Moving with K

The author, Dr Shubhobrata Mullick, is a practising dentist. He writes about his journey of discovery with J Krishnamurti (K) since 2021. His interests include reading anything in English and Bengali, as long as it all makes good sense. He is also a student of Hindustani classical music and follows good filmmaking.

‘Let’s go into this question. Let’s go into it together.’

K usually begins with this. It is always a journey together. He may have left the world, but every single day, quite a number of people still undertake this journey. A glimpse into the comments section on the YouTube channel reaffirms this fact. The questions are numerous. The subjects are fundamental. Conflict, greed, desire, love, sex, money etc- There is not a single space untouched by K.

How does K affect me as a whole?

In order to write about this, I must go back in time to the period where I was introduced to K. A former teacher of mine had casually mentioned about him to me. He had cautioned not to go into K without some preparation first. Not being the one to conform, I chanced upon K one day through the wikipedia page. I got curious and went to the Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) website and other websites run by the Krishnamurti Foundation all over the world. What I experienced shook me.

It was a talk about observation. Here, I was to hear the words “the observer”, “the observed”, ‘space’, which has since become a part of daily living. At first, I did have a difficult time in understanding. But I held on to it and slowly the sweet truth began to unravel. I found out about ‘Freedom from the Known’ and started to savour it. I was spellbound by the man, his clarity, his logic (the rarest, one of a kind) and his messages. Every page unfurled a new wonder. And then it began.

I watched one video after the other and thus began a relentless pursuit, a journey. Here was a man, who was ready to discuss all the tough questions and then let us seek out the truth for ourselves. A contrarian, non conformist, absolutely skeptical and dismissive of any kind of authority, a chaste speaker of the absolute truth, K has set me on a path to set myself free.

K has helped me cut through the chaos by simply looking at it. He urges us not to blindly act, but to look at the problem, stay with it, spend some time with.

Life, as most of us are taught to see, becomes a simple chain of cause and effect, when in reality, things are quite nuanced. Our childhood, parenting, culture, education (so called) – everything makes us conform- to a dogma, a structure. We feel scared once that structure is lost. That takes place whenever we have to face an issue as basic as grief or hurt. But is there any structure or is it a malaise produced by our society?

K always talks about our society and how we are responsible for it as he points out quite logically and rightfully. Society, environment, and the whole movement- every single one of us is responsible for whatever that goes on. Will we take the responsibility?

Well I have taken it quite seriously. Will you?