Vasanta Vihar Newsletter -08-Jul--Oct2008.4.3

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V a s a n t a V i h a r

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KRISHNAMURTIFOUNDATIONINDIA JULY-OCTOBER2008 Rs.2/- VOL.IVISSUE3

ou have lived ten years,thirty years, or eighty years;what have you done with your life? Yes, sir. Don’t say, ‘I’m going tofulfil next life.’ There is only thepresent, the beauty of the present,the richness of the present. Youhave had this life, thisextraordinary thing called life, inwhich there is sorrow, pleasure,fear, guilt, all the tortures and theloneliness and the despair of life,and the beauty of life. You havehad it, and what have you donewith it? Do consider it; it is veryimportant to ask it and to answerit, not to the speaker, to yourself.When you ask it, don’t go tobed with sorrow because you havedone nothing, you have doneabsolutely nothing. A life wasgiven to you, the most preciousthing in the world, and what haveyou done? Distorted it, tortured it,torn it to pieces, divided it, broughtabout violence, destruction,hatred, without love, withoutcompassion, without passion.So when you ask thatquestion—and I hope you areasking it seriously—what youhave done with your life,inevitably, if you are all sensitive,you will have tears in your eyes.But you will have tears becauseyou are thinking of the past, of what you might have done—tearsof self pity. So don’t have tears.For the question is asked, and theanswer lies only in the present,not tomorrow or in the past. Whichmeans, what are you doing, now,with the life that has been given—now, not tomorrow?

From a Talk in Bombay on 14 December 1969

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What have you done with your life?

By J. Krishnamurti

n 1976 we moved from Seattle, Washington, to Ojai, California, sothat our son, who was then ten years old, could attend The OakGrove School run by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Wewere attracted to the school by the sincerity and depth of Krishnamurti’sconcern for children, as indicated in his books on learning andeducation.Because of our association with The Oak Grove School, we not onlyworked with the teachers and the other parents to organize and helpmanage Krishnamurti’s annual talks in the Oak Grove in Ojai; wealso took park in the parent-teacher meetings of twenty to forty people,which Krishnamurti held whenever he was in town. Anyone who has attended Krishnamurti’s talks in the Oak Groveis familiar with the characteristic penetration which he brought evento such large public gatherings. In our parent-teacher meetings withKrishnamurti he was, if anything, more intense and rigorous than hewas in his public talks. Most of the teachers and parents were peoplein their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Krishnamurti was then in hisearly 80s and still very vital. The power of his presence was a palpable

Imagine having J. Krishnamurti as the presidentof your local parent-teacher association.A couple, Vicki and Stan Hodson, did so,and it changed the course of their lives,making them realize that

Krishnamurti gave usthe gift of our ignorance

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Vasanta Vihar NewsletterJuly - October 2008

quality in the room, and theatmosphere of his meeting with uswas often electric. In these smallgatherings Krishnamurti was very accessible and completelyopen to the give and take of serious discussion. And being primarily devoted to schoolmatters, the parent-teachermeetings were more focussed thanthe public talks.There was a quite definitepattern to the parent-teachermeetings. Whether we met in theOak Grove at the school or athis home, Krishnamurti wasalways impeccably dressed andgroomed. Though he might smileand shake hands with oldfriends as he arrived for ameeting, once the talk began therewere no familiars—and certainlyno favourites. Indeed, it was asthough there were absolutely nopast. For instance, he did notwant to be reminded of what wehad accomplished the day before,of where was had left off, etc. Hedidn’t trust keen memories. Infact, when it came to the highestmatters, he didn’t seem to trustretentiveness of any kind.It is easy now to write aboutthis trait of his—too easy—andalmost impossible to convey justhow frustrating yet exhilarating it was for most of us to try toconduct the ongoing business of our households and The OakGrove School in the new waythat Krishnamurti insisted on—a mode of conduct thatwas knowledgeable but notspecialized, engaged but notpreoccupied, steady but not rigid,dedicated but now worried, etc.The man was a perpetualwonder and a caution to us. Hewas maddeningly perceptive,profoundly uncompromising, anduncannily responsive to ourindividual and collective moods.The implicit rule of those parent-teacher meetings was: howeverbrilliant or helpful yesterday’smeeting may have been,yesterday is gone—we are heretoday, not to repeat ourselves butto discover just what it means tobe here today.We sat in a loose semi-circlefacing him. Krishnamurti oftenbegan by asking us whether wehad any questions. When ourgroup first met him, many of usresponded to this invitation byindulging in trumped-upquestions, questions which arosefrom our strong desire to showhow clever or sincere or profoundwe were. For many of us theKrishnamurti legend got in theway of our genuine encounterwith Krishnamurti the man. Wewanted him to approve of us, tocertify our lives somehow, or—atthe very least—to like us.Krishnamurti’s disposition of false question was both mercilessand immediate. Oftentimes hesimply flinched away from them,turning his whole body in hischair. At such times his face waslike a new-born baby’s face,completely expressive of anemotion or reaction for one instantand then completely clear thenext. To this day we have neverseen anything quite like it in agrown man or woman. As ourgroup became better acquaintedwith Krishnamurti, we learnt notto rush in at his first invitation.Most often we sat in silence; thatwas our answer to his request forquestions.Sometimes we would greet oursilence with a chiding remark. ‘Noquestions! Shall we go home?’Whether he really meant this wenever knew, because he nevercalled off a meeting at that point.Instead, he would sit for a whilein silence himself. Then he wouldsay something like, ‘So we have aschool. We are engaged inlearning together. We want toknow “What does it mean to learn?What does it mean to teach?”’Then he would go on to raisequestions, both wide-ranging andquite specific, about our lives—questions about right livelihood,about the proper kind of securityfor children, about punctuality, ordiet, or peer pressure (both of usand for our kids), about teaching methods, etc.These parent-teacher meet-ings with Krishnamurti wereconsistently interesting andchallenging—in fact, they weremost interesting when they werechallenging. The challenge of Krishnamurti’s company lay intwo things: in his willingness tolet his life intersect the lives of his companions, and in his trust—exercised all of his life,apparently—that Truth isdiscoverable at any moment withanyone. For most of us, therefore,Krishnamurti’s company wassomething of a two-edged sword.Most of us flattered ourselvesthat we were seekers of Truth. After all, hadn’t our searchbrought us to Ojai in the firstplace? In truth, however, most of us acted as though we did notreally believe that we were meantto see Truth. That was a specialcalling, for someone likeKrishnamurti. He was the seer—he would report and we woulddraw near and listen. Much of the‘abrasiveness’ of Krishnamurti’smanner in his later years seemedto come from his utter andprofound weariness of this kind of ‘spiritual division of labour’. Hesimply would not abide it. Hisreaction to the guru cliche wasimmediate—physical, even.Whenever any of us treatedKrishnamurti like a guru, itseemed to cause him physicalpain. He would finish away fromus in a gesture similar to hisreaction to false questions.In any case, he would not

