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Are you wasting your life? - J Krishnamurti

Excerpt from a talk given by Krishnamurti at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, in 1984, published in the new book, Why are you being educated?: Talks at Indian Universities.

We are problem-solving machines, aren’t we? We have been trained from childhood to learn mathematics, history, physics, and so on. All that becomes a problem at school, in college, and university. So we become problem-solving machines and thus make life into a vast, dreadful problem. There is great misery, poverty, brutality in this country. When you drive down Bombay you see all those huts, tents, where human beings live. You want to cry when you see all that, and nobody cares. You listen to all this, but it makes very little dent on you. Governments don’t care, individuals don’t care, because they are concerned only with themselves, with their knowledge, with their power, with their money. And students throughout the world are being trained to seek a vocation of imitation: To pass examinations, get a degree, and get a job either in this country or in America. As I was informed this afternoon, thirty per cent of you probably go to America, where you make a lot of money. That is where all your knowledge is leading you to. And we are asking: If you are at all serious, what is your response to all this? Either you withdraw from it all, join some ashram or some gurus who are making tons of money. Or you enter into the world and get caught in it. Or you live a life of your own.

So what is the purpose, the meaning, of your existence? Please, the speaker is asking this in all humility. Is life’s purpose merely to earn money, to be married, have a house, power, position? Is that the purpose of your life? Apparently it is. That is what you are all being trained for, that is what you want. And if you are dissatisfied with that, then you invent a purpose: To find God or some kind of illumination. If that too doesn’t satisfy you, you take to drugs and drink and all the rest of the vast amusement. One wonders if you realize what the entertainment industry is doing to you. Then there is the religious entertainment of going to temples, doing puja, and all that goes on in a temple or a church or a mosque. Please don’t get annoyed, I am just pointing this out. So, if one may ask, are you wasting your life?—life which is so complex, life which has no readymade answers. Life is vast and therefore is something most extraordinarily sacred. And what do we do with it? You have to answer this question, whether you are old or young.

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