16. This Matter of Culture

The second book on education, This Matter of Culture, was published in 1964. In America, it was called Think on These Things. It contains excerpts from Krishnamurti's talks, as well as many questions seemingly intended for children, both in terms of subject matter and answers.

None of the 27 chapters are identified in any way. There are no headings or information about where the talks were given.

What Are We Being Raised For?

In the first chapter, Krishnamurti asks why we go to school and what children are educated for. He says that this question is "important for everyone who loves this earth".

The answer is that we are educated for life, not just for a job. Understanding life as a whole is more important than getting good grades. Life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. What use is an education if it dulls the mind making us weary and stupid?

Everyone needs the intelligence to solve life's problems. Intelligence is the ability to think freely, without fear or formula, and to recognise what is true.

Unfortunately, we are rarely encouraged to discover things for ourselves. Instead, we are brought up to conform to a world torn apart by conflicting beliefs fighting for power to control people. Stupidity and cruelty tear the world apart, yet we accept them.

You have to examine the way things are and revolt it from within. You cannot do this if you are afraid. Therefore, the most important task of education is to eradicate fear at its roots, because fear destroys human thought, relationships, and love.

Someone asks whether the world would fall into chaos if everyone were to revolt.

K replies that we are already living in chaos; the present-day society is not in order and not everyone is living a happy, fulfilling life.

The world is decaying, and we must respond to this properly: not as Hindus, Christians, communists or capitalists, but as human beings who can see the consequences of ambition and acquisition as clearly as their own hands.

Every revolution is created by a few individuals who see what is true, and who are willing to rebel against existing practices by living free from fear and tradition.

Ideals Rob Us of Our Freedom

In the second chapter, K discusses freedom. It does not give us the right to do what we like, but is rather a state of mind that requires intelligence and sensitivity; a mind in which there is no fear or compulsion.

Many people want to be confident and admired or famous for a skill. It is this desire to be something that prevents freedom. It doesn't matter whether the desire is good or bad, or whether it's about power or money. Ideals and role models enslave us and prevent us from being who we are. We have become mere imitators.

The purpose of education is to help us be ourselves, not to imitate others. This is not always easy, especially when we think of ourselves as bad, ugly, stupid or inferior. Freedom comes from being who we are and being free from fear.

Sensitive to Ugliness

In chapter three, K begins by stressing the importance of seeing beauty and being sensitive to ugliness. Awareness of everything awakens in us a responsibility to act. We must act together, because the Earth belongs to everyone, not just the rich.

It is important to love the Earth all the time, not just occasionally. We can only love the world when we understand what freedom is and feel that this is our world.

To be free, we must revolt against all inward dependence.

Freedom and love go together. To love means not asking anything in return and only such love can know freedom.

Sadly, we are not educated for love and that is why society is continually decaying. Without love, we can never be thoughtful, attentive or considerate.

To be sensitive and open to this extraordinary movement called life, there must be freedom; and to be free, you must love. If we do not love, we are not free.

A child asks K why people fight.

He replies that children fight when someone takes their ball or book, and grown-ups fight for exactly the same reason, only their toys are things like positions, wealth, and power. Wars – both bloody and religious ones – are fought over those things.

Another child asks why he has to read.

K replies that he probably never asks why he has to play or eat, nor why he is cruel. We tend to ask about the things we don't like. If you don't know how to read, there's a lot you won't understand about life.

Reading, playing, laughing, being cruel or kind, watching the river are all part of life and we have to be able to see everything as a whole.

Don't Get Stuck in the Swamp

There are two ways to listen to each other: to confirm your own thoughts, or to discover something new.

Only a free mind can listen. To listen properly, the mind must be silent and observant. Such a mind follows everything naturally, without compulsion. Then there is great depth and blessing in listening.

When listening, it is important to look beyond verbal expression. Happiness lies beyond the words we use to describe life. Happiness comes from the beauty of existence, not from striving to be happy.

Fear prevents happiness. When fear leaves your mind, something wonderful and surprising happens. You could call it love, truth or happiness, but it's too big for words. This is what we should be raised for: not to pass exams and behave well, but to live a rich and full life.

A Heart Full of Smiles

In the next chapter, K asks the listeners if they have ever looked someone directly in the face. Many have not, and they don't want to make eye contact because they are afraid of being exposed. Few people are able to make eye contact and smile.

It is important to smile, because "without a song in one's heart, life becomes very dull". Finding inward joy is not easy because most of us are only superficially discontented.

It is also important to be discontented. You can't be afraid of it or avoid it, you must nourish it so that the spark becomes a flame. Only then will you truly begin to understand life.

