The Living Mind Never Concludes

“A mind that is full of conclusions is a dead mind, it is not a living mind. A living mind is a free mind, learning, never concluding.”

There comes a point in anyone's development that is more dangerous than any plateau, and it is the point where you decide you have figured it all out. We think we know what we need and want. We’re convinced of what we like. In music we have an approach, we have our “tone”, our bag of moves, style, etc. And it feels like mastery. Krishnamurti would call it a “dead mind” — full of conclusions, no longer learning, no longer alive - not really in the moment.

A conclusion is comfortable. It saves energy. We might conclude that we don’t like a certain genre, that a certain technique is beneath us, that a certain kind of audience does not deserve our best. Each conclusion is a small door that’s been closed, and it’s been closed to feel settled. But settled and alive are not the same thing, and a player or pro, at anything, and full of settled opinions, ceases to have an open mind and slowly stops growing.

The living mind, Krishnamurti says, never concludes. It surrenders to the moment with a completely open mind and a refrain from judgement. For an artist, sometimes this is almost unbearable because we crave security. We want to be a master and not a perpetual student. And yet the artists, pros or players who stay interesting into old age are precisely the ones who never finish — who at seventy still approach their craft as if they did not quite know what would happen.

I have started treating my own strong opinions as warning signs rather than achievements. When we catch ourselves with “certainty” — “that's not real music”, “that’s a wrong approach”, etc. — we should remember the feeling of being alive, which is actually living in the present moment and an approach that has no conclusions or certainty.

The free and open mind is uncomfortable. It does not give you the satisfaction of being right. But it keeps one moving, keeps the ears and eyes working and keeps you sharp. Would one rather stay alive and be uncertain or be a “dead master”?

Reference: Krishnamurti, Ojai 1973, Talk 3

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