Krishnamurti on Compassion

Kinfonet Discussion
21

Although K sets the bar for insight very high (‘only with the complete ending of self, or the complete ending of sorrow, can compassion be’, etc), he also sought to communicate aspects of this insight in ways that are yet relevant to those of us who still feel separate, who are in sorrow, who are self-centred.

He often began his talks by pointing out our relationship to the rest of the world, our relationship and our responsibility to the rest of humanity. Is this teaching (You are the world) separate from his teaching on compassion?

Clearly not. So I take it that K was constantly trying to find ways in to our conditioning, vulnerable spots in our conditioning that are maybe amenable to partial insight, partial perception.

22

Haven’t looked at the video yet, but at first glance this seems a bit out of character for K, don’t you think? The no-nonsense, Mr. Austere, happy is the man who is nothing, K, that is. :grinning:

23

Yes. Obviously this statement was made at the end of a long dialogue with Pupul and others, and the context would be important to consider. But if K felt it to be the expression of a fundamental truth, then - in the context of that dialogue - he is perhaps asking why listening should not be sufficient? And therefore if such listening is possible for us at all? - But this is a slightly separate issue. The point is, K is saying here that compassion is bound up with the ending of sorrow. Either that has meaning or it doesn’t. And this in turn depends on where we are in our investigation, in our inquiry. - So it’s perhaps subjective in that respect. The Buddha isn’t saying this thing to either of us directly.

24

What is out of character? You mean considering the Buddhist belief in bodhisattvas?

You know it’s interesting that K wrote a little tongue-in-cheek review for his Notebook when it was published, because he wasn’t satisfied with any of the reviews that he had read about it at the time.

I will give you a sense of it:

Krishnamurti’s Notebook appears to me to go beyond the Upanishads and Vedanta. When he talks about knowledge and the ending of it, it is in essence Vedanta, which literally means the ending of knowledge. But the Vedantists and their followers in different parts of the world are really maintaining the structure of knowledge, perhaps thinking knowledge is salvation, as most scientists do.

I am familiar with the Upanishads and have delved deeply into the teachings of the Buddha. I am fairly familiar with the psychological studies of modern times. As far as I have come in my studies I have not found the phrase ‘the observer is the observed’, with its full meaning. Perhaps some ancient thinker may have said it, but one of the most important things that Krishnamurti has found is this great truth which, when it actually takes place, as it has occasionally happened to me personally, literally banishes the movement of time.

I can feel through all the pages of this book a sense of extraordinary love which the Tibetans might call the love or the compassion of the Bodhisattva, but when you give it a name and an ideological symbol you will lose the perfume. It has strangely affected my life. (from Mary Lutyens’ biography of K, The Years of Fulfilment)

While K was no Buddhist, he had many friends who either were Buddhists or who were knowledgeable about Buddhism, and many of his dialogues in India reflect this. So when he raised the topic of the bodhisattva a few times in his Ending of Time dialogues with David Bohm, it is not very surprising. This doesn’t mean that he accepted the myth of the Maitreya Buddha etc, but he considered these things - he didn’t just throw them out without thinking.

25

No, I didn’t mean that at all. I have no issue with parallels with Buddhism. On the contrary, I find them most interesting. I was just going back to K usual stance that we need to start with “I don’t know”. You are quite correct though, that he only gets to that point after first attempting to engage us at from where we are at. And tries various avenues, including this one, to get us to move from there.

26

“Not until the hells are emptied will I become a Buddha; not until all beings are saved will I certify to Bodhi.”

For some reason, this was the vow that I was familiar with (although looking it up now the consensus is that the vow is to attain buddhahood for the sake of liberating all sentient beings) - needless to say, I found this idea of refraining from Buddhahood pretty odd at the time - when I asked why someone might do such a thing, I was told : “where do all the suffering beings reside?”

27

I’ve noticed that it’s almost impossible these days to listen to a recording of someone speaking without having to listen to a musical background added to it…and in many cases, having to endure a visual foreground, too. Is it a needless distraction or a concession to all the ADHD folks? Why has the KFA adopted this noxious practice?

When Krishnamurti talked about the “art of listening” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that listening is improved or enabled by adding music and videos to what you’re listening to.

28

This brings up an image of what is being discussed : we feel isolated as if on a desert island. All that can be addressed is my unfullfillable need.
We all want compassion, from others.

29

Haha! - I think it is called marketing Inquiry. It is part of the Foundation’s remit to disseminate K’s teachings to a wider audience (as long as it is done tastefully, without too much bombast). Young people these days apparently need a little more audio-visual stimulation to sweeten things :wink:

30

I am probably way too dead inside, but I think it would take a far far better person than I am to feel such a sentiment sincerely. Can such a feeling be cultivated? Or is it a calling that some have and not others?