Discontent is not about being unhappy or complaining, it's about getting on with things. It is also about finding joy in seeing the world. When you're not satisfied, you take action to address your discontent. If you don't, you become bitter and cynical.

When discontent is directed at the mind itself, it can be very powerful. All self-created problems then disappear and are replaced by creative joy.

A Small Room and the Big Mystery

Most people cling to only a small part of life. If we want to understand the meaning of death, we must step out of that small room. Life is a mystery that must be grasped first-hand.

Our room's window may offer a pleasant view, but it does not "perceive the whole expanse of the heavens".

In life, we need love that is not possessive. It is a great tragedy, if we never have that. If we love, we can't stay in that little room of our mind, we want to knock down its walls.

A child asks why people are proud.

You feel a sense of pleasure, when you have done something which somebody says is excellent, K replies. It is natural.

Unfortunately, this can lead us to expect praise and to do things to get it. Then we become dependent on it and are prone to be disappointed when our expectations are not met.

Pride must be thought right through: see how it begins and the disaster it brings. If you stop halfway, you condemn it without understanding it and begin to reject it.

Power Is Dependent

To bring about a complete revolution in the social order, the first thing is to understand is the instinct for the acquisition of power.

Wealth and power can make our lives easier, but they can also cause conflict. How much power is enough, and at what point does it become a burden and a dependency?

Is it possible to create a society without internal or external conflict? People want to change the world, yet they also live in conflict with each other. They seem to cling to their own views and ambitions; many even take pride in being ambitious and competitive.

This internal conflict spills over into the external world. The world is polluted, and we blame others. We destroy the lives of others both consciously and unconsciously.

It takes a great deal of intelligence to realise the consequences of one's own actions and change direction on your own. This is not easy because we are brought up to obey.

The truth is in our life, not away from it. It is in the way we talk, what we say, how we smile. If we don't see the truth, our life is a mess.

Even if you are told to kill someone for the sake of a wonderful utopia, you don't have to obey – you could be killed yourself.

Truth is not a belief; it is not out there somewhere. It is in our own daily living and in the movement of life.

Emotions Do not Obey

The questioner wants to know why people are careless, imprecise and inaccurate towards each other, and how we can live in a disciplined and virtuous way.

K replies that we are programmed to think that we have to strive for goodness because it doesn't come naturally. You have to be determined and act firmly.

K disagrees with this view. He starts from the premise that you have to begin by observing yourself as you are rather than wanting to be something that you are not.

We can't find joy just by being told to. Deep and strong emotions do not obey our commands. Compassion can perhaps be taught and practised, but it is piety. Connecting with another person is a spontaneous event involving genuine passion, not learned gestures.

It is important to understand this from a young age because, as you grow older, your mind has been discouraged so many times that it cannot perceive anything new or creative. Life finds it difficult to break through a shell of civilisation if it becomes too thick.

Happiness Is a By-product

A child asks K, what happiness in life is.

K replies that happiness is not something you can seek; it is a result, a by-product. It comes uninvited and often for no particular reason. Therefore, the pursuit of happiness is futile. Many people want it, but are they really happy?

Awareness is a prerequisite for happiness. An alert mind lives in a world without goals, from which a wonderful sense of joy and happiness flows.

Another child asks Krishnamurti if he is happy. He replies that he has never thought about it. He does not think happiness is within the field of self-consciousness. When you recognise happiness in yourself, it is merely a memory of happiness.

"To seek happiness is absurd, because there is happiness only when you don't seek it."

A Symbol Is Just a Shadow

Someone asks whether temples should be open to all for worship.

K answers that temples are places of worship in which there is a symbol of God. This symbol is like our shadow when we walk in the sun. We are not that shadow. So what does it matter who enters the temple and who doesn't?

"Truth may be under a dead leaf, it may be in a stone by the wayside, in the waters that reflect the loveliness of an evening or in the clouds, in the smile of the woman who carries a burden. In this whole world there is reality, not necessarily in the temple; and generally, it is not in the temple, because that temple is made out of man's fear, it is based on his desire for security, on his divisions of creed and caste. If a man is seeking God, he shuns temples because they divide people."

The symbol of God has mesmerised us. We must not be content with the shadow worshipped in churches. What is real is more fascinating.

The Mind Is a Bubbling Spring

Someone asks where K learned everything he talks about.

K thinks it is a good question. He hasn't read the sacred books, but he has watched his own mind – it is all there. If one sets out on a journey of self-knowledge, books are not important.

To take a long journey you must carry very little. If we aim to reach great heights, we must travel light.

And what does K think of Indians?

K says that they are just like any other people, like Americans. In both countries, people get bored, they can be cruel, they revolt; they want comfort, they worship tradition; they have deep-rooted ambitions, they can be hypocrisy, greedy and envious. The human mind is similar, only it expresses itself differently under different skies and governments.

Is giving lectures a hobby for K? Does he not get tired of talking, and why does he do it?

K says he is glad to be asked this question.

"If you love something, you never get tired of it."

K says he speaks for the same reason that jasmine gives off its scent or the birds fly. He doesn't talk for reward or self-fulfilment.

"If there is love in your heart and your heart is not filled with the things of the mind, then it is like a fountain, like a spring that is timelessly giving fresh water."

There Is No Equality

"In one sense, there is no such thing as equality, because we all have many different capacities", says K.

Of course, all people should be treated equally and with the same respect, regardless of their status or function in society.

What if there were no authority, no high or low, the big man or the little man? We would all live in a very different atmosphere of freedom in which there is love. This occurs when one feels secure and completely at home.

"Most young people don't feel secure because they are frightened. They are afraid of their elders, of their teachers, of their mothers and fathers."

They begin to flower and unfold when they feel completely secure. To help them unfold is the function of a school. A really happy person does not want to hurt anyone or destroy anything.

The real concern of right education is to help you to be vital, sensitive human being, one who is not afraid and who has no false sense of respect because of status.

Teaching Is Love

A student asks why we find pleasure in games but not in studying. K suggests that one reason may be that their teachers don't know how to teach.

"If a teacher loves mathematics or history, then you also will love that subject, because love of something communicates itself. If your teachers really loved to teach, you would be extraordinary human beings. You would love not only your games and your studies, but also the flowers, the river, the birds, the earth, because you would have this thing vibrating in your hearts; and you would learn much more quickly, your minds would be excellent and not mediocre."

After all, the mind wants to inquire because it is curious, but this curiosity is destroyed by the wrong kind of education. Living itself is a process of education and learning. There is an end to exams, but there is no end to learning, and we can learn from everything if our mind is curious and alert.

Routine Puts the Mind to Sleep

The smoker wants to know why K claims that when one sees something to be false, it drops away. He sees that smoking is false, but the habit does not drop away.

K says that smokers are slaves to their habit. The more they fight and resist it, the more strength they give to it. Habits are automatic actions that cannot be overcome by resistance. To get rid of a bad habit, it is necessary to be aware of the mechanism that the habit creates. Once something becomes a routine, we don't realise we are doing it.

"Observe how the mind wants to go to sleep through habit and then remain undisturbed. Most people's minds are always functioning in the groove of habit, and as we grow older it gets worse. Understand why the mind runs in grooves, why it moves along a particular set of rails like a streetcar and is afraid to question, to inquire."

Habits make us slaves. If we see this, "the mind becomes fresh, young, active and alive, so that every day is a new day, every dawn reflected on the river is a joyous thing to behold".

Forget Fame!

Someone asks why we humans seek fame. K answers:

"Because we really don't love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint or to write poems, you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing."

It is better to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous rather than to show it off. It's good to be "kind without a name". This does not make you famous; politicians won't come to your door and your photo does not appear in the newspapers. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and there is great beauty in it.

Working Willingly

Co-operation means doing, building or feeling something together, having something in common. However, this can be difficult. People often need to be compelled, threatened or rewarded in order to work together. K does not regard this as collaboration; to him, it is a form of greed, fear and compulsion.

Real collaboration comes from a shared desire or pure joy. It does not require persuasion. People want to get things done, so they work together positively, free from personal agendas.

However, it is equally important to know when not to co-operate; for example, when the other person is motivated by ambition or greed.

Ask yourself what you are working together for. Is it driven by ideology, threat, or psychological reward? Is there joy in working together, or is it purely for profit?

No Need for an Inspirer

Someone asks how we can get to know ourselves. K replies that, just as we recognise our face in a mirror, there is a mirror that shows us how we think, feel, and act.

Relationship is this mirror, but it only reflects accurately if we don't deceive ourselves. It's easy to ignore our own thoughts and reactions, or to interpret them in the most favourable way according to our beliefs and assumptions.

Like parrots, we are accustomed to repeating the words of others and reacting according to our habits and preferences. The key to true self-awareness and a timeless state of learning from what is lies in rejecting what we have learnt.

Someone asks if we can know ourselves without an inspirer.

K replies that knowledge must be first-hand. Learning from someone else's words means depending on them. Inspiration can come from anywhere; we don't need another person. The condition is that the mind is able to observe itself in relation to others.

