Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkx1njE95fs
As per Krishnamurti, the question of human responsibility
is not easy, but it can be understood by starting with some basics which
we need to ingrain in ourselves deeply. Then, we can freely enquire into
the question of what our responsibility as a human being is.
1. The first is the power to
observe with deep attention, but without jumping to conclusions, getting
depressed, or taking sides. We need to observe things going on in the world,
but without merely taking sides or getting depressed, etc. He goes on the
describe the world as a place with great advancements in technology, but
with uncertainty in the economic and social environment, and with
destructive attutides being cultivated the world over through wars and through
parochial attitudes - including patriotism, which for Krishnamurti, had
turned into nothing but glorified tribalism.
He clarifies that this
observation is different from analysis, and does not necessarily involve tearing
things to pieces. Like when we look at a flower - we first notice the sheer
beauty of it, and only then does the analysis start. That kind of simple,
but deep attention is needed. Later, he goes further and says that even
the distance between "what is" and "what should be" is
a division which creates conflict. To see with deep attention is to see
without conflict, and so, we need the quality of attention where even the
difference between the analyzer and the analyzed vanishes, he says. I
don't think K ever tries to say that technology or analysis don't have
their place in our lives. In fact, he starts with these things as
necessities which are of obvious importance. Just that in the field of
this larger enquiry on human responsibility, what is needed, he says, is
that quality of deep attention where one can see without conflict.
2. The second prerequisite is
to deeply understand the common background that all human beings share,
underneath our divisions of nations, races, etc. This is the common experience
of anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, a search for something beyond (whether we
call it God or something else), the feeling that our consciousness is
uniquely ours, etc. Countries might differ peripherally due to better food
or even slightly better governance, but underneath these divisions is the
common shared experience of all human beings. Even if our brains refuse to
accept it, we must accept the irrefutable fact of these experiences being
common to all of us. In that sense, "we are the world" and our
problems are more similar than dissimilar.
He adds that even when we
think about what our responsibility is, we tend to think in terms of our
individual isolated selves, which is wrong because we are again creating a
division which is not deep attention. He says that it is important that
people do this enquiry together the entire world over, because otherwise
there is a tendency for a lone voice of sanity to get submerged in the
confusion and commotion of the rest of mankind.
Once we completely lay down
this foundation of observing what's going on without conflict and understand
deeply how similar people are in their emotional consciousness (beneath
superficial physical differences) then the
mind would be ready to enquire into what we can do in this situation of
today's.
Finally, Krishnamurti mentions
the power of this deep attention in the context of problems of everyday
life. If you are angry, see this anger within yourself without thinking of
yourself as being different from the anger and without various such
escapist thoughts. In doing this, the mind gets cleaned of anger. If you
have been hurt by somebody, look deeply at what the hurt is doing to you
(i.e., its consequences), and the "flame of attention" will cleanse
the wound. If you are in a relationship, enquire whether it is based
mainly on a need or a dependency (rather than on love). Ask whether love
is possession or whether attachment is love? All action due to a motive
(dependency, need for gratification, etc.), he says, leads to conflict at some
level and must end somewhere. Cause-less love, on the other hand, seems to
be the one thing which is eternal.
Sadanand Tutakne
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