Saturday Kinfonet Question: Can the cause and effect of obedience be observed within ourselves?
This week we’ll read two quotes and show a short video clip.
Krishnamurti on Obedience:
In this world, obedience has been instilled by tradition, experience and habit - obedience to one’s parents, to society, to the priest. But obedience is born of fear, fear of going wrong, of acting independently, of not being secure, of not being part of the community, of standing alone, of making a mistake. So it is fear that breeds authority; one wants to live in a respected, accepted way which society has established. It is this very fear that has conditioned the mind; it is fear that has built the society to which the mind has become a slave. The mind has created this society through its fear, greed, ambition, envy and so on.
A discipline which comes naturally, without any conformity, is the simple observation of all these fears…as you see a tree.
The Whole Movement of Life is Learning
J Krishnamurti’s Letters to his Schools
Published 2006
from Chapter 58 Fear Breeds Authority
Krishnamurti: Fear Makes Us Obey
Why do we do all this – obey, follow, copy? Why? Because we are frightened inwardly to be uncertain. We want to be certain – we want to be certain financially, we want to be certain morally – we want to be approved, we want to be in a safe position, we want never to be confronted with trouble, pain, suffering, we want to be enclosed. So, fear, consciously or unconsciously, makes us obey the Master, the leader, the priest, the government. Fear also controls us from doing something which may be harmful to others, because we will be punished. So behind all these actions, greeds, pursuits, lurks this desire for certainty, this desire to be assured. So without resolving fear, without being free from fear, merely to obey or to be obeyed has little significance, what has meaning is to understand this fear from day to day and how fear shows itself in difference ways. It is only when there is freedom from fear that there is that inward quality of understanding, that aloneness in which there is no accumulation of knowledge or of experience, and it is that alone which gives extraordinary clarity in the pursuit of the real.
J. Krishnamurti
The Book of Life
Page: March 25
Video:
J. Krishnamurti - Fear and Pleasure | Reward and Punishment
Zoom Link:
Date: Saturday April 1, 2023
Time: 5 PM UTC, check Kinfonet.org under “Dialogue Groups" for the time in your zone
Duration: 2 1/2 hours
Join: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89941193018?pwd=YmlaNENRNGRpOGc0S3JFbjBMMStmQT09
Meeting ID: 899 4119 3018
Passcode: 641528