How we waste our life!

They were marching in a long procession, the generals with their decorations, bright uniforms, plumed hats, brass breastplates, swords and spurs; the lady in her carriage all dressed up, surrounded by soldiers, more uniforms coming on behind, top hats. People stood gaping at them. They would have liked to be in that procession. If you strip these people of their uniforms, their feathers and their grand-sounding names, they will be like the people standing by the roadside, gaping nobodies. It is the same everywhere: the name, the position, the prestige are what matter. The writer, the artist, the musician, the director, the head of a big company, strip them of their outward show and their small status, and what is left? There are these two things, function and status. Function is exploited to achieve status. Confusion arises when we give status to function, and yet they are always overlapping. The cook is looked down upon, and the man in uniform is respected. In this procession, we are all caught, disrespect for the one and respect for the other.

One wonders if one stripped oneself of the status, the glamour of titles, the furniture, the dead memories, what actually would be left. If one has capacity, that cannot be minimised. However, if such capacity is used to achieve position, power, status, then the mischief begins. Capacity is exploited for money, position, status. If one has no capacity, one may even then have status through money, family, hereditary or social circumstances. All this is vulgarity. We are part of it. What makes us so vulgar, so common and cheap? This ugliness is directly proportionate to the amount of status. Everyone gaping at this endless procession is us. The onlooker who gapes creates the status which he admires, so does the queen in the golden carriage. Both are equally vulgar.

Why are we caught in this stream? Why do we take part in this? The audience is as much responsible for the spectacle as the people strutting on the stage. We are the actors and the audience. When we object to the show of status, it is not that we repudiate status but rather that we attach importance to it; we would like to be there on the stage ourselves—‘or at least my son…’ We read all this and perhaps smile ironically or bitterly, reflecting on the vanity of the spectacle, but we watch the procession. Why can’t we, when we look at it, really laugh and throw it all aside? To throw it all aside, we must throw it all aside within ourselves, not only outside.

That is why one leaves the world and become a monk or sannyasi. But there too there is peculiar status, position and illusion. The society makes the sannyasi, and the sannyasi is the reaction to society. There too is the vulgarity and the parade. Would there be a monk if there were no recognition of the monk? Is this accolade of recognition any different from the recognition of the generals? We are all in this game, and why are we playing it? Is it the utter inward poverty, the total insufficiency in ourselves, which neither book nor priests nor gods nor any audience can ever fill? Neither your friend nor your wife can fill it. Is it that we are afraid of living with the past, with death?

How we waste our life! In the procession or out of the procession we are always of it, as long as this aching void remains. This is what makes us vulgar, frightened, and so we become attached and depend. And the whole strife of the procession goes on whether you are in it or admiring from the grandstand. To leave it all is to be free of this emptiness. If you try to leave it or determine to leave it, you cannot, for it is yourself. You are of it, so you cannot do anything about it. The negation of this vulgarity which is yourself, is freedom from this emptiness. This negation is the act of complete inaction with regard to emptiness.

From the book Can the Mind Be Quiet? by J. Krishnamurti