THIS MATTER OF CULTURE CHAPTER 26 part4 Krishnamurti: Do you think that his fellow beings are full of confidence?

They m ay strut about, they may put on airs, but you will find that behind the show of confidence most people are empty, dull, mediocre, they have no real confidence a t all. And why do we want to be loved? Don't you want to be loved by your parent s, by your teachers, by your friends? And, if you are a grown-up, you want to be loved by your wife, by your husband, by your children - or by your guru. Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved? Listen carefully. You want to be lo ved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dea d thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can n ever be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways. Questioner: Why do grown-up people steal? Krishnamurti: Don't you sometimes steal? Haven't you known of a little boy stealing something he wants from another boy? It is exactly the same throughout life, whether we are young or old, only the older people do it more cunningly, w ith a lot of fine-sounding words; they want wealth, power, position, and they co nnive, contrive, philosophize to get it. They steal, but it is not called steali ng, it is called by some respectable word. And why do we steal? First of all, be cause, as society is now constituted, it deprives many people of the necessities of life; certain sections of the populace have insufficient food, clothing and shelter, therefore they do something about it. There are also those who steal, n ot because they have insufficient food, but because they are what is called anti social. For them stealing has become a game, a form of excitement - which means that they have had no real education. Real education is understanding the signif icance of life, not just cramming to pass examinations. There is also stealing a t a higher level the stealing of other people's ideas, the stealing of knowledge . When we are after the `more' in any form, we are obviously stealing. Why is it that we are always asking, begging, wanting, stealing? Because in ourselves there is nothing; inwardly, psychologically we are like an empty drum . Being empty, we try to fill ourselves not only by stealing things, but by imit ating others. Imitation is a form of stealing: you are nothing but he is somebod y, so you are going to get some of his glory by copying him. This corruption run s right through human life, and very few are free of it. So what is important is to find out whether the inward emptiness can ever be filled. As long as the min d is seeking to fill itself it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.