"It was a bright, fresh morning and the flowers were splendid in their summer colours. Beyond the huge, tall open Eiffel Tower, the main attraction, passed a funeral procession, the coffin and the hearse covered with flowers, followed by many cars.

Even in death, we want to be important, to our vanity and pretence there is no end. Everyone wants to be somebody or be associated with someone who is somebody...Without recognition they have no meaning...power is always respected and so is made respectable. Power is always evil, wielded by the politician or by the saint or by the wife over the husband. However evil it is, everyone craves for it, and those who have it want more of it.

And the hearse with those gay flowers in the sun seems so far away and even death does not end power for it continues in another. It's the torch of evil that continues from generation to generation...Children were calling and playing as the hearse passed by, never even looking at it, absorbed in their game and laughter."

Krishnamurti's Notebook, p.91-92


"It is strange, the desire to show off or to be somebody. It seems so impossibly difficult to be simple, to be what you are, and not pretend. To be what you are is in itself very arduous without trying to become something, which is not difficult. You can always pretend, put on a mask, but to be what you are is an extremely complex affair; because you are always changing; you are never the same and each moment reveals a new facet, a new depth, a new surface. You can't be all this at one moment for each moment brings its own change. So if you are intelligent, you give up being anything."

Unknown source