Notes on UG Krishnamurti

UG Krishnamurti was a great thinker. Not to be confused with his famous contemporary, Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK). If you follow one, you’ll certainly find the other. Many things are common between them. Both were associated with Theosophical Society, but later their views changed. Not only both disassociated with the Theosophical Society, but broke relationship with each other. UG claimed that though JK preached ‘no isms’, ‘no groups’, ‘no gurus’, he (JK) got tangled in his own teachings and developed a certain followership.

UG spent considerable time searching for enlightenment. Or to find out if it is possible for a common man to get enlightened? His eventual conclusion: There is no enlightenment. Because of this statement, certain people do think UG is enlightened! (One gets enlightened only when one is not looking for it!)

It seems that UG went to Ramana Maharshi, and asked the famous teacher: “This thing called moksha (enlightenment), can you give it to me?”

Ramana Maharshi replied with a counter question: “I can give it, but can you take it?”

This answer irked UG to such an extent, he stayed away from all gurus or people who claimed to be enlightened, then onwards.

Many thinkers (JK, Ekhart Tolle) disagree with Descartes (Father of modern Philosophy), who identified Mind with ‘I’ in his famous axiom: “I think therefore I am”. UG goes little ahead by his own question to Descartes: “What If I don’t think, do I exist therefore?”

Below is a video of talks between Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove and UG.

Freedom from the Known [J Krishnamurti simplified]

Mind is a recording machine. It records everything: good and bad experiences.

This collection becomes “me”.

When I encounter a new challenge, I face it with the collection of my past experiences.

The challenge is new. But my solution is old.

When you let-go the past experiences, every challenge is faced without the burden of past. Your mind becomes sensitive. You face everything with a new curiosity, like a child.

GOD [J Krishnamurti simplified]

Our mind cannot seek the unknown.

When you seek something, you already have an idea of the thing you are searhing. For e.g. if you are searching a lost wallet, you already know what you are looking for——the color of the wallet, texture etc. So, when you find the wallet under the dining table, you recognize it immediately.

Can you search a thing that you haven’t seen before?

Let’s say you are looking for Pseduert. You don’t know what it is. How would you recognize Pseduert when you find it? It is not possible. Because you haven’t seen it before. Similarly, human mind cannot find God. It’s a futile search.

We learn about God from Parents, religious leaders, and holy books. Krishnamurti asks, What if they are wrong?

Reference:

On God by J.Krishnamurti.

Notes on Dostoevsky

For long I thought Dostoyevsky was a philosopher; this could be because of the kind of books he wrote. He wasn’t a philosopher, not like Socrates or Kant.  Although, he did influence many philosophers, writers, and thinkers: Freud, Kafka, and Nietzsche for example. Nietzsche was so impressed he claimed that Dostoevsky was the only writer from whom he had learned anything new.

Philosopher or not, Dostoevsky is the only writer who came very close to understand the mysteries of human behavior.

Early in in his writing career, he was imprisoned for his association with a socialist group; He was charged for reading banned literature, and was to be executed with a firing squad; however, at the last moment, the tsar pardoned him and the sentence was converted to a 4 year hard labor in the prison.

This near-death experience made a profound experience on him. In the prison he was not allowed to read any books, except the New Testament.

Themes

Four years of bible study made him a strong believer. Christ became a role model. So much so that, he once said, if he had to choose between ‘Christ’ and ‘Truth’, he would opt for the former. He also created a Christ-like character, Prince Myshkin,  for his book The Idiot. Prince Myshkin is probably the noblest character created in the history of literature. Though a noble person, he was unfit to live in the contemporary society--hence an Idiot. Like Christ, even Prince Myshkin fails in his efforts to save his friends.

Christ like themes appear in Other books as well. In The Brothers Karamazov, there is a parable of Christ's second coming. As soon as the Christ comes second time, he’s imprisoned by a ninety year old man, who asks a lot of questions, but Christ chooses to remain silent. In the end, Christ is released, on condition that he won’t come back again.

(In a similar situation Howard Roark [Fountainhead, Ayn Rand] chooses to remain silent, when questioned by the authorities.)

