The Krishnamurti Connection and
Buddhism
The following paragraphs were solicited and published
in two articles by a small, American, Midwestern Buddhist newsletter. They record
an attempt to think through a comparison between the example and teachings of
Krishnamurti and the Buddha. This is a particularly relevant exercise, given the
little known fact that Krishnamurti was known to have mentioned once or twice
during his life, that he had been a pupil of the latter. Krishnamurti tried, more
or less success fully, never to use this fact in public. At least once however,
after a talk, one of his listeners was, by way of introducing a question, explaining
to Krishnamurti that the Buddha had said such-and-such. On this occasion, before
K could stop himself he blurted out a forceful: "He never said that."
He did occasionally give the impression of not suffering fools gladly. Further
information can be downloaded from the "K server" at tu-berlin.
(from
Bob James: silenus@calvino.alaska.net to ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de in /pub/doc/krishnamurti/related/
and thence to Pannyavaro, BuddhaNet)
The paragraphs are inaccurate here and
there and some needed comments have been introduced in {curly brackets}.
1.
Background: The Krishnamurti Connection
Science and medicine tell us that humans
are mammals and are therefore related to many other animals which share our environment.
Among the things that we share in common with animals are certain characteristic
bodily functions. More specifically these functions are grouped into systems such
as the circulatory system, the muscular system, the digestive system, and the
nervous system. All animals need these systems in order to survive. Some animals
depend more on one system than on the others for survival. Most animals make heavy
use of the muscular system and the digestive system to move about and to assimilate
food, but parasitic worms have little need for muscles to move or a digestive
tract to process their nourishment. Perhaps more so than any other animal humans
depend on a highly developed nervous system which has evolved into a higher capacity
for memory with an enhanced ability for abstract thinking.
So highly developed
is the human ability for memory and abstract thinking that humans have given various
names to the products {not products: just because tennis balls are delivered in
cans and projected by racquets, does not enable us to conclude they are the products
of either} of their nervous systems. Names such as concepts, theories, ideas,
and beliefs have been applied to human thought processes. Over the ages the thoughts
and beliefs of humans have grown more and more important to them, partly because
thoughts were often heavily relied upon for survival, but also because the intense
emphasis that was placed on thoughts and beliefs made them seem real to most all
humans. As time went on many of the beliefs began to take on a reality and a life
of their own, independent of the external reality that humans and other animals
had hitherto known. Some of the beliefs became so real and so powerful to those
whose nervous systems created them, that they became substitutes for reality.
In the harsh struggle for survival suffering was frequently inevitable, and it
could only be expected that humans would sooner or later learn to escape from
the miseries of existence by living in a non-real world generated by their highly
advanced nervous systems.
The enhanced ability of humans to think their way
out of problems thus led to a surprising new activity -- escape from the realm
of reality into a world inhabited by beliefs. In all likelihood this activity
came about merely as an accidental byproduct of a superior brain stem. Thus the
human animal separated itself from other animals by using its nervous system for
something that it had never been used before to any great degree by any other
animal -- for the sustenance of beliefs that had no basis in reality. Up to this
point the use of beliefs and thoughts as a human diversion away from the acute
struggle for survival seems somewhat innocuous. But another unexpected surprise
was in store for that advanced human nervous system. Humans began to idolize and
worship their beliefs. They grew attached to the thoughts that they felt could
cushion them from the fearful necessities of living. Their thoughts became crutches
which they could always fall back on. Like cripples, many humans began to cling
to their beliefs desperately. Beliefs were treated as possessions. Fearful that
some outside group with different beliefs might deprive them of their mental possessions,
many people were prepared to fight and die for the products of their own nervous
systems. Animals had fought and died for food, for territory, and for mates, but
never before had animals engaged in deadly battles to preserve one set of beliefs
over another. By this time the beliefs were given even more high-sounding names
such as ideals, freedom, conscience, God, country, sacred path. Humans lacked
the objectivity and insight to see that concepts such as "my ideal",
"my freedom", "my God", "my path", and "my
country" never appear walking down the streets in broad daylight, and that
their reality was an illusory one that only existed within the brain stems of
the humans who harbored the beliefs.
