A Tribute to J. Krishnamurti
The following is an inspirational speech written and performed by C. Nicholas Walker for his Public Speaking class, commemorating spiritual philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, RARE individuals have broken with tradition. Socrates, Einstein, Martin Luther, the great revolutionary Jesus Christ, Freud, the Buddha; they had the courage and insight to see themselves and the world around them in a completely new way, and what they saw changed the world forever. Jiddu Krishnamurti was one such man. With his love and passion for human truth and wisdom, and with his deep, compassionate enthusiasm for human life and wellbeing, Jiddu Krishnamurti touched millions of lives in his many years on this earth and left a legacy of wisdom and knowledge in his wake that should never be forgotten; and showed us that anyone who believes hard enough in an idea can change the world.
As Einstein was to Newton, so Krishnamurti was to spirituality. He was born in the spring of 1895 in southern India to a family of poverty stricken Brahmins. At the age of fourteen he was called a prophetic World Leader, a role which he modestly disavowed. Even in his youth, he stepped among the filthy waters knowing they were the waters of truth and stretched out a loving hand to those who would hate and ridicule him. Even in this early time of burden, Krishnamurti showed his innately spiritual strength and wisdom, and offered a smile to the monster that would frighten him.
His teachings cannot be placed into any one category, nor he with any one title. He spoke of truth as a pathless land. He spoke of looking within oneself for the power to change the world.
I quote him now, “We’ve got the capacity, the energy, the selfish intentions to go into ourselves, look at ourselves, face ourselves, never escaping from ourselves. We’ve got all the energy to do that. Think what energy’s needed to go to the moon, do you understand, sir? Enormous, cooperative energy. Drive. But apparently, when it comes to us, we kind of become slack. Nobody’s going to give it, that one absolute fact; irrefutable fact. And we have had leaders, we have had teachers, we have had saviors, we have had every kind of outside agency, and the misfortune is that because we don’t know ourselves we are destroying other human beings. We are destroying this marvelous earth.”
For most of the twentieth century millions of people from all over the world were drawn to his vision. The Dali Lama, Aldous Huxley, Eric Clapton, Hurricane Carter, Greta Garbo, Deepak Chopra, Van Morrison, Helen Keller, Charlie Chaplin, Jonas Salk, George Bernard Shaw, mothers, students, farm workers, poets, scientists and heads of state; he spoke to each of them directly of the most fundamental issues facing humanity.
His seventy-five books have been translated into over thirty-three languages, and challenged humanity to discover a new way of living. In 1984, Krishna gave a speech at the United Nations where he was awarded the UN Peace Medal. He had traveled the globe, even fallen back into what seemed to be a childish form, where there is innocence and forgetting, a new-beginning, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement and a sacred “Yes” where before there was only a resounding “No”. He spoke even to his last days, when he died in 1986—the year before my own birth—at the age of ninety-one years.
I pretend that the reason for this speech is to tell the story of a great thinker, but it is not. The reason I stand here before you now is to say that you too, every single one of you, has the power to change the world; by becoming more than just a person. By belonging to and becoming an idea. Too often man wishes to find truth as a point, in a moment, or see it as a particular goal which is to be achieved. He wishes to discover truth in its most primal state; a pulse on the horizon, a tangible thing with texture and touch and all the powerful thoughts and feelings that fill this world. It pours into every soul on earth. It melts over all of our hearts and it gives us a sight, a vision that no other creature possesses. A vision into our own future. A foresight that can change the world.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, RARE individuals have broken with tradition. Socrates, Einstein, Martin Luther, the great revolutionary Jesus Christ, Freud, the Buddha; they had the courage and insight to see themselves and the world around them in a completely new way, and what they saw changed the world forever. Jiddu Krishnamurti was one such man. With his love and passion for human truth and wisdom, and with his deep, compassionate enthusiasm for human life and wellbeing, Jiddu Krishnamurti touched millions of lives in his many years on this earth and left a legacy of wisdom and knowledge in his wake that should never be forgotten; and showed us that anyone who believes hard enough in an idea can change the world.
As Einstein was to Newton, so Krishnamurti was to spirituality. He was born in the spring of 1895 in southern India to a family of poverty stricken Brahmins. At the age of fourteen he was called a prophetic World Leader, a role which he modestly disavowed. Even in his youth, he stepped among the filthy waters knowing they were the waters of truth and stretched out a loving hand to those who would hate and ridicule him. Even in this early time of burden, Krishnamurti showed his innately spiritual strength and wisdom, and offered a smile to the monster that would frighten him.
His teachings cannot be placed into any one category, nor he with any one title. He spoke of truth as a pathless land. He spoke of looking within oneself for the power to change the world.
I quote him now, “We’ve got the capacity, the energy, the selfish intentions to go into ourselves, look at ourselves, face ourselves, never escaping from ourselves. We’ve got all the energy to do that. Think what energy’s needed to go to the moon, do you understand, sir? Enormous, cooperative energy. Drive. But apparently, when it comes to us, we kind of become slack. Nobody’s going to give it, that one absolute fact; irrefutable fact. And we have had leaders, we have had teachers, we have had saviors, we have had every kind of outside agency, and the misfortune is that because we don’t know ourselves we are destroying other human beings. We are destroying this marvelous earth.”
For most of the twentieth century millions of people from all over the world were drawn to his vision. The Dali Lama, Aldous Huxley, Eric Clapton, Hurricane Carter, Greta Garbo, Deepak Chopra, Van Morrison, Helen Keller, Charlie Chaplin, Jonas Salk, George Bernard Shaw, mothers, students, farm workers, poets, scientists and heads of state; he spoke to each of them directly of the most fundamental issues facing humanity.
His seventy-five books have been translated into over thirty-three languages, and challenged humanity to discover a new way of living. In 1984, Krishna gave a speech at the United Nations where he was awarded the UN Peace Medal. He had traveled the globe, even fallen back into what seemed to be a childish form, where there is innocence and forgetting, a new-beginning, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement and a sacred “Yes” where before there was only a resounding “No”. He spoke even to his last days, when he died in 1986—the year before my own birth—at the age of ninety-one years.
I pretend that the reason for this speech is to tell the story of a great thinker, but it is not. The reason I stand here before you now is to say that you too, every single one of you, has the power to change the world; by becoming more than just a person. By belonging to and becoming an idea. Too often man wishes to find truth as a point, in a moment, or see it as a particular goal which is to be achieved. He wishes to discover truth in its most primal state; a pulse on the horizon, a tangible thing with texture and touch and all the powerful thoughts and feelings that fill this world. It pours into every soul on earth. It melts over all of our hearts and it gives us a sight, a vision that no other creature possesses. A vision into our own future. A foresight that can change the world.
