KRISHNAMURTI - A TRIBUTE
"Beauty is where the self is not." Jiddu Krishnamurti
(From the East West Journal, 1986)
Krishnamurti's last public talk before he died quietly in his sleep on February 17th, 1986 in Ojai, California at the age of 90 was at The Kennedy Center for The Arts in Washington D.C., the 22nd of April, 1985. It was an extraordinary spring day outside and the tickets had long been sold out. The immensity of the hall and the numbers of people stood in stark contrast to the lone and solitary figure of Krishnamurti seated on a simple folding chair amidst a bare stage. His erect body, facing the crowd straight on, hands resting gently on his thighs, head seldom moving, reminded me of a portrait painted by Giocometti, a head-on figure, perfectly symmetrical, trunk erect, knees pointing slightly outwards, but implying the feet solidly on the ground, hands folded neatly at the groin.
This straight forward image not only paralleled Krishnamurti's seated position with amazing accuracy, but the directness of his discourse as well - its piercing simplicity, its forthright challenges, (sparing us nothing), its elliptical phrasing where word and insight became one.
How many times had he been there before us in different parts of the world, speaking with us, dialoguing with us? Images dart through my mind in rapid succession: Krishnamurti in Saneen, Switzerland, under a huge tent nestled in the valley of the towering alps, asking us to examine the nature of desire, the root of all self centered activity; Krishnamurti at Brockwood Park in England speaking to us about the wholeness of life, challenging us to live a life without a grain of conflict; Krishnamurti in new Delhi, crossed legged on a podium, dressed in Indian garb, exhorting us about our "ugly gurus" while only a short distance way yogis and saints from all over India busied themselves with their secrets at The Conference on Scientific Yoga; Krishnamurti at Carnegie Hall, single-handedly tackling our conditioned minds by proposing that 'East' and 'West' were mere products of thought, figments of our imagination.
It seemed fitting that the lead article for the D.C. talks, written by Milton Friedman in the Washington Post be entitled: "Is Washington Ready for Krishnamurti?" Perhaps he might have put instead, "Are we Ready for Krishnamurti?" For when it came right down to it, how many of us were ready to meet the challenges to our minds and our hearts which he would throw out time and time again, stripping our conditioned minds and mechanical thinking to the bone?
"The most terrible thing," he warned, "is to learn something you know is true and not to apply it; (otherwise) what you have heard and what you do brings about contradiction. It is better not to hear any of this if you are not going to act upon it."
Krishnamurti was a man for whom the split between word and action did not exist, a man who had no utopia to thrust upon us, 'the future is now, death is now, the ending is now', a man who had no techniques to propose, no path to follow, a man about whom one might say, as Chuang Tzu said long ago in his poem, "The Man of Tao," that "no self" is "true self" and "The greatest man is nobody," a man whose only legacy was the light he awakened within us. How often had he told us "You must doubt everything the speaker says, the speaker (meaning himself) has no importance whatsoever," emphasizing the word 'whatsoever.'
Perhaps the last and final image I have of him (which was that beautiful spring day at the Kennedy Center), might serve as a metaphor for what he was trying to tell us: he had been asking us if we could see the 'extraordinariness of death, like the extraordinariness of life,' adding that 'to live with death was to live with the ending of every day.'
Somehow his words were stronger, more poignant than they ever had been before. When he finished, he rose from his chair as though to walk slowly off stage. Suddenly the audience stood up and began to applaud vigorously.
Krishnamurti turned around in his steps, faced the crowd and with an impatient flick of the wrist in an effort to subdue the clatter asked, 'But what are you clapping for?' and then added in a somewhat exasperated voice, 'The speaker wants nothing from you, please, please do not clap.'
Without further ado, he turned around again and walked quietly off the stage, as though to disappear from our sights forever.