Most humans lacked the perspective to
know and understand the dilemma that the human animal had inadvertently fallen
victim to, but there were some. In human history mention is made of a few rare
individuals who had the objectivity and the perspective with which to understand
the human plight. Many of the words recorded from these prophets echoed again
and again in one form or another: "Know thyself" was probably the most
common advice offered by all prophets. And yet, this advice has been almost totally
ignored, being drowned in one belief system after another throughout most cultures
and religions of the world. Humans, being blinded by their possessiveness for
their own thought creations, failed to pay attention to this most important dictum.
Instead they took the words of their prophets and tried to interpret them as beliefs,
almost literally. Rather than trying to look inward and trying to understand what
they had created within their brain stems, they succumbed to the tyranny of their
petty beliefs. They unwittingly followed paths which their nervous systems and
its beliefs had laid to ensnare them.
We know too little about some of the
prophets that may have had some insight into the human predicament. Those who
may have had the gift {it is no gift} of this insight include the leaders of the
major religions and a handful of gifted mystics. Jiddu Krishnamurti was one of
these mystics. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was born of a Brahmin family of less than
moderate means in southern India. His life might have been a much more uneventful
one if it had not been for the Englishman, Charles Webster Leadbeater, who discovered
the boy, dirty and undernourished, walking along a beach near Madras at the turn
of the century.
Charles Leadbeater shared the prestigious position of being
one of the two top leaders of the Theosophical Society with Annie Besant, its
president. The Theosophical Society had evolved into a powerful organization {it
has never been and is not now powerful in any ordinary meaning of that word} that
had branches in every industrialized country throughout the world. Its members
were often {occasionally, as in any other organization} wealthy and influential.
Its goals were to form a sort of world order or religion that would ultimately
combine all existing religions, both western and eastern, into one unitary world
order. The Theosophical society was looking for a world teacher, a prophet of
sorts, who would become the leader for this new world order. {Poorly phrased but
more or less correct. As long as one understands this phrase "world order"
to have nothing whatever to do with politics or religion. The number of secular
organizations from Amnesty International to the United Nations who have adopted
a portion of the goals of the Theosophical Society, without acknowledgment, are
yet to be counted.} It was in Krishnamurti that Leadbeater saw an instrument for
this new order. With the approval of Annie Besant and his parents Krishnamurti
and his brother, Nitya, were sent off to England to be educated.
By the time
he had reached the age of twenty Krishnamurti had become very fluent in English.
As a gifted speaker and writer he had been introduced to the intellectual and
social life of England. The Theosophical Society formed a new organisation named
"The Order of the Star of the East" and made Krishnamurti its leader
both in temporal and spiritual matters.
For a number of years Krishnamurti
presided over large gatherings of theosophists from all over the world. He was
acclaimed and accepted as the prophet of the new order. Then two unexpected events
changed things forever in the life of Krishnamurti. His brother, Nitya, died of
tuberculosis in 1925, and in 1929 while resting in the estate of a friend in the
Ojai Valley of California, Krishnamurti was attacked by {what seemed to his friends
to be} feverish dreams. One day he wandered into a nearby grove and stopped to
rest underneath a pepper tree. It was while he lay under the tree that indescribable
feelings of unity with nature overtook him. He claimed that he could in some sense
merge with the insects and the leaves on the pepper tree. He claimed to be able
to see things with greater clarity than ever before in his life and that he had
touched the face of the infinite.
Within two years of these experiences Krishnamurti
formally disbanded "The Order of the Star of the East". To the amazement
and disappointment of Annie Besant and some of the other theosophists, he gave
up all the power and prestige that he had gained under their tutelage. He proclaimed
that truth could not be found through membership in any organization that was
created by man and that no organization should be established by men to show others
the correct path to truth. In short, each person would have to find truth for
themselves.
