Jiddu Krishnamurti: “There Is Only One Revolution!”

“We want to escape. . .because man has lived like this for thousands and thousands of years, with sorrow, confusion, and great misery and mischief. And without changing all that, completely, radically. . .mere outward revolution. . .changing a particular system for another system does not solve this aching agony. There’s only one revolution — the inward revolution. So, spitting on society, blaming society for your condition is obviously blaming something, which you have created. It’s your society. You have built it. By your greed, your ambition, competitiveness, comparison, by one’s own inward hatred, violence. Now, the question is, how can that life be changed? Not gradually, but immediately; otherwise, you are sowing the seed of violence. Though, you may want peace, you are actually sowing the seed of enmity, misery. (…) And if we want order — and order is virtue — order demands discipline. . .”

“A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

While I do not agree entirely with not belonging to any system, whenever I have tried to share Jiddu Krishnamurti on my personal social media in the past, the reaction was indifference or that Krishnamurti was naive. Only because so many people are so tied to systems and identities whether religious, ethnic, etc. Can Jiddu Krishnamurti be understood, if he is inviting you within a space of reflection, asking you to see through these very attachments? I think, he cannot be understood in that way, and so the consequential reaction in the mind of the listener is firstly to fight, to scrutinize and to judge the whole of the man speaking while not even really trying to engage in the mental exercises he encourages when listening to him. The first speech on the inward revolution is an extremely powerful speech during a high point in his inner state of being, and so from this awareness comes his analysis of the society in which we live.