Monday, July 6, 2009

The purpose of human existence


Questioner: What is the ultimate reason or purpose of human existence?


J Krishnamurti: Do you know any purposes? The way we live has no meaning and no purpose. We can invent a purpose, the purpose of perfection, enlightenment, reaching the highest form of sensitivity; we can invent endless theories. And we are caught in those theories, making them our problems.

Our daily life has no meaning, no purpose, except to make a bit of money and lead an idiotic kind of life. One can observe all this, not in theory but actually in oneself; the endless battle in oneself, seeking a purpose, seeking enlightenment, going all over the world—specially to India or to Japan—to learn a technique of meditation.

You can invent a thousand purposes but you need not go anywhere, not to the Himalayas, to a monastery, or to any ashram—which is another form of concentration camp—because everything is in you.

The highest, the immeasurable, is in you, if you know how to look. Do not assume it is there; that is one of the stupid tricks we play upon ourselves: that we are God, that we are the ‘perfect’ and all the rest of that childish stuff. Yet through the illusion, through ‘what is’, through the measurable, you find something that is immeasurable; but you must begin with yourself, where you can discover for yourself how to look.

Beyond Violence, pp 106-107

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