2. "Truth is a pathless land.": The Teachings
For
Krishnamurti the conglomeration of thoughts and beliefs that each human acquires
and builds upon into adulthood go together to form the ego. A self-propagating
thing, the ego is that bundle of nervous energy which strives to maintain the
thoughts which it needs to identify itself. For example: I am white, I am black,
I am Christian, I am a pagan, I am an Englishman, I am a Chinese, I am John, I
am a republican. The ego thrives on labels such as these. Labels are thoughts,
having no objective reality, but they do serve a purpose, to discriminate between
what I am and what I am not. The use of labels facilitates the fragmentation of
the universe. By virtue of labels and fragmentation the human nervous system (ego)
has subdivided a universe which in its primeval innocence had hitherto only known
oneness. Krishnamurti often refers to this process as one of divisiveness and
insularity.
For Krishnamurti the ego is a process that consumes nervous energy
in order to set itself apart from the rest of the universe. The ego owes its existence
to fear of all that is unknown, and this fear is acquired after birth by all humans
as soon as they begin to deal with the unknown. The energy tied up in the beliefs
which comprise the ego serve as a buffer against the memories of hurt that each
human acquires and subsequently carries as a burden. {Correct}
The divisive
nature of mankind is responsible for all of the suffering which mankind endures.
Divisiveness occurs both internally and externally. Within ourselves we build
images of what we want to be or what we think we should be. But these images can
never reflect what we truly are. A conflict exists between reality and mental
images which cannot be resolved by thought, because it is thought that is projecting
these images in the first place. Any attempt by thought to resolve the conflict
ends in more confusion, frustration, and suffering.
External divisiveness occurs
with thoughts, images or beliefs like "we are different from them" or
"we are better than them". Comparisons are made, and in order to make
comparisons we must first create mental scales of good and bad, black and white,
smart and stupid, right and wrong, high and low. These, of course, are all examples
of duality, and thus duality becomes a tool for subdividing and fragmenting external
reality. As usual, fear is the prime motivation. We are fearful of the reality
of knowing exactly what we are. To avoid this fear we find security by indulging
in mental creations - images of being good as opposed to being bad or being right
as opposed to being wrong. The process leads us gradually into a state of insularity
or separation from that which causes the fear. For example, one might have Jewish
blood and be fearful of learning the truth. To avoid having to acknowledge the
truth one could go on a rampage of hate and destruction bent on a "final
solution" of eliminating all the evidence that the Jewish race ever existed.
Clearly, external divisiveness can be the cause of much suffering.
What are
we exactly? According to Krishnamurti we are emptiness. In some of his writings
he describes this emptiness as the nowhere from which joy emerges without a cause
and the nowhere to which it returns. The nowhere is timeless - not having a beginning
or an ending, but not having a duration either for duration would imply time.
Subjective
time is a product of our advanced human memories. We can remember our pasts so
well that we very readily form images of the past that seem real. We do this better
than most other animals. But our superior ability for abstract thinking enables
us to foresee certain events in the future, e.g. when the temperature drops low
enough we may predict that water will freeze. We may become so obsessed with our
ability to anticipate future events that our anticipations may seem to be real
to us. We 'believe' that a past and a future exists because our nervous system
has very real powers of making predictions for the future and our memory is likewise
powerful in recalling the past. The flow of images that our nervous systems construct
of the past and the future deceive us into thinking that there is something like
a concrete past and a concrete future. Like many other prophets and mystics, however,
Krishnamurti reminds us that the only reality lies 'now' in the present moment.
The
illusion which we experience as the passage of subjective time is intimately tied
into the ego. When we experience time we are always doing something of this sort:
1.
Waiting to get something or to go somewhere. 2. Working (and waiting) to earn
money. 3. Studying to become better in a skill or a discipline. 4. Growing impatient
to achieve or obtain something.