A young man wants to be an engineer, but his father is against it. K advises him to gently defy his father's wishes. When we really want something, we find a way. If we are afraid and conform, we will merely be copies.

"The moment you are very clear about what you want to do, things happen. Life comes to your aid – a friend, a relation, a teacher, a grandmother, somebody helps you. But if you are afraid to try because your father may turn you out, then you are lost. You may have to go hungry, but you will be a worthwhile human being, not a mere copy, and that is the miracle of it."

Why Stars Shine and Birds Die?

Fear and the weight of tradition smother our vital urge to inquire. When we are children, we want to know why the stars exist, why the birds die, and how the jet planes fly. However, little by little, our sensitivity is pushed aside, and our capacity for wonder diminishes.

Society does not seem to want individuals who are alert, keen, or revolutionary. It wants us to fit into the established social patterns.

Someone asks K how we can put into practice what he is telling us.

He says that there is a gap between what we think and what we do. We then ask how to bridge this gap. This is the lazy mind's game. It avoids taking action and looks for reasons not to.

When faced with danger, people do not hesitate or postpone taking action. If we meet a cobra on the road, we jump immediately. We don't wait for instructions or justification, or speculate on different ways to act. The alert mind does not ask how to implement an idea. It doesn't invent obstacles; it leaps over them.

Some pupil is used to drinking tea, but one teacher said it's a bad habit. Others think it's all right. Should he give it up?

K extends this question to all habits.

"When you have become used to something, your mind is already on its way to the graveyard. But if your mind is alert, inquiring to find out why you are caught in a certain habit, why you think in a particular way, then the secondary question of whether you should smoke or drink tea can be dealt with."

Hear the River Sing

On his walk, K sees a man-made pool. The water is stagnant and covered in scum because it is not connected to the life of the river, and there are no fish in it.

"Don't you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life. In that little pool they stagnate, die. We all want a state of permanency. We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, ambitions, cultures, fears, gods, and various forms of worship, and there we die, letting life go by."

If you sit quietly on the riverbank, you can hear the river's song: the lapping of the water, and the sound of the current flowing by. In the little pool, the water is stagnant, but most of us prefer it that way: a stagnant existence away from life.

But life is not permanent; it flows. Birds die, snow melts away and trees are cut down. We humans want to be safe and eternal. We refuse to accept life as it is.

Life breaks down these walls. For a mind without walls, life is extraordinary. Such a mind is life itself: it has no resting place, no walls, no foothold. Such a mind moves with life and it can only

be happy – eternally new and creative. It is religious in the deepest sense of the word.

Afraid of Living

A child asks what makes us fear death.

K replies, "Do you think a bird lives in fear of dying? It meets death when death comes; but it is not concerned about death, it is much too occupied with living, with catching insects, building a nest, singing a song, flying for the very joy of flying. It is we humans who are always concerned about death ­because we are not living. That is the trouble: we are dying, we are not living."

We are preoccupied with death because we are afraid of losing the known, the things we have gathered. This is why we invent theories about death and the afterlife.

Death is an ending, and most of us are unwilling to face this fact.

"Try it for a day – put aside everything you know, forget it, and just see what happens. Don't carry over your worries from day to day, from hour to hour, from moment to moment, let them all go, and you will see that out of this freedom there comes an extraordinary life that includes both living and dying."

Two Ways to Listen

When you listen to the ringing of temple bells, what are you actually hearing? Near the river, you can hear the sound of water, but how do you hear it?

There are two types of attention. One we can practise, and the other we cannot.

When we focus on something, we become absorbed in what we are doing. Concentrating on something isolates us. If you make an effort to pay attention, you are resisting and you lose some of your energy. When you try to stop certain thoughts from entering your mind, your mind begins to control itself.

Another way to be attentive is to engage your mind fully, rather than partially. This means paying undivided attention to everything going on around you. You hear both the sound of the bell and the silence between the strokes.

Forcing the mind deteriorates it. It is violence against oneself. However, when the mind is observing naturally, this does not happen. A restless mind calms down when it follows its movement without trying to silence it.

There must be space in the mind. There is no space in a crowded mind. When the mind stops moving, it hears everything without interfering. There is silence.

"You can hear a song or a sound and let the mind be so completely full of it that there is not the effort of learning."

A Glimpse

Someone had seen K watching two peasant children playing on the roadside and wanted to know what he was thinking while watching them.

