J. Krishnamurti Online

Learning is not experience

The word learning has great significance. There are two kinds of learning. For most of us learning means the accumulation of knowledge, of experience, of technology, of a skill, of a language. There is also psychological learning, learning through experience, either the immediate experiences of life, which leave a certain residue, of tradition, of the race, of society. There are these two kinds of learning how to meet life: psychological and physiological; outward skill and inward skill. There is really no line of demarcation between the two; they overlap. We are not considering for the moment the skill that we learn through practice, the technological knowledge that we acquire through study. What we are concerned about is the psychological learning that we have acquired through the centuries or inherited as tradition, as knowledge, as experience. This we call learning, but I question whether it is learning at all. I am not talking about learning a skill, a language, a technique, but I am asking whether the mind ever learns psychologically. It has learned, and with what it has learned it meets the challenge of life. It is always translating life or the new challenge according to what it has learned. That is what we are doing. Is that learning? Doesn’t learning imply something new, something that I don’t know and am learning? If I am merely adding to what I already know, it is no longer learning.

The Book of Life, January 10, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

Facebook
Facebook
Twitter
Twitter
Website
Website
Copyright © 2018 Krishnamurti Foundation of America & Krishnamurti Foundation Trust,
All rights reserved.


You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website.

Our mailing address is:
Krishnamurti Foundation of America & Krishnamurti Foundation Trust
PO Box 1560
Ojai, CA 93024

Add us to your address book
 
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust
Brockwood Park
Bramdean, Hampshire SO24 0LQ
United Kingdom

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.