Reply without Reaction

Mr. J Krishnamurti, 90, is a well-known Indian thinker. When he is on a public stage, he folds his hands and says, “Sir, I am a nobody” or, “Sir, I am just a passer-by.” Are we all nothing on reality? His answer is, “Yes, when you are as nothing, you are everything.”

Islamic thinkers disapprove of thoughts of this kind for they lead to scepticism or monism, and both are just a philosophical license for irresponsibility and monism. Yet there is an example from Krishnamurti’s life which can be quoted here with great pertinence.

Mr. J. Krishnamurti is fortunate enough to find a large audience at every speech he makes. Thousands attend his talks year after year, but he feels unhappy at their failure to move along with him. At the end of his discussions in Madras in February 1984, he asked the audience: “Will you change, sirs?” and declared, “You’ll all go back and continue doing what you have been doing.” For more than 50 years he has been travelling round the West and India but has still not relaxed his efforts to make people see what he thinks ought to be seen.

Once a man in the audience asked him angrily, “Year after year you say that we are not going along with you; then why do you keep talking to us?” Mr. Krishnamurti politely replied, “Sir, have you ever asked a rose why it blooms?”

When you are provoked by a remark of your critic, all you do is react. But when you resist provocation, you are able to give an answer which will render your critic speechless.