Facing a World in Crisis: What Life Teaches Us in Challenging Times

by J. Krishnamurti

Overview

J. Krishnamurti, one of the most beloved and renowned religious teachers of the twentieth century, often taught his students that they must look at the state of the world, with all its violence and conflict, if they are ever to understand themselves. To turn away from world events was for him not to be alive to what life has to teach.

Facing a World in Crisis presents a selection of talks that Krishnamurti gave on how to live in and respond to troubling and uncertain times. His message of personal responsibility and the importance of connecting with the broader world is presented in a nonsectarian and nonpolitical way. Direct and ultimately life-affirming, Facing a World in Crisis will resonate with readers today who are looking for a new way to understand and find hope in challenging times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780834824041
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	03/08/2005
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	316 KB

About the Author

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. He traveled and lectured throughout the world until his death at the age of ninety. His talks and works are preserved in more than seventy books.

Read an Excerpt

From
Chapter
8: Being Free of Problems

To deliberate implies not only to consider, weigh, think out together, but also go into problems very deeply, slowly, carefully, knowing one's own prejudices,
one's own crankiness, so that one listens not only to the speaker but also to the reactions, resolves, and idiocies one has—if you will forgive me for putting it that way. So that seriously, and not separately, not divisively, not you taking one side and the speaker the other, but together we observe what is going on in the world. Not only in this particular country but throughout the world: in economics and science, and in politics with the Socialists, the
Liberals, and Conservatives. So this is not just a weekend gathering but something very serious—not churchy seriousness, but rather a seriousness that lasts not only for the time we spend together but also afterward when we go our separate ways.

Deliberation also implies seeing, deciding, and then acting. All that is implied in that one good word. So together, not merely intellectually, sentimentally or fantastically, let us take a serious look at what is happening to all of us.

We must also bear in mind in deliberating together that there is no outside help.
The speaker is not trying to help, impress, convince, cajole, or pressure you.
We can leave all that to the politicians, the newspapers, the television, and to the temples, mosques, and churches around the world. So we are together in this, without any pressure or persuasion on the speaker's part, or you on your side taking a view and then holding onto that. We are together investigating the extraordinary and dangerous problems that we are faced with. No one knows what is going to happen in the future; there is immense uncertainty, chaos, and the world is becoming more and more sinister.

So we are going to look first at the world, not my world or your world but the world that is confronting us, what is going on in the scientific field, in the buildup of armaments, with the politicians clinging to, and fighting for, their particular ideologies. If one may ask, how do you approach these problems? Not only one's own particular problem but the problems that challenge and require determined action in the scientific world, in biology, economics, the world of social inequality, social immorality? How do we approach this? As someone
British? As a Frenchman? As a Hindu? As a Muslim and so on? If we approach it with a particular view, we are conditioned by a motive, known or unknown, and therefore our approach will be limited. This is obvious, isn't it? If the speaker is holding foolishly on to his India, then he will look at the world with all its complicated problems from a particular narrow view. So his approach to all these problems will be partial, self-interested, always very petty, very limited.

That is clear. So one is asking, and please ask yourself, how will you approach these problems? Not a particular problem, whether is be yours, or your wife's,
your husband's, and so on, but how do you approach a problem as such? Which means, how do you meet a challenge? Something that you have to face, answer,
and act on.

What is a problem? According to the root meaning in the dictionary, it is something thrown at you, something that you have to face and answer. Not with a response dictated by time, circumstances, in a pragmatic or casual way, or with a certain sense of smugness, or with certain obvious conclusions. So how do you come to it? We are deliberating together; forget the speaker. Personality doesn't enter into this at all; you can brush that completely aside. So in what way do we face a problem? And why do we have so many problems? All our life from birth until death, we are beset, worn out by problems—worry, uncertainty,
and perpetual conflict, struggle, pain, anxiety, all the rest of it. So shouldn't we together find out how to deal with them? That is the first question.

Editorial Reviews

"Krishnamurti is one of the greatest philosophers of our age."—the Dalai Lama

"Few modern thinkers have integrated psychology, philosophy, and religion so seamlessly as Krishnamurti."— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher