Critique of U.G. Krishnamurti
sulochanosho
by David Quinn
U.G. Krishnamurti is certainly an interesting man. On the surface, his
teachings appear to be genuinely Zennish. He powerfully attacks much
of what humanity believes and cherishes, and is extremely critical of
religious teachers, whom he calls frauds. He endeavours to undermine
all the imagined "certainties" of his listeners and tries to keep them
continually off-balance by contradicting everything that has ever been
said before, including his very own statements. In so doing, his
listeners are given no handles by which to form easy conclusions and
are therefore forced to do some active thinking for themselves.
All this is very admirable. But the problem I have with UG is that he
doesn't go anywhere near far enough. While his words are sometimes
pretty good, his actions and his lifestyle are a different matter
altogether. They provide too much nourishment for his deluded
followers and nullify all the good that may come from his words.
Undermining realities for the sake of wisdom is completely different
to undermining realities just for the sheer sake of it. In other
words, being truly Zennish is infinitely removed from being merely
contradictory. That UG's actions undermine his verbal teaching is not
something to be celebrated. It is not an expression of his wisdom, but
of his ego. At bottom, UG is a coward, and his cowardice literally
destroys everything he says. Instead of promoting wisdom, UG is
promoting delusions and lies.
I define wisdom as being the absence of all delusions. A wise man,
then, is one who has banished all false thinking from his mind. This
is also UG's stated goal. He advocates the "natural" state which comes
from eliminating all false concepts, like "enlightenment",
"spirituality", "God", "self", and so on. On this, I agree with him
entirely.
But unfortunately, UG does not live in the "natural" state, as he
often likes to claim. To my eyes, he is merely an actor, albeit a very
ingenious one. He conforms to a role, that of the anti-guru, and as
such is no different to any of the other thousands of run-of-the-mill
gurus which litter this sorry planet. And just like all these other
gurus, his role-playing only serves to strengthen the delusions of his
listeners. His words might be full of fire and brimstone, but deep
down everyone knows he is just a harmless puppy.
His lifestyle is far too concrete for my liking. He has literally
cemented himself into the role of the anti-guru. He does this by
wearing guru-like clothes, having guru-like hair, being rude to
people, abusing his listeners, and treating everyone as if they were
infinitely below him. Whenever he opens his mouth he seems to be
addressing empty space. In other words, he directs his words into a
vacuum, rather than attending closely to the questioner before him.
Because he takes little account of the wisdom or character of the
person who talks to him, his teachings lack discrimination. The person
could well be a genuine human being asking a perfectly valid question,
but more often than not UG just abuses him.
I certainly don't like the way UG speaks against every single wise man
who has ever lived, as if he were the only person in history who has
discovered the Truth! This is a very misleading and harmful habit of
his. It only bolsters the personality cult which surrounds him and
obscures the timeless wisdom which has been known for thousands of
years.
Look at some sayings of wise people from the past:
"I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled
enlightenment." - Buddha.
"In truth there is no unalterable Dharma which the Tathagata
could have preached. Methods and techniques cannot
be compared to the sudden elimination of conceptual thought,
in the certain knowledge that there is nothing at all which
has absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold, nothing
on which to rely, nothing in which to abide, nothing
subjective or objective." - Huang Po.
"True nature is no-nature." - Hakuin.
"The Kingdom of God is only for the thoroughly dead."
- Meister Eckhart.
All these men are teaching the very same thing that UG is supposedly
teaching. The giving up of "seeking enlightenment" is a profound truth
which has been articulated many times by wise men of all cultures. So
why doesn't UG acknowledge this? Because it would destroy his role as
an anti-guru.
If UG actually stepped down off his high horse and acknowledged his
agreement with these men, his status would immediately be lowered in
his followers' eyes. No longer would he be able to gain artificial
substance by contrasting himself with the whole of humanity. His
contrived personality would begin to dissipate and merge into other
people.
In the Tao Te Ching it says somewhere that "the sage covers his
tracks". As outlined above, this is something which UG does very
poorly. He is far too visible to his deluded followers for my liking.