Krishnamurti gave us the gift of our ignorance

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Vasanta Vihar NewsletterJuly - October 2008

abide being treated like a guru. And this was the crux of his effecton us. When we were speaking oracting from what he called our‘second-hand lives’, he would notabide

. That was the harsh sideof his behaviour, his rudeness, if you will. Once by way of warning he said to us, ‘I am not a niceman.’ However within hisapparent rudeness or impatiencethere was a stunningly powerfuland positive attitude towards us.However little

actuallyexpected of our lives,Krishnamurti always proceededas though we were capable of Truth—today, right now, here. Healways behaved as though ourlives were the very stuff of whichTruth is made, or not at all. Theupshot was that though many of us had worked with teachers whowere nicer, none of us had evermet anyone who took us asseriously as Krishnamurti did.So it was that our most fruitfulparent-teacher meetings withKrishnamurti took the form of challenges, of wrestling matches,of confrontation. The householdthat comprised our group were‘second-hand’ in their variousways so the confrontations varied,as now this person’s life and thenthat person’s life came intointersection with the force of Krishnamurti’s attention. Themost important life-lesson for ourparticular household came up oneday during an encounter betweenStan and Krishnamurti on thequestion of creating teaching methods. Krishnamurti had askedour group how we thoughtchildren should be taught history. As it turned out, my husband hadthought about this matter; he hadbeen an educator for some time,teaching college classes in varioussubjects. So Stan not only had aready answer for Krishnamurti’squestion, he had an answer thathe was proud of. A deadlycombination.In his desire to give his answer,Stan forgot himself. He didn’t justsit quietly with Krishnamurti’squestion for a while. He answeredright up, asserting that the bestway to bring history alive forstudents was to introduce them tothe interesting and powerful factthat the inner life of each personhas all of history within it, that inthe life of each boy and girl thereare the seeds of kings and slaves, victors and victims, and all thestages of society, from hunter-gatherers to the sophistication of the modern era.The answer met with murmursof assent from some of thegathering and murmurs of misgiving from others, butof time, a kind of dropping of theego and of one’s own time andplace so as to

someone andsomewhere else. And wasn’t thatexactly what Krishnamurti wasalways recommending as the wayto live?!‘No sir!’ he said. Noqualification, no extenuation.This abruptness was typical of Krishnamurti during the yearsthat we were associated with theOak Grove School. Oftentimes hedid not say the ‘rational’ thing oreven the ‘fair’ thing. For instance,he did not say to Stan, ‘Well sir,perhaps there is some merit inwhat you say, but on the otherhand...’ etc. That sort of responsewould probably have been lost onStan at the time—and on anyoneelse who was similarly launchedinto a defence of one of his or herpet theories.Over the years, Krishnamurtihad met up with wholegenerations of passionatelycontrived theories aboutimportant matters. In the face of them, what he said was ‘No!’ InStan’s case what Krishnamurtimeant—in his look, his bearing and his seriousness—wassomething like: ‘Sir, you havewasted too much time and energyon your precious humanities. It istime that you stopped inflicting them on yourself, your friends,your co-workers, and the children. You, sir, are doing yourself harmby analysing your own depths.Let the whole of humanity be yourdepth and your “own” life willcome round.’That was alwaysKrishnamurti’s way with us—to

start

from wholeness. The riskwith such a procedure is that ameeting may never get moving atall. On the other hand, a meet-ing that starts with particularsalways gets moving but oftennever achieves universality.Krishnamurti apparentlypreferred the first risk to thesecond. In a sense,

We tried to cajoleKrishnamurti, to threatenhim, to seduce him, to flatterhim. We complained to him.We were angry with him, hurtby him, even downrightdisgusted with him. But,finally, never disappointed.

Krishnamurti’s response wasimmediate and sure. ‘No, sir!’ hesaid. ‘No, sir!’ he repeated. ‘Thespeaker does not need to knowthat he contains all of humanity.That path starts with thepersonality—with the ego—and itcan go on forever, collecting andinterpreting one’s dreams, seeking evidence of past lives, spending years in psychoanalysis. Since thechain of causation is unending,the analysis of causes isunending. It is not important forone to know that K is mankind,rather that mankind is K.’Stan didn’t want to hear thisHe was deeply attached to the artsand to the humanities, andKrishnamurti’s response seemedto be a radical devaluation of those disciplines. Stan arguedpassionately that the secret of thehumanities—their magical core,even—was a kind of cancellation

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