Cheap Courage to Stand Alone; Conversations with U.G. Krishnamurti (Book) (Ellen Chrystal, Ellen J. Chrystal) Price

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Customer Reviews of Courage to Stand Alone; Conversations with U.G. Krishnamurti

A Non-Gimmicky Teacher of Wisdom
U.G. Krishnamurti is definately a character in the "spiritual" (he dislikes that word associated with him)community.
It is quite difficult to describe him and his system of thought since he doesn't really have one. I will attempt to do so only for the sake of the reader, not that it will be totally accurate since it will still be a label which he would probably himself disagree with. He's part philospher, guru, social commentator, and ironically-an anti-guru.
He seems to be a self realized man. His main attitude is that of breaking down all these spiritual systems, gimmicks, money making, scamish guru businesses. In short, pointing out the stranglehold that society can create in an individual who has been sucked into the system of always trying to fix yourself, change, improve or naively following a false spiritual teaching only to become more confused than when you started. His books do a lot of bashing. He's not a gentle, passive kind of guy, he's a negator of man made concepts and their many traps. Mostly he's tearing down ideologies not creating them.
From what I can absorb, most of what he says is quite true. You may not agree with it at first, but he plants a seed in you that germinates later, and makes you question. He even can come across a bit repulsive because he's so on the attack always.
Personally, I find him to be more enlightened than the famous J. Krishnamurti who UG. bashes also because he felt that altough J. Krishnamurti kept claiming the "no guru is necessary" philosphy, UG. felt that he was being hypocritical since his teachings became a bit of a system that was very institutionalized, he came out with dozens of books and got trapped in his own following, so U.G. Krishnamurti argues that JK. was in essence another self-inflated guru with a gimmicky system.
It's a bit difficult to get a direct positive outcome of U.G. Krishnamurti's teachings becuase most of the time he's on the negative, discarding mode, however in the discarding process, one can be forced to give up all these gimmicks and learn to just BE once again. Function from a more natural state of BEING instead of DOING practices all the time.
For "no-nonsense" type "seekers" that enjoy these types of teaching I very strongly recommend Nisargadatta Maharaj. Starting with his book I AM THAT and moving into his even more direct works that came later. Nisargadatta Maharaj while also being a annhilator of mind made concepts for the spiritual seeker, offered a more positive tone that is direct yet a bit more practical than UG. He was one of the few guru's that never got trapped and who sincerely pointed earnest seekers in the right direction.