Think on these things...

Can we live creatively, happily, in this modern world, without ambition and competition?

Don’t you want to find out if it is possible to live in this world richly, fully, happily, creatively, without the destructive drive of ambition, without competition? Don’t you want to know how to live so that your life will not destroy another or cast a shadow across his path? You see, we think this is a utopian dream which can never be brought about in fact; but I’m not talking about utopia; that would be nonsense. Can you and I, who are simple, ordinary people, live creatively in this world without the drive of ambition which shows itself in various ways as the desire for power, position? You will find the right answer when you love what you are doing. If you are an engineer merely because you must earn a livelihood or because your father or society expects it of you, that’s another form of compulsion; compulsion in any form creates a contradiction, conflict. Whereas if you really love to be an engineer, or a scientist, or if you can plant a tree, or paint a picture, or write a poem, not to gain recognition but just because you love to do it, then you will find that you never compete with another. I think this is the real key: to love what you do.

J. Krishnamurti – What are you doing with your Life?

The ambitious man is never really a creative man, is never a happy man

Ambition is really a form of power, the desire for power over myself and over others, the power to do something better than anybody else. In ambition, there is a sense of comparison; and therefore, the ambitious man is never really a creative man, is never a happy man; in himself he is discontented. And yet, we think that without ambition we should be nothing, we should have no progress. Is there a different way of doing things without ambition, a different way of living, acting, building, inventing, without this struggle of competition in which there is cruelty and which ultimately ends in war? I think there is a different way. But that way requires doing something contrary to all the established customs of thought. When we are seeking a result, the important thing is the result, not the thing we do, in itself. Can we understand and love the thing which we are doing, without caring for what it will produce, what it will get us, or what name or what reputation we will have?

J. Krishnamurti – Reflections on the Self

All our so-called progress is based on ambition

We have heard people say that, without ambition, we cannot do anything. In our schools, in our social life, in our relationship with each other, in anything we do in life, we feel that ambition is necessary to achieve a certain end, either personal or collective or social, or for the nation. You know what that word ‘ambition’ means? To achieve an end, to have the drive, the personal drive, the feeling that without struggling, without competing, without pushing you cannot get anything done in this world. Please watch yourself and those about you, and you will see how ambitious people are. A clerk wants to become the manager, the manager wants to become the boss, the minister wants to be the prime minister, the lieutenant wants to become the general. So each one has his ambition. We also encourage this feeling in schools. We encourage students to compete, to be better than somebody else. All our so-called progress is based on ambition. If you draw, you must draw much better than anybody else; if you make an image, it must be better than that made by anybody else; there is this constant struggle. What happens in this process is that you become very cruel. Because you want to achieve an end, you become cruel, ruthless, thoughtless, in your group, in your class, in your nation.

J. Krishnamurti – Reflections on the Self

Can we find out what we really love to do?

Success is an invention of a society which is greedy, which is acquisitive. Can we, each one of us, as we are growing, find out what we really love to do - whether it is mending a shoe, becoming a cobbler or building a bridge, or being a capable and efficient administrator? Can we have the love of the thing in itself without caring for what it will give us, or what it will do in the world? If we can understand that spirit, that feeling, then, I think, action will not create misery as it does at the present time; then we shall not be in conflict with one another. But it is very difficult to find out what you really love to do, because you have so many contradictory urges. When you see an engine going very fast, you want to be an engine driver. When you are young, there is an extraordinary beauty in the engine. I do not know if you have watched it. But, later on, that stage passes and you want to become an orator, a speaker, a writer, or an engineer, and that too passes. Gradually, because of our rotten education, you are forced into a particular channel, into a particular groove. So you become a clerk or a lawyer or a mischief-monger; and in that job, you live, you compete; you are ambitious, you struggle.

J. Krishnamurti – Reflections on the Self

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