Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 117 Location: Manchester UK
Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:13 pm Post subject: Jiddu Krishnamurti on effort, acceptance and contentment
"For most of us, our whole life is based on effort...Why do we make effort? Is it not, put simply, in order to achieve a result, to become something, to reach a goal?
Is not all such effort the activity of the self? Is not effort self-centered activity? If we make an effort from the centre of the self, it must inevitably produce more conflict, more confusion, more misery. Yet we keep on making effort after effort. Very few of us realise that the self-centered activity of effort does not clear up any of our problems. On the contrary, it increases our confusion and our misery and our sorrow....
Does happiness come through effort? Have you ever tried to be happy?...You struggle to be happy and there is no happiness is there? Joy does not come through suppression, through control or indulgence...
Therefore happiness does not come through effort, nor joy through control and suppression; and still all our life is a series of suppressions, a series of controls, a series of regretful indulgences....
Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what is not, or into what it should be or should become? That is, we are constantly struggling to avoid facing what is. A man who is truly content is the man who understands what is...That is true contentment; it is not concerned with having few or many possessions but with the whole significance to what is; and that can only come when you recognize what is, when you are aware of it, not when you are trying to modify it or change it.
So we see that effort is a strife or a struggle to transform that which is into something which you wish it to be....Effort is a distraction from what is. The moment i accept what is there is no struggle..."
Nice post. I bought a book about the teachings of J. Krishnamurti recently, but I haven't read it yet.
BTW, I think spiritual 'gurus', or whatever, are probably very confusing for 'normal' people, because some of the things they talk about will sound absurd to almost all westerners. Like... there is no self, or the ego must be destroyed to be truly happy and what not.
I think in the end any problem can only be solved by accepting what is. For example, I have been unhappy with my appearance since puberty started. I'm unhappy about it, because I think 'I look like this, but I should look like that'. I want to be something that I'm not, so I become angry and frustrated. It's irrational on multiple levels, and the only thing that will bring happiness is to realize that I look the way I look, I can't look the way I don't look, I don't have to look any different than I look.
I think the irony of what Krishnamurti says here, is that although you won't be happy through effort, and you are not content until you accept what is, it requires a lot of effort to understand this.
Basically, you have to struggle hard to find out that you don't need to struggle.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 117 Location: Manchester UK
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject:
Yeah, i thought it might be good to post some of his stuff on here, maybe get people reading his books, they really helped me out. I dont think many people will grasp it though.
This article made me analyse, what is happiness? I thought about it for a long time and didnt know. When i was a kid, happiness was eating chocolate. I thought, when i grow up all im gonna do is eat chocolate, all day every day. I grew up and i dont like chocolate that much anymore. I got older and after school i went to my friends house to play on his computer. I didnt have one, so i thought if i got one, all my problems would be solved and id be happy. I eventually got a few computers, played all the games. Now they dont make me happy, so i move on to the next thing. Drugs! Drugs might make me happy. So i start messing around with drugs. They did NOT make me happy. So i move on to the next thing. A relationship! that'll make me happy, so i eventually meet a girl and we have lots in common, shes very pretty. It didnt make me happy though, i was sure it would. So, i move on, to the next thing, a new job! that'll make me happy, so i go through college and get a new job. Theres a pattern emerging here. It didnt make me happy.
So, what is happiness? Clothes? maybe if i buy lots of clothes and new gadgets and trainers, that'll surely make me happy, wont it? It didnt.
So i start to wonder, maybe happiness is simpler things, good food? Food is good but its a very short lived sense of happiness.
Im currently putting myself through 3 more years of college to get a better job. When i enrolled i thought it might make me happy, if not even getting the higher wage, i really dont think it will. I thought if i save my money and buy an amazing sports car, that'll do it, but now, i know it wont.
Maybe if i stop chasing happiness? Maybe if i just let go, let go of the effort, let go of the stress, 'if i do this now, ill be happy tomorrow', it doenst work. Isnt that what our society is? In pursuit of happiness? I hope people will ask themselves, 'What is happiness? Really?'. It could save a lot of strife.
You are mistaking pleasure for happiness. I think pleasure comes from the fulfilling of a desire and happiness comes from being content with things as they are now. Not stating this as fact though, I haven't thought that long about it.
It's true that nearly all people are always chasing something (I know I am). They get lost running in circles in search of happiness (and they don't even know that they are searching for happiness).
Happiness can't be found in anything outside of you. I really think it's like this: You're already perfect. You just have to get rid of all your illusions to see this.
Have you read books by Thich Nhat Hanh? He writes a lot about Mindfulness, which is just being aware of the moment. His books are so full of love.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 117 Location: Manchester UK
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:21 pm Post subject:
Never heard of Thich Nhat Hanh, ill have to check his stuff out. Lots of people now bring up the issue of self/god awareness. Its one of the core teachings of the vedic scriptures, its a good thing though because its an important issue. The Krishna consciousness movement/ hare krishnas base their whole theology on the concept.
I thought more on the issue of happiness. I think everyone i know chases happiness. I could also look at it from another perspective and say that people are trying to avoid suffering. It seems like a constant toil to avoid suffering. This creates a kind of empty space that needs to be filled and we pursue things to fill this empty space, to make us feel complete, to make us feel happy and in trying to escape suffering, we undertake actions such as buying clothes and cars, which require maintenance, seeking relationships, which require a lot of attention and often heart break and some of us bad habits, that do us no good at all. All of this to attain happiness, to avoid suffering and in doing so, we create more suffering. (Im not saying buying clothes and cars is wrong, but it is if it is done to create a sense of happiness.)
I think the problem is we constantly look outside of ourselves for salvation. We expect someone or something to save us, to give us happiness, to reduce our suffering, to make us feel complete, and they may, for a short period of time, but it doesn't always last without problems.
The only way we can realise to avoid this is to realise we dont need anything to feel complete, we already have everything we need. If we require help in avoiding suffering, we must do it. If we need to understand something, we must learn by ourselves, not expect someone to give it to us.
When i first realised this it gave me a great sense of calm. I used to be extremely insecure and this helped me understand a lot about resolving suffering in my life.
In the book 'the miracle of mindfulness' by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is about meditation, he talks about "contemplating on interdependence".
Quote:
...
Recall a simple and ancient truth: the subject of knowledge cannot exist independently from the object of knowledge. To see is to see something. To hear is to hear something. To be angry is to be angry over something. Hope is to hope for something. Thinking is thinking about something. When the object of knowledge (the something) is not present, there can be no subject of knowledge.
...
In other books he talks about 'inter-being' a lot, which is another way of saying that everything depends on other things.
For example, take a simple piece of paper. This paper could not exist without the machines that made it, and the people that helped made those machines and the people that worked those machines. (also, those people could not exist if their parents hadn't existed, etc.). The piece of paper could not have existed if there were no trees. Without the sun, the air and the earth, the piece of paper would also not be possible.
If you look deeply, you can see the whole universe in that piece of paper. Everything, except a seperate self. Nhat Hanh says that the paper is composed out of non-paper elements. If you remove any of those elements, the paper can no longer exist.
There's a lot more. I hope this isn't too off-topic, but it's fun to think about.
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