K replies: "I will tell you. Those children have no proper place to sleep; the father and the mother are occupied all day long, with never a holiday; the children never know what it is to be loved, to be cared for; the parents never sit down with them and tell them stories about the beauty of the earth and the heavens. And what kind of society is it that has produced these circumstances – where there are immensely rich people who have everything on earth they want, and at the same time there are boys and girls who have nothing? What kind of society is it, and how has it come into being? You may revolutionise, break the pattern of this society, but in the very breaking of it a new one is born which is again the same thing in another form – the commissars with their special houses in the country, the privileges, the uniforms, and so on down the line. This has happened after every revolution, the French, the Russian and the Chinese. And is it possible to create a society in which all this corruption and misery does not exist? It can be created only when you and I as individuals break away from the collective, when we are free of ambition and know what it means to love. That was my whole reaction, in a flash. But did you listen to what I said?"

Coercion to Escape?

The youngster said he is Muslim and his parents threaten to throw him out of the house if he does not follow the daily the traditions of his religion. He asked what he should do.

K replied that many non-Muslims would probably advise him to leave home. It is easy to give advice to others, but many of us are in the same situation. We are surrounded by people whose values we do not share. It would be foolish of us to put ourselves above others in this matter.

Ultimately, the solution depends on "how vitally you don't want to follow the old superstitions". If you refuse to accept them, you must be prepared to face whatever life brings when you move out.

If you don't want to put up with emotional pressure, you must be ready to face whatever life brings, including misery and death. When it comes to life's big decisions, we must use our own judgement. If we don't, we will simply be swallowed by tradition.

Cruel People

A child asks why do birds fly away when she comes near.

K replies, "We human beings are cruel people. We kill the birds, torture them, we catch them in nets and put them in cages. When we do all these things to the birds, do you think they will not be frightened when we come near them? But if you sit quietly in an isolated spot and are very still, you will soon find that the birds come to you."

Animals seem to sense our fear, and in turn they become frightened of us. However, if you go and sit under the same tree every day, you will notice how everything around you is alive: the blades of grass sparkling in the sunshine, the ceaseless activity of little birds, a kite flying high in the skies without a movement of its wings. To do that, you need immense patience and a great deal of love.

Stand-by Spectators

It seems there are more spectators than players in the world. Most people seek some form of amusement. There is a constant demand to be amused, to be taken away from ourselves. We are afraid to be alone and do nothing. Most of us spend all our time worrying about something.

We are afraid to be alone, so we escape this fear by pursuing activities that stimulate the mind. We go to the cinema or turn to religion. Religion has become a form of distraction, a serious escape from boredom, from routine.

If you escape loneliness, you will never understand it; it will always be there waiting for you. However, if you confront it, you will discover what reality is and can receive that which is timeless.

Where Did Your Joy Go?

Have you ever wondered why people seem to lose all joy in life as they grow older? There are many possible explanations. External factors weigh us down, but K suggests:

"I think it is effort that destroys us, this struggling in which we spend almost every moment of our lives. The object of struggle varies, but all struggle is essentially the same. One may struggle to bring about social reforms, or to find God, or to create a better relationship with oneself and one's wife or husband. What is important is not the object, but to understand struggle itself."

Is it possible for the mind to be completely free from struggle and discover a state of joy in which there is no sense of superiority or inferiority? We feel inferior, and that is why we strive to be or become something or someone else. We are caught in this everlasting conflict.

How to achieve a state in which there is no struggle? The very effort to achieve such a state is a process of struggle itself. If you simply observe and learn about it, you will see how much energy is wasted in this struggle. K concludes that in the state of watchfulness, the mind is fully awake and such a mind is joyous.

Don't Beat Yourself Up

Someone asks why we are fundamentally selfish and have become so self-absorbed and indifferent to the interests of others.

K stresses the importance of not calling oneself either selfish or unselfish. Words influence our mind. Certain emotions are associated with certain words, and the word selfish has a judgemental connotation. A meaning is attached to the word, evoking an emotional response.

It is important to be aware of the responses that words cause. Your relationship with the object changes in an astonishing way, and your mind no longer acts in a self-centred manner.

Just observe how you approach a person whom others regard as a great figure. Can you dissociate your mind from all influence and

neither condemn nor approve? Just look at the facts. Then there is no longer the problem of selfishness trying to be unselfish.

In the final chapter K states that, in order to seek out reality, we must have great love and a deep awareness of the human connection to everything. One cannot create a new culture by renewing the old, one must remove "the dust of centuries that has settled upon us" and allow the mind to have an "explosion of discovery", where it no longer seeks or wants to have experiences.

This requires an education that frees the student from all dogmas and beliefs. Liberation is only possible when you are truly religious.