In each case the ego is using its favorite
tool, duality, and making comparisons to go from a state of lesser possessiveness
to greater possessiveness. Krishnamurti points out that this process which has
ego at its heart gives rise to the passage of subjective time. Egolessness, therefore,
implies timelessness.
He acknowledges that there is a place for ego. Humans
need ego to survive in daily living. Beliefs, thoughts, and memory are necessary
to fend for our daily requirements. We need to earn a living and know when to
cross a street safely by remembering what a green light means. The aborigine must
use memory and thought in order to prepare the tips of spears or the shafts of
arrows. But thoughts and beliefs are never sacred! They are not to be worshipped
as things in themselves. Thought, no matter how elevated or holy it may seem,
is no more a sacred product of the nervous system than defecation is a sacred
product of the digestive system. How easy it is to be deceived by the illusion
of sacred thoughts.
Krishnamurti has stated that there is only one way to
achieve a deep, fundamental and permanent change in our personalities, and that
is through a kind of profound, spontaneous insight into our inner nature -- "know
thyself". This insight, it turns out, is the equivalent of meditation. In
order to cause such a change, this meditation must be without concentration because
concentration involves will power and this implies ego activity. Any activity
involving concentration, discipline, effort, or force will only cause superficial
changes. The underlying mechanism will remain unchanged. He describes a type of
meditation where insight and revelation come to the meditator of their own accord
as opposed to meditation which rigidly follows a path, a discipline, or a method
set down by others. One cannot use the ego to force itself into inactivity because
the use of force implies ego activity.
When Krishnamurti refers to insight
he means an instantaneous insight. He means insight which does not require time,
deliberations, or tedious analysis by the ego process. Krishnamurti's insight
is so vivid and dynamic that it also becomes its own action. In other words action
with a response takes place simultaneously with insight, and there is no passage
of subjective time in which to think or invoke belief systems.
Experiences
of this sort may be incredibly powerful:
1. A mother who steps between her
child and a rattlesnake threatening to strike. She does this without a moment's
hesitation to think about Christian ethics deploring suicide, whether she should
say ten hail Mary's first, etc.
2. The many accounts of soldiers in combat
who threw themselves upon hand grenades to save their comrades without wasting
an instant on their belief systems. One may well guess that even some atheists
may have been up to it.
3. Some years ago a passenger airliner lost part of
its hull near Hawaii, a few passengers perished, but most landed and survived.
A stewardess, interviewed on TV, said: "there was no fear -- no time for
fear, we all acted spontaneously to the needs of each other without giving thought."
She said it was all played out in slow motion. Time seemed to stop. There was
no time for belief systems and no time to get out a handy-dandy bible or Koran
or 'Gita'. No time for the Lord's prayer.
4. Young persons in love (perhaps
for the first time) refer to dying for each other and moments when time seems
to stop. One notices that love in this case crosses all artificial, man-made,
religious boundaries. Not much thought given to the Christian, Hindu, or Moslem
God when lovers meet. No time to waste on belief systems. A communist can love
a capitalist, a Satanist a Christian, no time, no thought given to the 'rules',
the 'covenants', the 'commandments.' Love cannot be constrained by rules that
are taught at the foot of a guru.
5. Athletes in long distance racing sometimes
attain a state where they are overcome with passion. They report experiencing
feelings of such intense joy that they become overwhelmed and begin to cry. They
report that they sometimes seem to be running in slow motion. Once again time
seems to slow or stop. Their whole thoughts, minds, bodies are given up, surrendered,
or sacrificed to the task at hand. There is no time to waste on belief systems.
All energy must be sucked back out of belief systems and applied to the race.
The
same pattern appears in all the examples above. The ego has been sidestepped because
the effort and the task at hand are so intense that there is no time for ego involvement.
