Krishnamurti

Early Speeches

The Purpose of Life (1928)

Fly Away in the Open Sky

Early Speeches

The Purpose of Life

Flutter of the Wings

The Open Sky

Back to K's Early Speeches

One day in Benares I was going in a boat down the sacred Ganga, watching the people on the river banks worshipping God in search of happiness, in search of their goal and the way of its attainment. I saw one man in deep meditation, forgetting everything around him, holding but the one thought in his mind - to find and to attain the goal. krathong.jpg (9598 bytes)

I saw another performing rites required by his system of yoga. I saw another repeating chants, lost to the world and to himself. They were all seeking what you are seeking, what everyone in the world is seeking in moments of deep thought and of great desire. As the boat is carried down the stream by the current, so is everyone carried away by his desires, by his passions and longings, because not one has found or established his purpose. Because the goal has not been established, because the path that leads to that goal has not been found, there is confusion and chaos, there is questioning and doubt in the mind. As long as there is doubt in the mind there is not peace, nor certainty and ecstasy of purpose.

This condition exists throughout the world, but everywhere there is a heart beating and a mind capable of thought. Man everywhere is unconsciously seeking a way to free himself from his narrowness, his pettiness. The end of this search is freedom and eternal happiness. He experiments along many paths, and every path leads to complications. From life to life he wanders, from shrine to shrine, from one creed to another - gathering experience, accepting, rejecting, and again accepting - thus he goes forward towards that goal which awaits him as it awaits all men.

In the process of the accumulation and rejection, he does not know which way to turn for comfort, and when he seeks comfort through any particular channel he is enmeshed and entangled. Because there are many interpreters of the Truth, because there are many conflicting paths, beliefs and religions, man is lost in their complexities. As a butterfly that knows against the window pane, struggling to escape into the fresh air and the open sky, so do men struggle when they have not caught a glimpse of the goal - but it is not hard to establish. It is because they are in darkness that the goal seems far away.

charpotg.jpg (15036 bytes) As the potter moulds the clay to the delight of his imagination, so can man mould his life through the desire of his heart. As the earthen vessels are fashioned into beautiful or ugly forms, so life can be made beautiful or ugly according to the purpose which you have established for yourself.

I would help you to that goal which you are seeking, which you desire to attain - the goal which awaits all the peoples of the world, whatever their experiences, thoughts or feelings. Then you will be able to guide yourself through the darkness of of the world as a man guides himself of a dark night by the starts.

If you once establish such a goal - which is happiness and hence freedom - life becomes simple. There is no longer confusion and time and the complications of time disappear. It is because you have not established your goal that the present is as the mountain when the sun has set - the light fails and the darkness of the mountain overshadows the valley. Time is only a binder of life and the moment you are free you are beyond time.

Then you can guide yourself without depending upon any authority. Then you will no longer have fear. Then for you there will be no conflict of good and evil. When you have set life free you will find happiness, which is the only goal, the only absolute Truth.