Dostoyevsky, although a staunch follower of Christ, didn’t like church's interference in politics and other mundane activities. According to him, religion had no business than that of the soul.

Over the period, he got addicted to gambling, and often found short of funds. As a result he had to work on multiple books in parallel. (Unlike Tolstoy, who was quite wealthy, and had the luxury of revising War and Peace a few times over the years.)

Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy as well. The seizures occurred frequently and severely affected his health. However, once he said that these seizures, though painful, served as  epiphany and enlightened him.

Books

Though a strong believer, his books often challenged the religious beliefs. In Crime and Punishment, he asks: Is any person morally superior (Raskolnikov) to kill a fellow human being? Even when the victim (the pawnbroker) is harming the society. And, then the greater question: Is such a crime pardonable?

In The Idiot, we find even the noblest person (Prince Myshkin) is unable to save his friends, inspite of all his goodness.

In The Brothers Karamazov, a small time character questions: whether faith can really move mountains? Yes, says bible, maybe it was a metaphoric statement. Nevertheless Dostoyevsky’s character challenges the reader.

Contribution

Of other things, Dostoevsky is the first writer to employ First Person Point-of-View in writing (Crime and Punishment), which is the favorite writing style of contemporary writers. (Tolstoy employed Omniscient Third Person Point-of-View for War and Peace, which is not a popular choice these days. )

Criticism

Nabokov (Lolita), criticized that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t grow. They are fully developed at the beginning of the story itself and don’t change over the period.

And, some have criticized his characters talk a lot of philosophy unlike people in real life.

Also, Dostoyevsky’s solution for human problems is salvation through suffering. Many are not convinced by this solution.

Translations

Some of the initial Russian books were translated by Constance Garnett. She neither had Tolstoy’s sense of beauty nor the depth of Dostoevsky.

Nabokov, famously criticised that the english speaking world is neither reading Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky, but they are just reading Constance Garnett!

Luckily the translations by the husband and wife Duo, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, are the best available in the market. Anyone interested in Reading russian literature in English should first look for a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, with the exception of Gogol. The couple somehow failed to capture Gogol’s humor.

Contemporary writing

In current times, if someone writes like Dostoyevsky, he probably won’t find a publisher. Such writing is no more in vogue.

A new writer, trying to learn the craft, may not find much in Dostoyevsky. Novice writers should go elsewhere.

Among the readers, there’s always a debate on who’s the greatest writer: Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky. Both are great writers, uncomparable. And, yet, I am a bit biased to Dostoyevsky knowing his background and the circumstances in which he wrote his books.

War and Peace is all about Beauty. Tolstoy is a gifted writer. No other writer has written a better picturesque prose than Tolstoy. But what he lacks is the depth of Dostoevsky. Every time you read Dostoyevsky you understand him at a different level. You notice things that you didn’t in the earlier reading, which is not true for Tolstoy, and that makes Dostoevsky a better writer.

My favorite opening lines

One of the challenges in writing these days is to grab readers attention in the initial sentences——as early as possible. If you can’t capture their attention in the first few lines, they’ll leave you.

In this article, I have listed some of my favorite opening lines——in descending order; so if you want to check my top opening line, plunge right down to the bottom.

I have omitted some of the biggies. So No, ‘Call me Ishmael’; as much I want to include it, I somehow, didn’t connect to it. In the future, I might add new ones, or drop the existing ones. But right now these are my favorites.

Here they go…

This one is from one of the initial books written in the history of literature. Cervantes is very casual and confident.

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605)

Shocking!

Mother died today.
—Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)

Though Papa Hemingway is not my favorite author, this below line makes it to the list. I have made several tries at cracking his books, no success yet.

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

—Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

For long, Proust was top on my list. But, sadly, I have to push him to the third position. Reading, In Search Of Lost Time is in my every year’s pending resolution list. And, often, it’s the only pending item. I hope to read this Elephant one day.

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book…

-Marcel Proust,In Search Of Lost Time (1913)

If you haven’t read One Hundred years of Solitude, I highly recommend it. It’s written very beautifully.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

—Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

And, here it is my top favorite.

When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. 

― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985)