In such moments the ego loses its authority and its energy. It is the same energy
which is used to maintain divisiveness or insularity. The energy then becomes
available to be channeled for more efficient use in accomplishing the task. Without
ego time seems to stop. There is no doubt about the need to accomplish the task
because doubt implies a divisive personality, and divisiveness has vanished with
the ego. The act becomes an act of love, sacrifice, or surrender, because all
the mental, physical, and psychic energy expended in maintaining the ego must
be withdrawn from selfish pursuits and focused on the task at hand without any
second thoughts. This act is unconditional, all-consuming and therefore, very
passionate.
If one feels a need to hesitate and give a thought to the advice
of Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha then one's whole being is not totally united in
the act, because some ego with its divisiveness still remains. In that case one
could not say that one unconditionally loved one's child, a comrade-in-arms, or
the other airline passengers. In this manner love and compassion are negated by
faith, belief, thought, and even hope.
We often hear testimony from persons,
such as the stewardess, who stated that their lives were permanently changed by
their experiences. They claim that because of their "peak experience"
they feel that they live more fully now. It is much more common for us to feel
that we love this person or that thing or some god, but no sooner is the statement
made and our minds are already thinking about rules to follow, Christian rules,
Hindu rules, conditions, etc. "You will love your God by not eating meat
on Fridays" or "You will love your God by destroying the infidels."
Krishnamurti
in his discussions and dialogues is not being theoretical or otherworldly. Denying
any guru-like authority, he urges us not to take his word for anything he says,
and urges us to find out for ourselves. His message, therefore, becomes very immediate
and real.
3. The Krishnamurti Connection With Buddhism
In many ways Krishnamurti's
message is similar to the one that Buddhism teaches. Both point to the ease and
susceptibility of the human mind to succumb to conditioning as the origin of all
our human problems. Both doctrines, therefore, prescribe the use of an intense
awareness of all of our mental processes, thoughts, memories, beliefs, hopes,
and fears in order to gain that state of enlightenment which Krishnamurti calls
insight or complete and unconditional freedom.
On the surface there appears
to be conflict between Krishnamurti and Buddhism on some points. To Krishnamurti
the process of enlightenment takes place instantaneously, like a sudden awakening.
To most Buddhists enlightenment would take place only after years of painstaking
meditative practice and countless rituals.
In the preceding we examined the
nature of human psychological time. Time is measured by humans usually through
a process of increase or decrease. We sense that time is passing because we are
growing older or earning more money or waiting to be promoted to a higher rank.
More precisely, psychological time is our perception of the process of increase
or decrease and nothing more. Without that perception there would be no sense
of passage of time.
When we talk of working and meditating over a period of
years to achieve enlightenment it is the same as saying, "I will create the
passage of time by undergoing a process of 'increase' from a lower to a higher
spiritual level". By taking this approach we will have avoided taking the
discontinuous leap into enlightenment, and instead we will have created our own
delay in achieving enlightenment. As we mentioned earlier, the human ego is involved
with this process. In fact, one could say that the human ego is this process,
i.e. perception (increase/decrease) = psychological time = ego.
It stands to
reason that any Buddhist authority who urges others to work real hard over a long
period of time in order to achieve enlightenment is selling an ego package. Yet,
we sometimes hear such advice coming from Buddhists. Krishnamurti's view of enlightenment
is not that of a gradual one which increases slowly over years of hard work, because
that sort of ego-related process creates its own delay and thus insures that the
end is never attained. In Krishnamurti's view enlightenment comes by its own accord
where and when it chooses, and there is little that we can do about it. It comes
to us at auspicious times like a major discontinuity in our lives, and it reminds
us of some Buddhist accounts of awakening which were induced by an unexpected
slap to the face or a blow to the body. Ego involvement in enlightenment (or meditation
for that matter) is no more than an interference which will negate the process.
