Page 209 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

ne of the last things Krishnamurti said was, “Keep the
teachings clean and look after the land,” a statement
as remarkable for what it leaves out as it is for the two
Othings he mentions expressly. No mention, for instance,
of education or of that broad field he cultivated so carefully, and
of which he stated so succinctly, You are the World, The Observer
is the Observed—the scattered field of consciousness. ‘Keep the
teachings clean and look after the land.’ The implications are enor-
mous.
The word dharma is derived from the phoneme dhr, meaning
to hold, to maintain, to keep. It signifies, in Hinduism, behaviours
considered to be in accord with Rta, the order that makes life and
the universe possible. It includes rights, duties, laws, conduct, vir-
tue and the ‘right way of living’. In Buddhism, it means cosmic law
and order and is handsomely incorporated in the Noble Eightfold
Path with such principles as Right Livelihood, Right Action, Right
Attitude—eventually, I believe, Right Meditation.
What strikes one, as one ponders this, is the preponderance, the
presence, of the word right and its link to the order of the universe.
Without this ‘rightness’ there will be chaos and collapse, and we
humans are the means by which it holds together. In other words,
there is not only a physical/material order, there is a moral order
governing the universe. In our drenched-in-materialism modern
world it may be difficult to countenance this, even as a possibil-
ity, but ‘keep the teachings clean’ is an obvious point of reference.
Nothing stays clean by itself—we have to tend our garden, even
brush our teeth—so an application to the task is implied, an appli-
cation moreover that betokens understanding. We need to “keep
moving”, as K would say.
According to traditional thought, svadharma is ‘that action
which is in harmony with your true nature’ (svabhava); it is ‘in

*For G Narayan, deceased, and for Raman Patel

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