Question: Some of my friends have remarked that, although they find your sayings intensely interesting, they prefer service rather than too much thinking about questions of truth. What are your observations on this point?

J Krishnamurti: Sir, what do you mean by service? Everybody wants to help. That is the cry of those people who think they are serving the world. They are always talking about helping the world, especially those people who belong to sects. It is their particular form of disease, because they think that by doing something, it does not matter what, they are going to help, by serving people they will help. Who is to say what is service? A man that belongs to the army, prepared to kill the barbarian that enters his country, says he is serving the country. The man that kills, the butcher, says he is serving the community. The exploiter who has the means of production in his hands, monopolized, says he is serving the community. The man who exploits beliefs, the priest, says he is serving the country, community. Who is to decide? Or shall we look at it quite differently? Do you think a flower, a rose, is ever considering that it is serving humanity, that it is helping the world by its existence because it is beautiful? On the contrary, because it is beautiful, supremely lovely, unconscious of its own magnificence, it is truly helping. Not like a man who goes about shouting that he is serving the world. That is, each one wants to use his means, or his ideas, to exploit the world, not to set the world free. Personally, if you will not misunderstand me, that is not my point of view at all. I do not want to help the world, as you would call it. I cannot help, it naturally happens. That is service. I do not desire to make others come to my particular form of belief or ask them to come into my particular cage of thought, because I hold that to have a belief is a limitation. To really serve, one must be supremely free from the limited consciousness we call the “I”, the ego, self-centred consciousness; and so long as that exists, you are not really serving the world. Unless you really think, you cannot find out if you are truly helping the world. So let us not first consider whether we are helping the world, but rather find out if we have the capacity to think and to feel. To really think, mind must not be tethered to a belief. That is very simple is it not? To think really profoundly, frankly, completely, your mind cannot be held by prejudice or a certain belief, or by fear, or by preconceived ideas. To think, the mind must start anew, afresh, and not with a background of tradition. After all, tradition is only valuable when it helps you to think, not when it overpowers you by its weight. Let me put this thing differently. We all want to help. When you see suffering in the world there is an intense desire to help; but to truly help people you have to go to the fundamental cause of things. You have to discover the cause of suffering, and you can only do that if there is profound thinking. And this thinking is not mere intellectual delight, but it can only take place, this thinking, in action.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND 1ST TALK IN VASANTA SCHOOL GARDENS 30TH MARCH, 1934
J Krishnamurity [read more]

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