It
is the author's opinion that Krishnamurti's views provide us with more insight
into The Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge than most explanations available
from the Buddhist world. In the Sutra, Avalokitesvara states that there is no
birth and no cessation, ... no decrease and no increase, ... It is the exact same
process which Krishnamurti dwells upon in volume after volume of his works. Enlightenment
is a state that is timeless which means that its chief attribute is one of no-time,
meaning no involvement with ego or ego-created time. Once an acknowledgment is
made by the ego that time is required to attain enlightenment, the search has
gone off on a hopeless tangent and will end in failure. The ego has to surrender
its jurisdiction in the matter of enlightenment and allow something which is infinite
and unknowable to take its course.
To Krishnamurti any process of thought is
unsacred. Thoughts of the dharma or Buddha are as unsacred as any other type of
thought. The only thing remaining sacred in Krishnamurti's view is that which
thought is incapable of capturing or the unknowable. All thoughts are mere human
creations of the human brain stem and are forever incapable of capturing that
which is infinite and unknowable.
At first it seems that most Buddhists would
agree with the foregoing paragraph. But there is plenty of Buddhist literature
available which encourages Buddhists to meditate upon sacred images or thoughts
or The Eight-Fold path or some mandala or mantra. It is self-evident that a state
of complete emptiness is impossible as long as any images whatsoever persist in
the mind. The Sutra says that emptiness is form and all form is emptiness, yet
many Buddhist leaders keep on encouraging others to fill this vast, wonderful
emptiness with a product of the human nervous system as if that product is sacred
enough to occupy space as long as it has received the authorized stamp of approval
from a duly appointed Buddhist authority.
Some Buddhist groups conduct prayer
meetings. Prayer is an obvious exercise of the ego, a deliberate, calculating
way to gain an increase over a period of time. There are some who feel that more
prayer results in more gain. It is another attempt to attain something despite
the fact that there is no attainment.
4. No Path, No Progress, No Goal
"...the
bodhisatvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajnaparamita."
To
Krishnamurti there is no "path", no procedures, no organization, and
no rules that should be laid down by men for other men to follow on the road to
enlightenment. As part of the path, Buddhists must observe a very typical, man-made,
structure which begins at the top with The Three Precious Ones: the Buddha, the
Dharma, and the Sangha. Each of these pillars has subsets of rules associated
with it: The Five Skandhas, The Eight Siddhis, etc. Some would have us believe
that learning all these articles of faith are necessary for enlightenment.
Much
Buddhist literature suggests that in following Buddhism there is a great object
that one must attain and that one progresses towards this goal as one takes each
step along the path. To Krishnamurti setting a psychological goal and working
for progress in any direction will only lead to more confusion and suffering.
Any attempts at psychological self-betterment will amount to no more than just
one more futile duplication of many similar past efforts, all of which had previously
failed.
The typical pattern of human behavior that we always seem to fall into,
perhaps by virtue of conditioning, is the "work for a reward" stereotype.
One finds a religion and sees something desirable in it which becomes an object
of attainment. The next step is to devise a plan to acquire the object, and finally,
with great deliberation we set about to carry out that plan with hard, unrelenting
work.
Krishnamurti tells us that the "work for a reward" operandi
has been tried countless times by homo sapiens, but it has never led us to anything
new or different in the area of spiritual enlightenment. What do we make of all
this? Buddhist leaders round the world tell us that there are Buddhist goals and
a path of hard work and attainment for reaching these goals.
Here again Krishnamurti
seems to be more in agreement with the very core of Buddhist teachings than the
Buddhists themselves. The Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge sounds
more like Krishnamurti than does many of the Buddhist teachers: "There is
... no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no nonattainment ..." Here Krishnamurti
is telling us to live up to the precepts of this great Buddhist Sutra. He is not
telling us to follow a path, but to under stand that there is no path. He tells
this just as bluntly and simply as the Sutra does. There is no apparent sympathy
or embellishments for the benefit of those who either fail to understand or for
those who have beliefs in goals to which they must continue to cling.
