Sunday, October 16, 2005

What we are on this earth for ?

Questioner: What are we on this earth for?

Krishnamurti: You are on this earth to live fully, happily with your whole being, free of ambition, greed and fear. If you are greedy or ambitious, you cannot live fully, because greed and ambition dissipate your energy. To live fully is to live without fear, without sorrow, without asking a thing of the gods, because you would be a light onto yourself. When you live fully - a light onto yourself - you will not follow anybody, you will have no nationality, or belong to any religious or political group. As you would be a free human being it would, therefore, be possible to live in this world richly, whether you have little or much and, in that very active living you would beautify the earth.

Look at all the horrors that are going on everywhere! It is because you do not know how to live that you give an artificial significance to life. If you asked ten different people what the purpose of life was, they would give you ten different answers; and then what could you do but choose an answer from among those ten and try to live according to it? You have to find out for yourself what it means to live fully. Obviously you cannot live fully if you are afraid of death, or a public opinion, or of making a mistake.
If you are ambitious, seeking power, or clinging to a position, which in one form or another is what most people are doing, you cannot live fully, because you would be everlastingly in conflict, both with others and with yourself.

It is most difficult to live without ambition in a world which is corrupt, a world where there are so many vested interests, so many gods who are always threatening, or offering rewards. It requires astonishing intelligence to live in such a world. And you can have intelligence only by seeing everything, and by listening to everything. Then your eyes will become alive and your ears sharp. From seeing and listening there comes self-knowledge and, in knowing yourself you will have astounding vision. What better reason do you want for being on this earth than that.