Page 51 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

My Association with Krishnamurti

which we belong. Among the Theravadins, the dialogues with the
venerable Walpola Rahula of Sri Lanka—he was a great scholar of
Pali and Buddhism—are recorded. You can see even today that he
used to relate K with the Pali canon. As soon as K concluded his
sentence Walpola Rahula used to laugh and say, “Yes, the Buddha
has said the same things 2,500 years ago”, and then he would quote
extensively from the Pali canon. So that is one kind of dialogue.
With us, of the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition, we would not quote
from the Buddhist canon, nor try to compare the Buddha’s teach-
ings with K’s teachings. For us they go parallel. For us, K’s words
give a different kind of understanding about Buddha’s teaching,
and in the same way, Buddhist philosophy is very useful and help-
ful for understanding K more easily or more in depth. We try not
to compare, particularly myself and Jagannath Upadhyay. We
belonged to that group which is against the system of comparative
study in religious and philosophical subjects. Comparative study is
feasible or appropriate in the social sciences or material sciences.
In the sphere of philosophy and religion or spiritual things, no
one can make comparisons. Comparison means putting them into
‘positions’, and trying to find the similarities or dissimilarities. And
similarity and dissimilarity both are in the sphere of duality. To
multiply duality will not help in the understanding of reality or
truth. So, we try to understand both in parallel, side by side . . .
how to understand the Buddha’s words and how to understand K’s
words.
Of course there are many things similar; but we cannot label
them as the same. The Buddha’s words are Buddha’s words, and K’s
words are K’s words. Apart from that, K speaks in modern English
language and Buddha spoke in ancient Indian languages. So, the
nature of language is different, and therefore to draw comparisons
will not help in understanding. But what kind of negation the Bud-
dha is making, and what kind of negation K is making, both work

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