Friday 26 August 2011

The accidental and the fundamental

This summer we were reading Krishnamurti´s book "Education and the significance of life". In chapter 1 there was a paragraph that we did not pay much attention to, but has been resonating in my head since:

"We must distinguish between the personal and the individual. The personal is the accidental; and by the accidental I mean the circumstances of birth, the environment in which we happen to have been brought up, with its nationalism, superstitions, class distinctions and prejudices. The personal or accidental is but momentary, though that moment may last a lifetime; and as the present system of education is based on the personal, the accidental, the momentary, it leads to perversion of thought and the inculcation of self-defensive fears. "

This reference to the personal (accidental) and the individual was only mentioned in this paragraph, and not later in the text.

This prompted me to look at myself an others, and I think there are things in our lives which are accidental and there is something else which is fundamental.

The accidental being where we have been born, in what town or country or what family, how we have been conditioned, what desires we have, what people have we met, what we have studied or learned, and a long etcetera. Maybe we can even include what we think and feel.

And that we tend to have a life centered in this accidental realm. this is the realm in which we normally move....

And what is, then, the fundamental?