
- Paperback
- 230 Pages
- What Are You
- What Are You Doing With Your Life?
- Thought, The Thinker, and The Prison of The Self
- Insight, Intelligence, and The Revolution of Your Life
- Escape; Entertainment; Pleasure
- Why Should We Change?
- What Is The Purpose of Life?
- Fear
- Anger and Violence
- Boredom and Interest
- Self-Pity; Sorrow; Suffering
- Jealousy; Possessiveness; Envy
- Desire and Longing
- Self-Esteem: Success and Failure
- Loneliness; Depression; Confusion
- Self-Ending - Not Self Improvement - Ends Suffering
- What Is Education?
- Comparison, Competition, or Cooperation?
- Work: How Do You Decide?
- What Is The Besis of Right Action?
- What Is Relationship?
- Love; Desire; Sex; Dependency
- Family And Society: Relationship or Exclusion?
- Nature And Earth
- Marriage: Love and Sex
- Passion
- Truth; God; Death
- Meditation Is Attention
Customer Reviews
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Sometimes the universe brings you things that you need at the right time. I guess this is one such thing for me.
The philosophy in this book is rather deep, and to me, it will be hard to incorporate right away. But I am hoping to get there someday. I will reread this book someday.
JK encourages his audience to self-enquire, think one's way through the problem and arrive at a solution. To achieve peace in the world, he reasons that one should live peacefully. Only a mind that is self-aware and free of conditioning is capable of love. A mind that is capable of love is peaceful.
This may not be a popular opinion here, especially going by the glowing reviews I'm seeing here on goodreads.
But I've just ploughed through one of the most painful, rambling 30 pages I've read in my life (academic books included). And, although I usually tend to have an almost uncontrollable compulsion to finish almost every book I've started, in this particular case, it's been relatively simple to make the decision to add it firmly to my DNF pile. I do not even think I will give it another try. Not for the next few decades, at least.
I'm sure JK makes some valid points, like the fact that we are all a product of our conditioning and we need to break out of it to really learn and grow.
I also completely understand the fact that education needs to be redefined to include all-round development of a student, instead of merely focusing on technical knowledge. This latter argument is a fact that the schools ostentatious founded on JK's philosophy would do well to understand better (given the propensity of at least some of them to misconstrue this advice as a diktat that they should *not* focus on technical knowledge at all! Mega face-palm!)
However, it is very painful to sift through all the rambling to try and unearth a few pebbles of wisdom. The language especially, is extremely trying.
Rambling, unedited and conversational stream-of-consciousness style of prose, it started to get on my nerves after the first page and a half.
In short, I found myself concluding after the first 20 odd pages, that life is too short to waste reading this book by JK, ironically titled "What are You Doing With Your life?"
As far as I'm concerned, this is yet another case of the emperor not having any new clothes.
Oh, and maybe JK gets to actually providing solutions later on in the book (I wouldn't know), but whatever I read was just him going on and on about how human behavior is so very flawed, without offering any constructive suggestions.
He successfully lost my attention completely at the point when he declared that human thought has never, and will never, solve any problems.
Once that idea is put into print in a book, I really cannot force myself to read any further. I do not appreciate self flagellation to *that* degree!
Another, potentially scandalous thing I'm going to say is this: the crazily-abstract rambling of the book reminded me very strongly of "Swamy" Nithyananda (I know, I expect a reasonable amount of hate for having drawn this comparison).
But actually, on balance, I'd rather listen to Nithyananda. At least he's entertaining. I can laugh at what he says without giving it a second thought; and that is time better spent than reading abstruse (pretentious) rambling!
There are no answers in this book, that would be disapponting. What you'll find is incredible self-empowerment to find answers within yourself through the understanding of the mind and self. An oversimplified bottom line: stop looking for guidance on how to live your life and start living it mindfully and passionately.
Makes à convincing case of self awareness.
"Like river, life is running, swift, volatile, never still"
Simple, provocative, rhetoric questions and concepts on life, education and somewhere-in-between.
Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1895 to 1986, and is regarded as one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. Krishnamurti claimed no allegiance to any caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. His purpose was to set humankind unconditionally free from the destructive limitations of conditioned mind. For nearly sixty years he traveled the world and spoke spontaneously to large audiences until the end of his life in 1986 at the age of ninety. He had no permanent home, but when not traveling, he often stayed in Ojai, California, Brockwood Park, England, and in Chennai, India. In his talks, he pointed out to people the need to transform themselves through self knowledge, by being aware of the subtleties of their thoughts and feelings in daily life, and how this movement can be observed through the mirror of relationship.
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