UG's charismatic acting stands in the way of whatever wisdom he
happens to possess. He literally fosters the personality cult which
has sprung up around him. An example is his beloved "calamity", which
he often speaks about and which is supposed to be central to his
wisdom. Now I ask you, what on earth does this have to with
understanding the Truth? Absolutely nothing! Yet he frequently spins
this yarn about how he "physically died" as if it were somehow
important, and this only causes his followers to bend down and worship
him all the more. Rather than worshipping the Truth, his followers
worship the vanity of UG instead.
There is no escaping the fact that the quality of his followers is
very low. This more than anything else is a damning judgment upon the
man. The type of people who are attracted to him are of the worst kind
- submissive, worshipful, and sado- masochistic. People flock to him
in order to be abused and get beaten up, something they will cherish
for the rest of their lives. And it is obvious that UG himself takes
great pleasure in inflicting pain upon them.
Accordingly, I find UG's attempts to repel people very insincere. The
fact that he is frequently abusive, often rudely telling people to go
away, is held up as a kind of proof that he is somehow different to
the other gurus, that he really doesn't sell himself in order to be
popular. But it doesn't wash with me. Look deeply into the man and you
will see all the con tricks of a typical salesman.
UG doesn't really want to repel people. He only wants to be seen to be
doing so. This is his image, his trademark style. It is the covert
means by which he can attract a following. I mean, if he truly wanted
to repel people, he could do so very easily. He could start becoming
physically violent towards them, for example, or start urinating on
them, or begin defecating in the living room, or start masturbating in
the middle of a lecture, or whatever. If he started doing things like
this, I assure you his followers would soon flee him like the plague.
More to the point, if he really wanted to drive people away and yet
remain philosophical, all he has to do is start preaching about the
nature of woman. I doubt very much whether his followers could really
stomach an honest assessment of feminine nature. But I also doubt
whether UG himself actually understands the profound difference
between masculinity and femininity. I get the impression that he
continually blocks this kind of knowledge from penetrating his
consciousness.
So you see, UG Krishnamurti is not much of a wise man at all. He is
duplicitous, dishonest, fraudulent, and vain. He boasts that he gives
away everything he owns at the start of each year, including all his
money. But he does this knowing full well he can rely on his followers
to support him. And the reason he can rely on them is because he
willingly panders to their delusions. Deep down, he regards his
followers as little more than an investment for the future.
The root problem with UG, the one that underlies all the other
problems outlined above, is that he has no bodhicitta. By this I mean
he has no desire to become perfect. He is not willing to go all the
way and eliminate his delusions completely. He holds onto a portion of
his ego in order to enjoy life. J. Krishnamurti may have only seen the
sugar cube and not tasted it, as UG is fond of saying, but UG himself
does not want to become the sugar cube. He has some awareness of God,
but has no desire to develop it into a full-blown consciousness of
God.
Out of this lack of bodhicitta arise consequences of the worst kind.
All the evils of egotism - war, violence, rape, ignorance, etc - are
in large part caused by people like UG. For they set themselves up as
gurus and therefore must assume a far greater responsibility for the
world than ordinary people. And if these gurus are not really genuine,
as is the case with UG, then the harm that is caused by them is simply
immense.
But UG seems to be utterly unaware of this kind of thing. Indeed, his
frequent claims that he has no teaching, that he is not a guru, that
he does not believe in the "perfect person", etc, allows him an easy
escape route from all responsibilities as a teacher. He can use these
discourses to deflect anything which is directed too close to the
bone. It enables him to obscure the fact that he is, at bottom, just a
common egotist hell-bent on enjoying life and who just so happens to
have some decent verbal skills.
As soon as UG dies, whatever wisdom he possesses will also die. All
that will be left will be a sorry bunch of third-rate individuals
fashioning a religious cult out of his name. It will be exactly the
same fate as that of Ramakrishna, the Buddha and Jesus. A low quality
religion, filled with superstitions and lies, will emerge and negate
everything of value. This is the true face of U.G. Krishnamurti's
wisdom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read this at:
http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/ug.html