The Landscape:- From Kriasnamurti’s Writings There is something curiously pleasant to walk, alone, along a path, deep in the country… There is something curiously pleasant to walk, alone, along a path, deep in the country, which has been used for several thousand years by pilgrims; there are very old trees along it tamarind & mango, & it passes through several villages. It passes between green fields of wheat; it is soft underfoot, fine, dry powder, & it must become heavy clay in the wet season; the soft, fine earth gets into your feet, into your nose & eyes, not too much. There are ancient well & temples & withering gods. The land is flat, as the palm of the hand, stretching to the horizon, if there is a horizon. The path has so many turns, in a few minutes it faces in all the directions of a compass. The sky seems to follow that path which is open & friendly. There are a few paths that in the world though each has its own charm & beauty. There is one beauty. There is one [at Gstaad] that goes through the valley, gently climbing, between rich pasturage, to be gathered for the winter to be given to the cows; that valley is which with snow but then [when he was there] it was the end of summer, full of flowers, with snow mountains all around & there was a noisy stream going through the valley; there was hardly anyone on the path & you walked on it in silence. Then there is another path [at Ojai] climbing steeply by the side of a dry, busty, crumbling mountain; it was rocky, rough & slippery; there wasn’t a tree anywhere near, not even a bush; a quail with her small new brood, over a dozen of them, was there & further up you came upon a deadly rattler, all curled up, ready to strike but giving you a fair warning. But now, this path was not like any other; it was dusty, made foul by human beings here & there, & there were ruined old temples with their images; a large bull was having its fill among the growing unmolested; there were monkeys too parrots, the light of the skies. It was the path of a thousand humans for many thousand years. As you walked without a single thought & there was the incredible sky & the trees with heavy foliage & birds. There is a mango on that path that is superb; it has so many leaves that the branches cannot be seen & it is so old. As you walk on, there is no feeling at all; thought too has gone but there is beauty. It fills the earth & the sky, every leaf & blade of withering grass. It is there covering everything & you are of it. You are not mead to feel all this but it is there & because you are not, it is there, without a word, without a movement. You walk back in silence & fading light. A timeless spring—is it not?—to work very hard. You work very hard at your hard at your studies; your parents work hard at earning a livelihood. Everybody about you & around you is very busy—those women carrying merchandise to the town, the villager in the field, the rickshaw-wallah. Everyone is working—the politician, the reformer, the write. It is necessary to work to work hard, because without hard work there can be no real understanding. But, you see, we give much importance—and in a way quite rightly—to outward activity. Unfortunately, while we are so occupied with outward activity—like the ants that are everlastingly busy—we do not see that, inwardly, we are slowly dying. We spend our days talking about the past. The older we get, the more important the past become. Have you not noticed your parents & your older friends talking about things that have gone, things that are so trivial, & unimportant? They talk about experiences that have been, about how much they know & what they know. They quote scripture; they live in the past. And take the idealist—he always lives in the future, building a marvelous utopia which can never be, which inside, inwardly, there is slow decay. You know, the difference between youth & age is that youth is full of enquiry, curiosity, zest, & age has burnt itself out in activity.