A questioner asks J. Krishnamurti, “I want to help people, serve them. What is the best way?”
And Krishnamurti replies,
The best way is to begin to understand yourself and change yourself. In this desire to help another, to serve another, there is hidden pride, conceit. If you love, you serve. The clamour to help is born of vanity.
If you want to help another, you must know yourself for you are the other. Outwardly we may be different, yellow, black, brown or white, but we are all driven by craving, by fear, by greed or by ambition; inwardly we are very much alike. Without self-knowledge, how can you have knowledge of another’s needs. Without understanding yourself, you cannot understand another, serve another. Without self-knowledge you are acting in ignorance, and so creating sorrow.
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To help another, you must know yourself; like you, he is the result of the past. We are all interrelated. If you are inwardly diseased by ignorance, ill will and passion, you will inevitably spread disease and darkness. If you are inwardly healthy and integrated, you spread light and peace; otherwise you help to produce greater chaos, greater misery. To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.
You are the first result in the great google search of “whats the best way to help people”. So what does this site think is helping people. And mathematically what does this site believe is the course of action one can take to help the most people.
Yes i understood the idea that any action to help another is for self gratification from a friends episode like 20 years ago. Focusing soley on oneself is a easy way to distract yourself from the ultimate sacrifice that can be given which is ones every waking moment of helping others.
That is the guilt we all have hanging over us, that people around the world are starving to death and we do not spend our every waking moment trying to help them. This is the truth. Sad and disgusting but true. Do not lie to yourself. In reality millions suffer, we can ease suffering and we choose not too. It has nothing to do with finding oneself. Its simple greed, we make excuses to be complacent with our coldness to strangers sufferings.
Yeah, “we make excuses to be complacent with our coldness to strangers sufferings.” that’s right! So, when you realize this, what’s the first thing you have to do? Remove the coldness and complacency in yourself. And once you have done that, love blossoms in you and you spontaneously help others. So, the best way is to begin to understand yourself and change yourself. If you love, you serve.
Where does this article even say about self gratification and distracting oneself? It only talks about understanding oneself, becoming inwardly healthy and integrated, and once you become inwardly healthy and integrated, you spread light and peace. There are, and there have been many such wonderful souls, and you surely can be one of them. But without any sort of integrity or understanding of yourself, you only help to produce greater chaos, greater misery. Don’t we see many people in the world today, in the garb of helping the world, only confusing themselves and all those they are trying to help?