5. No
Apostolic following
Buddhist teachers are prone to exhort us to believe in
the principles that Buddhist leaders have laid down for them over the centuries,
and there are authoritative Buddhist lineages with apostles who have been appointed
to carry out this task.
For Krishnamurti even the faintest aroma of authority
is totally detrimental to spirituality, because authority implies that someone
has been placed in a position of acceptance. Anyone who accepts any truth from
someone else has not yet found it within himself. As long as people are unwilling
or for any reason unable to find truth within themselves there will be no possibility
of obtaining any true spiritual insight.
According to Krishnamurti the person
is not important, but what he says is. In many of his writings he pleads and begs
the reader not to accept anything on his authority, but instead to undertake a
profound inward search to verify the truth (or untruth) of anything he says. Advice
with an uncanny similarity appears in the Kalama Sutra where the Buddha says,
"Don't believe in me, don't believe in others, don't believe in something
because it is written in books, but really see for yourself what practice is conducive
to the weakening of greed and delusion."
If we are not to believe in the
Buddha, other Buddhists, or Buddhist scriptures then of what value is a Buddhist
lineage? Perhaps not much, but Krishnamurti has an answer to this. The only useful
function that he could ever claim for himself was, as he put it, as a mirror.
He felt that he could help those most in need by reflecting an image of themselves
that would be so vivid that no one could fail to recognize the simple fact that
our true nature was that of a vast, unlimited emptiness. If Krishnamurti's role
for himself were also applicable to Buddhist leaders then the Buddhist clergy
would serve better as instruments of reflection rather than reservoirs ready to
spout endless dictums: The Six Realms of cyclic existence, The Ten Bhumis, The
Four Performances, The Four Noble Truths, and so on and on and on.
What of
all the rules that the Buddha has passed down to us over the centuries? Accounts
have it that just before his death the Buddha entrusted his monks to discard all
minor rules, saying he knew they were able to discern the essence of dharma. Overcautious,
the monks decided they couldn't decide, and kept all the rules. In effect, they
denied the Buddha's last wish. Had Krishnamurti sat in the place of the Buddha,
and had he made but one rule, it might have been "know thyself", and
all other rules would have been declared to be minor and therefore to be discarded.
Although
Krishnamurti has left us with no apostolic succession to continue with his work,
he did establish a foundation before he died. The Krishnamurti Foundation which
has an office at Ojai, California, another in Brockwood Park, England, and a third
in Madras, India, makes all of his work available either in print or on sound
& video recordings, and on CD-ROM. Some of the tapes contain various impressions
of Krishnamurti which were recorded during interviews with prominent world figures
from many different fields.
In one such interview with Rinpoche Sumdung the
Buddhist teacher stated that in his opinion the Buddha taught on two different
levels. The first level was that of the average human being. This was the level
that Buddha used when he spoke to the masses, and it was on this level that Buddha
taught rules, dharma, rituals, etc. Rinpoche Sumdung went on to say that the second
level, a higher level, was the one which the Buddha used to communicate in-depth
wisdom as in the sutras. The "Heart Sutra" was such a higher form of
communi- cation.
Finally, Rinpoche Sumdung said that the Buddha "compromised"
himself by teaching on the two different levels, because eventually obvious discrepancies
were sure to appear between the two levels. In the preceding paragraphs we have
been dealing with some of these problems. Rinpoche Sumdung concluded by saying
that in his opinion Krishnamurti never addressed the masses from the lower level
like the Buddha did. He always taught at the level of the sutra and for that reason
there is much agreement between Krishnamurti and "The Heart Sutra".
Krishnamurti, therefore, never "compromised" {not quite the best choice
of a word; perhaps what the Rinpoche meant would be better expressed by the word
"overextended"} himself in the same manner as the Buddha did. Rinpoche
Sumdung felt that on this second level Krishnamurti's teachings were identical
with those of the Buddha. Krishnamurti remained true, at times obstinately steadfast,
to the Sutra level of teaching during his whole life, and his teachings were consequently
more difficult for the public to assimilate.