Prejudice...

This quote from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my in-tray this morning, really ‘spoke' to me…

Am I aware of you if I am prejudiced against you? My prejudice projects itself and prevents me from looking, and therefore I am not aware of you. To be aware, I must be aware of my prejudices, of my likes and dislikes, aware of my conditioning, that I am a Dutchman, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim. Whatever I am, I must be aware of it. And to be aware of it, I must not deny it. I mustn’t deny what I see in myself; I must look at it.

I must be aware without choice, saying, ‘I’ll keep this, I won’t keep that.’ So awareness means to be aware without choice so that I can look. I can look into myself without any choice. I won’t say, ‘This is good, this is bad, this is beautiful, I’ll keep it, that is ugly, I won’t keep,’ but I will look. I will see but not judge. Can I see without judging? Can I see violence in me without judging it? This means without the censor, without the entity that judges, that says violence is wrong. Can I look at it? I can only look if there is no opposite.

If I don’t have the ideal of non-violence, I can look at violence. I have been conditioned to accept the ideal, and I see that prevents me from looking at violence. So can I look at it without any ideal? And if I can look at it without an ideal, I have broken down the conditioning. Therefore the mind can look freely. So I have learnt something: the mind can be free and not be a slave to environment…