comes an extraordinary sense of order - which we were talking the other day. The order which comes with the observation, in oneself, of pleasure. The order. And there is enjoyment. A marvellous sense of ending each enjoyment as you live each moment. You don't carry over the past enjoyment. Then that becomes pleasure. Then it has no meaning. Repetition of pleasure is monotony, is boredom. And they are bored in this country - and other countries. They are fed up with pleasure. But they want other pleasures, in other directions. And that's why there is the proliferation of gurus in this country. Because they all want the circus kept going. So discipline is order. And discipline means to learn about pleasure, enjoyment, joy and the beauty of joy. When you learn - you follow, sir? - it is always new.
42:15 A: I've just thought - well, thought isn't the right word - something flashed in the communication of what you have been pointing to, - if you don't mind I'd rather say that you've been pointing to than to use the phrase that you've been saying - I hope I've understood you correctly here, because in terms of the communication problem it seems that there's been a profound confusion between perception and practice.
43:05 K: Yes. Oh yes.

A: I have grasped that. It's as though we had the idea that perception is perfected at the end of practice.
43:17 K: Practice is routine, is death!
43:20 A: We do have that idea.

K: I know.
43:23 A: Yes.
43:26 K: You see, sir, they've always said, freedom is at the end, not at the beginning. On the contrary, it's at the beginning! It is the first step that counts, not the last step. So if we understand this whole question of fear and pleasure, joy, the understanding can only come in freedom to observe. And, in the observation, learning and the acting, they are all at the same moment, not learn, then act. It is the doing, the seeing, all taking place at the same time. That is whole.
44:20 A: All these marvellous participles being in the infinite mood in themselves. In themselves. Yes. A little while back it occurred to me that, if we paid attention to our language, as well as to the flowers, and the mountains, and the clouds...

K: Oh yes.
44:49 A: ...the language not only in terms of individual words, but words in context, so that we would refer then to what we call usage, would, through perception, intelligence, disclose themselves completely.

K: Quite.
45:12 A: We say, don't we, that one is pleased, one is joyed, but if we ask somebody, 'What have you been doing?' and he said to us, 'I've been pleasing myself', we'd think that was a little odd. We wouldn't think it strange at all if he said, 'Well, I have been enjoying myself'. We don't mind that.

K: That's right.
45:38 A: But we don't pay attention to what we say, to even...
45:41 K: That's right, sir. I came back after lunch, after a meal, and somebody said, 'Have you enjoyed your meal?' And there was a man there who said, 'We are not pigs to enjoy'.
45:55 A: Oh, good Lord.
45:58 K: Seriously.

A: Yes. Exactly. I suppose he must feel very righteous. What he denied himself during the meal.
46:12 K: It is a question of attention, isn't it really, a question of attention, whether you are eating or whether you are observing pleasure. Attention, that's a thing we have to go into very, very deeply - I don't know if there is time now - what it means to attend? Whether we attend to anything at all, or it's only a superficial listening, hearing, seeing, which we call attending. Or the expression of knowledge in doing. Attention, I feel, has nothing to do with knowledge, or with action. In the very attending is action. I mean, one has to go into this again, question of 'What is action?'. Perhaps we can do it another day.
47:38 A: Yes, I see a relation between what you've just said about action and what a few conversations ago we came to with the word 'movement'.

K: Yes.
47:57 A: On-going-ness. And when you were talking about standing and looking at the tree on the mountain. I remembered when I was in Rishikesh, I was staying at one of the ashrams there, actually the Vedanta Forest Academy, and when I got to my quarters, a monkey came and sat on the window sill with her little baby, and she looked full into my face, and I looked full into hers, but I think she looked fuller into mine. I had that strange feeling that I was actually a human being being...
48:55 K: Investigated.

