Aug 19, 2009, 12.00am IST.
All our life is based on choice. We choose at different levels of our existence, between white and blue, between one flower and another flower, between certain psychological impulses of like and dislike, between certain ideas, beliefs, accepting some and discarding others. So our mental structure is based on this process of choice, this continuous effort of choosing, distinguishing, discarding, accepting, rejecting. And in that process, there is constant struggle, constant effort. There is never a direct comprehension, but always the tedious process of accumulation, of the capacity to distinguish, which is really based on memory, on the accumulation of knowledge and, therefore, there is this constant effort made through choice.
Now, is not choice ambition? Our life is ambition. We want to be somebody, we want to be well thought of, want to achieve a result. If i am not wise, i want to become wise. If i am violent, i want to become non-violent. The "becoming" is the process of ambition. Whether i want to become the biggest politician or the most perfect saint, the ambition, the drive, the impulse of becoming is the process of choice, is the process of ambition, which is essentially based on choice.
So, our life is a series of struggles, a movement from one ideological concept, formula, desire, to another, and in this process of becoming, in this process of struggle, the mind deteriorates. The very nature of this deterioration is choice, and we think choice is necessary, choice from which springs ambition.
Now, can we find a way of life that is not based on ambition which is not of choice, which is a flowering in which the result is not sought? All that we know of life is a series of struggles ending in result; and those results are being discarded for greater results. That is all we know.
In the case of the man who sits alone in a cave, in the very process of making himself perfect there is choice, and that choice is ambition... We are not trying to find out whether ambition is right or wrong, whether it is essential to life, but whether it is conducive to a life of simplicity. I do not mean the simplicity of a few clothes; that is not a simple life. The putting on of a loincloth does not indicate that a man is simple; on the contrary, it may be that by the renunciation of the outer things, the mind becomes more ambitious, for it tries to hold on to its own ideal, which it has projected and which it has created. So if we observe our own ways of thinking, should we not inquire into this question of ambition? What do we mean by it, and is it possible to live without ambition? We see that ambition breeds competition ^ whether in children, or among the big politicians, all the way up. This ambition produces certain industrial benefits, but in its wake, obviously there is the darkening of the mind, the technological conditioning, so that the mind loses its pliability, its simplicity and, therefore, is incapable of directly experiencing. Should we not inquire, not as a group but as individuals, should we not find out what this ambition means, whether we are at all aware of this ambition in our life?
...The becoming mind is a mind that is always growing, becoming, enlarging, gathering experience as knowledge.
Talk: Jiddu Krishnamurti
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