It may that what is important though is to just get the “perfume” of what is being said rather that some concrete emotion.

31

I’m not an expert on how different Asian cultures have mythologised the bodhisattva ideal - but apparently this saying is attributed to a popular (and mythical) bodhisattva called Ksitigarbha.

The idea of eschewing “buddha-hood” until everyone else has been enlightened is obviously a rather idealistic notion! It assumes that buddha-hood is a real possibility for one thing (which we cannot simply assume), and then postpones it indefinitely or forever - which doesn’t sound very sensible!

But I think the quality these and other similar verses are attempting to communicate is something immeasurable - a compassion that literally has no limits, no boundaries. I suppose it is intended to be indigestible to our reason, so as to communicate a quality of feeling that challenges our predisposition to private egotism. As Emile says

A more practical expression of this same sentiment can be found in a poem by Shantideva, an Indian monk from the 7th/8th century (who wrote several texts about what he believed is involved in being a bodhisattva, which are popular in Tibet).

The poem is clearly aspirational, rather than something to be analysed through the prism of rationality alone. It goes as follows:

May I be a protector to those without protection,
A leader for those who journey,
And a boat, a bridge, a passage
For those desiring the further shore.
May the pain of every living creature
Be completely cleared away.
May I be the doctor and the medicine
And may I be the nurse
For all sick beings in the world
Until everyone is healed.

32

We were discussing this on the other thread. K says no. But that didn’t stop him from talking about the importance of love and compassion, or stop him from encouraging the students and teachers in his various schools to be affectionate, respectful, sensitive, etc. He seems to have linked together these qualities of awareness, sensitivity, affection, love, intelligence, compassion, etc, and demanded them of human beings, as though they were natural, obvious necessities - while at the same time denying that we are generally capable of being loving, attentive, intelligent, sensitive, compassionate, etc.

So what does one do with this apparent infinity ribbon (or lemniscate)? Doesn’t one have to just break into it at any point and see if what k is talking about takes place?

33

Some humans have been looking to break into what has no beginning and no end, for millennia. It is just a theory. Right? Why do we talk about that as if it’s possible? It doesn’t make sense that someone can partake in nothing. Do you think there is another way to post on a forum, aside from the measuring of one idea against another, often using some agreed upon authority? Why do we assume that our accumulated knowledge is true, other than what we have observed firsthand?

34

It certainly was a koan (a counterpoint to knowing) for me.
I don’t think that trying to cultivate a mysterious state is reasonable. Like believing in something I cannot comprehend - thats just confusion.
If I was to be be charitable to the vow as stated above, I would break it down thusly :

  • When the I is emptied, hell is emptied.

  • The I is not mine, but is the same in all beings.

  • When I am not, at least all beings are being saved from me :joy:

35

I wasn’t concluding that K’s teachings are an infinity ribbon, I was merely sympathising with Emile that this is how they often appear - because according to K, to “break in” at any point requires an insight that covers the whole. So to break in to his teaching “You are the world” already covers compassion too.

So where does one begin in the discussion? This is all that was being asked. Do we begin with what it means to be affectionate, considerate, respectful, sensitive? Do we begin by looking at what it means to be attentive? Do we begin with “You are the world”? Do we begin with sorrow?

One of the avenues into the topic (of compassion) might be to pay attention to the “smoke” that covers it up (in the analogy K makes in quote 16) - our self-interest, our callousness, our indifference.

Another might be our attitude to killing, to killing people and animals. Another might be our relationship to the whole (because compassion refers to the whole: it is “passion for all”).

So we are just trying to find a way in. Maybe you could suggest a way in?

The way I see it is that we are at the very beginning of this journey, this investigation. And my approach is to take a wide angle first before moving in closer. I don’t want to begin narrow-mindedly. I want to begin by being as aware as I can be of the topic as a whole.

For me this includes being aware - in précis - of what our culture has said about the topic. So, for example, it is worth being aware that western philosophy has not paid much attention to compassion at all. Only one or two philosophers took it seriously. This is because the Greeks (who invented western philosophy) saw compassion as a moral weakness! This prejudice is very deep rooted in our society, and so it is (for me) worth taking into account.

The other major culture to explore this topic of compassion was in India - probably beginning with the Jains and then the early Brahmans who refused to kill animals. The Buddha also taught not to kill (although Buddhist monasteries permitted the eating of animal flesh) - and the later pan-Asian Mahayana movement made compassion (especially the compassion of the bodhisattva) its most central tenet (along with emptiness).

