Self-Knowledge and Relatedness in Everyday Life

摘要

This essay focuses on the idea of the self in everyday life and not on our efforts to construct another self in our striving to be better human beings in a troubled and fragile world. Self-knowledge is an essential process of being in this world in the framework of relatedness. In this context, the work of J. Krishnamurti is essential to our understanding of how we engage with ourselves through observation, listening and looking inwards. Unless we are in a continuous process of this engagement with the self, we are unable to relate to others in a meaningful and significant manner. We remain enclosed, isolated and individual selves. It therefore becomes essential to view selfknowing and the sacred as a part of everyday life and not as some better world to be pursued through ritual and selfimprovement aspirational regimes. I further develop the role of education as a transformative process to develop empathy and compassion among children. In doing this, I am not, however, advocating that there is once again a striving for the sacred or a reaching out to a ‘superior' moral phenomenon to beget a change. We need to be aware of the pedagogic possibilities in the everyday that are opened up through the development of both cognitive and emotional skills to ‘awaken intelligence' and agency for social transformation.