我相信，每个人一定都问过自己：我真能改变吗？我心里明白，外在环境风云变幻，我们结婚、离婚、生儿育女，我们面临死亡、更好的工作、创新的压力等等，人类在控制学、自动化领域正在取得巨大革命。人们一定都曾问自己：我究竟能不能改变自己？这种改变无关乎周围世事，也不只是重复过去，或者改头换面延续以往，而是根本性的变革，是内心彻底的转化。
想必你已经觉察到了：实际上你根本没变，所以你极度郁闷，或自我逃避。于是，问题就在所难免了：究竟有没有真正的改变？我们回溯年青时的岁月，往事又涌上心头，抚今思昔，我们果真有变化吗？你真地改变了吗？或许外表确有所变动，但在深层，你有根本性的变化吗？或许，我们根本就不想变，因为我们太安于现状。
我想改变。我看清楚了：我极度烦恼、郁闷，我丑陋，我暴烈，总被动机所驱使，只是偶尔灵光闪现。我锤炼意志力，想有所为。我说：我必须有所改观，我必须丢弃这个习惯、那个嗜好，我必须思维卓异，我必须另辟蹊径，我必须多一些这个，少一些那个……付出了洪荒之力，可到头来仍然拙劣、郁闷、丑陋、粗野，没有丝毫的品味。
所以，人们不禁扪心自问：究竟有没有真正的变化？人真能改变吗？
——克里希那穆提《生命书：365观心日课》（The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti）
Can a Human Being Change?
One must have asked oneself, I’m quite sure, whether one changes at all. I know that outward circumstances change; we marry, divorce, have children; there is death, a better job, the pressure of new inventions, and so on. Outwardly there is a tremendous revolution going on in cybernetics and automation. One must have asked oneself whether it is at all possible for one to change at all, not in relation to outward events, not a change that is a mere repetition or a modified continuity, but a radical revolution, a total mutation of the mind.
When one realizes, as one must have noticed within oneself, that actually one doesn’t change, one gets terribly depressed, or one escapes from oneself. So the inevitable question arises: can there be change at all? We go back to a period when we were young, and that comes back to us again. Is there change at all in human beings? Have you changed at all? Perhaps there has been a modification on the periphery, but deeply, radically, have you changed? Perhaps we do not want to change because we are fairly comfortable….
I want to change. I see that I am terribly unhappy, depressed, ugly, violent, with an occasional flash of something other than the mere result of a motive; and I exercise my will to do something about it. I say I must be different, I must drop this habit, that habit; I must think differently; I must act in a different way; I must be more this and less that. One makes a tremendous effort and at the end of it one is still shoddy, depressed, ugly, brutal, without any sense of quality.
So one then asks oneself if there is change at all. Can a human being change?
