For over 45
years I have had some kind of relationship with the work of the educator J
Krishnamurti. I have seen him, heard him
speak, I have read books, watched videos and listened to audio recordings; I
met him briefly once, but he was more interested in my young children than he
was in me. The man himself has been of
passing fascination in that his story has more than its fair share of fairy
tale elements, and, inevitably, many of those that have written about him have
shed more light upon themselves than they have upon the man. It is in the message
that I have found a constant source of learning and renewing of understanding.
As a 19 year
old in London just 18 months out of British Public School after 11 years as at
boarding school, I had embarked upon an unconscious process of
re-education. Rejecting the system that
had been effectively designed to produce leaders of the British Empire; men who
would be unemotional, insensitive, arrogant and capable of withstanding all the
possible physical and psychological discomforts that could be found in any
foreign land, I pursued the possibilities that had been awakened by the intense
cultural shift that had taken place during the 1960s, the decade that I had
spent at school. At an evening talk at
the Buddhist Centre I came across Krishnamurti through a passage read by
someone there. It was on organised
religion and powerfully exposed the hypocrisy and deceit that I had experienced
at first hand in my schooling. It was
uncompromising, stark and discomforting.
What does it
mean to engage with the work of one individual in one’s life? Does it mean you become a devotee, a
follower, as I saw so many people do, creating a sense of belonging by seeking
out their own pet guru choosing from seemingly endless array that rode in on the tides of interest
that flowed to and from India in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s? In life, does one have to find a code by
which one lives; an orthodoxy, an ideology?
Or does one engage directly with life itself?
Attracted by the sparseness of Zen Buddhism, the similar brevity of
words found in the Tao te Ching and the simplicity of Buddhism, I found that
Krishnamurti’s way of questioning, creating seemigly paradoxical statements and
unfolding insight through negation led me to explore life, not settle on
‘inspirational quotations’ or trite phrases.
As I have over the years met people who were closely involved with
Krishnamurti’s work, mostly in education in the UK and India, some for a very
long time, I have been struck by the integrity and humour of the vast majority
of these people. Many have become
friends. All have spoken of Krishnamurti
the human being, not his intelligence alone, but also his fallibility and
mistakes. Always they spoke of his sense of affection for humanity – you could
feel it, hear it when he spoke in front of the crowds in the tent all those
years ago.
I have
learnt from my wife, our children, the students I have taught and continue to
teach. I have learnt from the wind, the
sun, the rain, the sea and the hills that fall away into the mist. I saw into death through the eyes of our
golden retriever on the night before he died, and through a moment of
understanding with my father just a few days before his troubled life ended. There is so much that teaches us and we do
not need the words of another to tell us how to live. However, I continue to return to the work of
Krishnamurti, particularly regarding education and nature, as I walk the path
of shedding all the thoughts that have crystallised into unshakable convictions, empty ideas that carry their own destruction: re-education is a
lifelong process.
I have
deliberately not quoted any words from Krishnamurti here. Look if you are interested, but treat them
lightly, observe them as you might some lofty bird circling the sky that melts
away so silently. As with all words,
watch yourself and do not get caught up in the net of identification or
rejection. If necessary, put them to one
side. My feeling with language is that what
is not said contains as much significance as any utterance.
photographs taken by Maggie Alexander of the Ganges near Rajghat, Varanasi.