A: ...investigated, or as the students say today, being psyched out by this monkey. And it was a profound shock to me.
49:10 K: Talking of monkeys, sir, I was in Benares, at the place I go to usually, I was doing yoga exercises, half naked, and a big monkey, with black face and long tail, came and sat on the veranda. I had closed my eyes. I looked and there was this big monkey. She looked at me and I looked at her. A big monkey, sir. They are powerful things. And it stretched out its hand, so I walked up and held her hand, like that, held it.
49:56 A: Held it.
49:58 K: And it was rough, but very, very supple, extraordinarily supple. But rough. And we looked at each other. And it said... it wanted to come into the room. I said, look, I am doing exercises, I have little time, would you come another day? I kind of talked to it: come another day. So it looked at me, and I withdrew, went back. She stayed there for two or three minutes and gradually went away.
50:33 A: Marvellous, just marvellous! Complete act of attention between you.
50:40 K: There was no sense of fear. It wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid. A sense of, you know...
50:51 A: This reminds me of a story I read about Ramana Maharishi, how when he was a young man he went and lived in a tiger's cave. And it was occupied by the tiger. And the tiger would come back after the hunt in the early hours of the morning and sleep with him. To read that within the environs of our culture, well, it starts, you feel undone when you read that, if you think for a moment, you could allow yourself to believe it. But in the context of what we have been saying about the monkeys and this marvellous story you told me, I wish I could have shaken the hand of that little mother with her baby. I wasn't ready to.
51:47 K: No, it was really... I don't know, there must have been a communication, there must have been a sense of friendship, you know, without any antagonism, without any fear. It looked at me, you know. And I think, attention is something not to be practised, not to be cultivated, go to a school to learn how to be attentive. That's what they do in this country and in other places, say, 'I don't know what attention is, I'm going to learn from somebody who will tell me how to get it'. Then it's not attention.
52:30 A: Speed reading, it's called.
52:33 K: Speed reading, yes.

A: A thousand words a minute.
52:40 K: Sir, that's why I feel there is a great sense of care and affection in being attentive, which means diligently watching. That word 'diligent' comes from 'legere' - you know, of course - to read. To read exactly what it is, what is there. Not interpret, not translate it, not contrive to do something with it, but to read what is there. There is an infinite lot to see. There is tremendous lot to see in pleasure, as we saw. And to read it. And to read it you must be watchful, attentive, diligent care. But we are negligent. We say, yes, what's wrong with pleasure?
53:49 A: There's a colloquial remark in our tongue, when somebody wishes to secure attention, they will say, 'Do you read me?' That, of course, has been taken over in technology into a different aspect - but quite apart from what someone would be saying with earphones on in a plane - just common ordinary practice, sometimes a person will say that.
54:16 K: So that what we have done is really read this whole map.
54:23 A: Yes.
54:24 K: From the beginning of responsibility, relationship, fear, pleasure - all that. Just to observe this extraordinary map of our life.
54:42 A: And the beauty of it is that we've been moving within the concern for the question of the transformation of man, which is not dependent on knowledge or time, without getting worried about whether we are getting off the track. It is happening naturally. That, I take it, is not a surprise to you, of course, but I'm sure that it's shocking in terms of...
55:18 K: And that's why, also, sir, it is right to live with the company of the wise. Be with a man who is really wise. Not these phoney people are wise, but real wisdom. Not bought in books, not attending classes where you are taught wisdom. Wisdom is something that comes with self-knowing.
55:49 A: It reminds me of a hymn in the Veda that talks about the goddess of speech, who never appears except among friends.
56:00 K: Yes.

A: Marvellous. Actually that means that unless there is the care, the affection that you mentioned, that is continuous, concurrent with attention, there can be nothing but babble.
56:23 K: Of course.

A: There can be verbal babble.
56:27 K: Which the modern world is encouraging, you see.
56:31 A: Yes.
56:34 K: Again, which means the superficial pleasures, not enjoyment. You follow? Superficial pleasures have become the curse. And to go behind that is one of the most difficult things for people to do.
56:56 A: Because it goes faster and faster.

K: That's just it.
57:00 A: It goes faster and faster.
57:01 K: That's what is destroying the earth, the air. Everything they are destroying. There is a place I go to every year, in India, where there is a school: the hills are the oldest hills in the world.
57:23 A: What a beautiful thing.

K: Nothing has been changed, no bulldozers, no new houses, it's an old place, with the old hills, and in amongst there is a school, with which I am connected, and so on. And you feel the enormity of time, the feeling of absolute non-movement. Which is civilisation, which is all this circus that is going on. And when you come there you feel this utter quietness, in which... time has not touched it. And when you leave it and come to civilisation you feel rather lost, a sense of what is all this about? Why is there so much noise about nothing? I think, that's why it is so odd and rather inviting, a great delight to see everything as is, including myself. To see what I am, not through the eyes of a professor, a psychologist, a guru, a book - just to see what I am, and to read what I am. Because all history is in me. You follow?

A: Of course. There is something immensely beautiful about what you have said. Do you think, in the next conversation we'll have we could talk about the relation of beauty to what you have said? Thank you so much.