So, because I want to approach this topic globally, holistically, from a wide-angle lens to start with, I thought I would bring these things up. But the purpose is not to remain at this introductory level, but to move deeper into the topic itself.

36

Going deeper into a topic would seem a sensible thing to do. Have we all experienced compassion at some moments of our lives? Have we ever acted compassionately? Or is compassion, as K defines it, something else altogether?

37

Yes. I think this is a good question. You see, I think most of us (or, speaking for myself only) would say that there have been moments when there has been a sense of (what one feels to be) compassion.

But was it true compassion (in K’s sense) if self-interest and sorrow returned afterwards?

You see, part of the issue is that K is to some extent an authority for us, and he has said certain things about compassion that challenge what we ourselves may feel about it.

Speaking for myself, I would say that there are moments in a person’s life when one’s general self-centredness is punctured - by love, by a sense of beauty, relationship, compassion - but this doesn’t mean that one is thereby free of self.

What is your sense?

38

So one question that is worth looking at here is Sean’s question, because it is a very factual, observation based question:

Another question that occurred to me, in light of what several people have said already, is the question K asks (in Quote 10 from above):

What prevents us from seeing the very simple fact that this world is ours, that this earth is yours and mine to live upon, undivided by nationalities, by frontiers, to live upon happily, productively, with delight, with affection and compassion?

What do people think about this?

Perhaps if we begin with Sean’s more practical (observation-based) question, and then later open it out to respond to the “You are the world” question…?

39

This seems reasonable and I am surprised/chagrined that this may not be the case for many people - obviously this is due to my upbringing.

Yes, theories (or hypotheses) are just ideas until they are shown to be be correct. This can be done via logic, or through demonstrating their predictive power, if the goal is to reveal that they are reasonable/functioning/useful models of reality. (feel free to respond to this if it an interesting line of inquiry)

As for personal experiences, these are obviously part of our journey of psychological conditioning - the cracks that have appeared in the self, have been due to both the intellectual/emotional inquiry into the self (listening to K for example and experience of suffering) and the moments of psychological death that have sometimes (very rarely) occured.
These days, it does seem apparently obvious that inattention (our habitual self-centered preoccupations : debating on kinfonet, playing video games, writing my blog etc) is the motor of conflict (with my wife, with the unwashed dishes, with my dog)

Or rather : the inability to drop my self-centered preoccupations is the motor of conflict.

40

Maybe it is worth just putting out there (i.e. expressing) what we ourselves initially think about compassion?

The word itself (“compassion”) for me has a more global quality than the word “love”. Of course, these are just words, and one can give them any meaning one wants to - and K himself often used these words interchangeably - but love, the word “love”, seems to me to be more personal; while I take it that “compassion” refers to the ‘whole situation’ as it were.

Although K sometimes said that compassion is not a feeling, in my understanding at least compassion does involve a feeling aspect (“passion” means suffering after all).

According to my etymological dictionary “passion” in Middle English meant "the state of being affected or acted upon by something external”. Of course we know that K often took a common word and gave it a new meaning, but the word itself usually connotes a feeling aspect.

K often paired together compassion and intelligence as two fundamental qualities that a person must have to perceive truth. Putting it crudely, intelligence has something to do with the acme of the mind, while compassion is perhaps the acme of the heart (even though these two qualities are not fundamentally separable in K’s teaching - for him the acme of intelligence is compassion).

So compassion - in my mind - is something like a feeling or heart-quality with respect to the whole: to what is happening in human society, the ‘feeling response’ we might have to poverty and degradation, to the suffering of ignorance in every clime, the tragedy of heart-break and loneliness all around us; to the thoughtless killing of other human beings in war, the pain and grief this creates for thousands and thousands of people all over the world.

And also for nature - our response to the fact of how we human beings are despoiling the natural world, cutting down forests, killing animals on an industrial scale, for profit, for sport, for pleasure.

So compassion - in my understanding - involves our response to (and insight into) to the global suffering of others (of which we are a part).

However, compassion is also - as I understand K’s usage - a quality or state that is, in itself, entirely free from suffering; that can expand the horizon of our perception to include the whole world of beauty, perhaps even the whole universe in its scope! So it has a mystery to it too. It is perhaps an energy by itself, without reference to how I myself (or you or another) feels about the world of human suffering.

In K’s language compassion is a passion - an energetic feeling-perception - for everything: for clouds, for the blue sky, for the stars at night, for trees and people and “everything the earth contains.”

That intelligence which is supreme is everywhere. It is that intelligence that moves the earth and the heavens and the stars, because that is compassion. (Mind Without Measure)