Greatness Questioner: What is real greatness and how can I be | Jiddu Krishnamurti

Greatness

Questioner:
What is real greatness and how can I be great?

KRISHNAMURTI:
You see, the unfortunate thing is that we want to be great. We all want to be great. We want to be a Gandhi or a prime minister, we want to be great inventors, great writers. Why? In education, in religion, in all the departments of our life, we have examples. The great poet, the great orator, the great statesman, the great saint, the great hero such people are held up as examples, and we want to be like them. Now, when you want to be like another, you have created a pattern of action, have you not? You have set a limitation on your thought, bound it within certain limits. So your thought has already become crystallized, narrow, limited, stifled. Why do you want to be great? Why do you not look at what you are and understand that? You see, the moment you want to be like another, there is misery, conflict, there is envy, sorrow. If you want to be like the Buddha, what happens? You struggle everlastingly to achieve that ideal. If you are stupid and crave to be clever, you constantly try to leave what you are and go beyond it. If you are ugly and want to be beautiful, you long to be beautiful till you die, or you deceive yourself into thinking you are beautiful. So, as long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind merely wears itself out. But if you say, 'This is what I am, it is a fact, and I am going to investigate, understand it, then you can go beyond; for you will find that the understanding of what you are brings great peace and contentment, great insight, great love.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
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