Page 142 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

your husband, or a child, or a wife, or a neighbour,
so that the mind becomes sharp, clear, dealing only
with facts and not with emotional opinions and
prejudices - then perhaps we can come to under-
stand the very complex problems that life hides.
Paris, 1965, Talk#1,
Collected Works Vol XV, p. 155

You know, a boy at school, in class, wants to look
out of the window. A bird is flying by, there is a
lovely flower on the tree, or someone goes by. His
attention is taken away from the book, and the
teacher tells him to look at the book, to concen-
trate on the book. That is how most of our life is.
We want to look, but society, economy, religious
doctrines force us to conform; and therefore we
lose all spontaneity, all freshness. So, the discipline
of learning is something entirely different from
the discipline of acquiring knowledge. You need to
have a certain discipline when you are acquiring
technological knowledge or any other knowledge.
You have to pay attention, give your mind to some-
thing particular, to specialize in a subject; and that
entails a certain discipline of conformity, of sup-
pression, and all the things that are happening in
the world through discipline. Now, the discipline
which we are talking about, has nothing whatso-
ever to do with the discipline of conformity to a pat-
tern…We are learning, and that learning is never
conformity to a pattern—how can it be? Whether
the pattern has been laid down by the Buddha, by
Christ, by Sankara, or by your own pet guru, learn-
ing has nothing whatever to do with it. Because in