Meeting Life - How to Meet Life

How to Meet Life

BROCKWOOD PARK, ENGLAND, 3 SEPTEMBER 1981

Questioner: We find ourselves living in fear of war, of losing a job, if we have
one, in fear of terrorism, of the violence of our children, of being at the very
mercy of inept politicians. How do we meet life as it is today?

KRISHNAMURTI: How do you meet it? One must take it for granted that the
world is becoming more and more violent—it is obvious. The threats of war are
also very obvious, and also the very strange phenomenon that our children are
becoming violent. One remembers a mother coming to see us in India some time
ago. In the Indian tradition mothers are held in very great respect, and this
mother was horrified because, she said, her children had beaten her—an unheard
of thing in India. So this violence is spreading all over the world. And there is
this fear of losing a job, as the questioner says. Facing all this, knowing all this,
how does one meet life as it is today?
    I don’t know. I know how to meet it for myself, but one doesn’t know how
you will meet it. First, what is life, what is this thing called existence, full of
sorrow, overpopulation, inept politicians, all the trickery, dishonesty, bribery that
is going on in the world? How does one meet it? Surely, one must first inquire
what does it mean to live? What does it mean to live in this world as it is? How
do we live our daily life, actually, not theoretically, not philosophically or
idealistically, but actually how do we live our daily life? If we examine it or are
aware of it seriously, it is a constant battle, constant struggle, effort after effort.
Having to get up in the morning is an effort. What shall we do? We cannot
possibly escape from it. One used to know several people who said that the world
was impossible to live in, and they withdrew totally to some Himalayan
mountains and disappeared. That is merely an avoidance, an escape from reality,
as it is to lose oneself in a commune, or join some guru with vast estates and get
lost in that. Obviously, those people do not solve the problems of daily life nor
inquire into the change, the psychological revolution of a society. They escape
from all this. And we, if we do not escape and are actually living in this world as
it is, what shall we do? Can we change our life? To have no conflict at all in our
life, because conflict is part of violence—is that possible? This constant struggle
to be something is the basis of our life, the struggle to struggle. Can we, as
human beings, living in this world, change ourselves? That is really the
question—radically, psychologically transform ourselves, not eventually, not
admitting time. For a serious man, a really religious man, there is no tomorrow.
This is rather a hard saying, that there is no tomorrow; there is only the rich
worship of today. Can we live this life wholly, and actually, daily, transform our
relationship with each other? That is the real issue, not what the world is, for the
world is us. Please see this: the world is you and you are the world. This is an
obvious, terrible fact, a challenge that must be met completely—that is, to realize
that we are the world with all its ugliness, that we have contributed to all this,
that we are responsible for all this, all that is happening in the Middle East, in
Africa and all the craziness that is going on in this world, we are responsible for
it. We may not be responsible for the deeds of our grandfathers and greatgrandfathers—slavery, thousands of wars, the brutality of empires—but we are part of it. If we don’t feel our responsibility, which means being utterly
responsible for ourselves, for what we do, what we think, how we behave, then it
becomes rather hopeless, knowing what the world is, knowing that we cannot
individually, separately, solve this problem of terrorism. That is the problem of
governments, to see that its citizens are safe, protected, but they don’t seem to
care. If each government were really concerned to protect its own people, there
would be no wars. But apparently governments have lost sanity too, they are only
concerned with party politics, with their own power, position, prestige—you
know all this, the whole game.
    So can we, not admitting time, that is, tomorrow, the future, live in such a
way that today is all-important? That means we have to become extraordinarily
alert to our reactions, to our confusion—work like fury on ourselves. That is the
only thing we can do apparently. And if we don’t do that there is really no future
for man. I do not know if you have followed some of the headlines in the
newspapers—all this preparing for war. And if you are preparing for something,
you are going to have it—like preparing a good dish. The ordinary people in the
world apparently don’t seem to care. Those who are intellectually, scientifically,
involved in the production of armaments, don’t care. They are only interested in
their careers, in their jobs, in their research; and those of us who are fairly
ordinary people, so-called middle class, if we don’t care at all, then we are really
throwing in the sponge. The tragedy is that we don’t seem to care. We don’t get
together, think together, work together. We are only too willing to join
institutions, organizations, hoping they will stop wars, stop us butchering each
other. They have never done it. Institutions, organizations will never stop any of
this. It is the human heart, the human mind that is involved in this. Please, we are
not talking rhetorically; we are facing something really very dangerous. We have
met some of the prominent people who are involved in all this, and they don’t
care. But if we care and our daily life is lived rightly, if each one of us is aware
of what we are doing daily, then I think there is some hope for the future.