Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes: July 2009

Friday, July 31, 2009

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For most of us, change implies the continuation of ourselves in a modified form. If we are dissatisfied with a particular pattern of ideas, of rituals, of conditioning, we throw it aside and pick up the same pattern in a different milieu, a different colour, with different rituals, different words. Instead of Latin it is Sanskrit, or some other language, but it is still the old pattern repeated over and over and over again; and within this pattern we think we are moving, changing. Because we are dissatisfied with what we are, we go from one teacher to another. Seeing confusion about us and in ourselves, seeing perpetual wars, ever-increasing destruction, devastation and misery, we want some haven, some peace; and if we can find a refuge that gives us a sense of security, a sense of permanency, with that we are satisfied.So, when the mind projects an idea and clings to it, struggles towards it, surely that is not change, that is not transformation, that is not revolution, because it is still within the field of the mind, the field of time. To clear away all that, we must be conscious of what we are doing, we must be aware of it.The Collected Works vol VII, pp 7-8

Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Perception of the importance of change

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Question: Is it possible for any of us, who are living in this particular society, to bring about the change of which you are talking?Krishnamurti: If we as individuals do not bring about this change, how is it to be done? If you and I, living in this society, do not do it, who will? The powerful, the millionaires, the people of great possessions are not going to do it. It must surely be done by ordinary people like you and me—and I am not saying this rhetorically, stupidly. If you and I see the importance of this change, then it is not courage but the very perception of the importance of change which will bring it about. A man may have the courage to stand against the dictates of society, but it is the man who understands the complex problem of change, who understands the whole structure of society—which is himself—it is he alone who becomes an individual and is not merely a representative of the collective. Only the individual who is not caught in society can fundamentally affect society…The Collected Works vol X, p 13

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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Life and change are synonymous

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You do not want to change when change means danger, lest you lose your job or your wife. You may ask, “What is the need for change?” If you do not change, you are dead, obviously. Life means moving, and not stagnation. If you deny life, you are dead. Life and change are synonymous. You are changing, your body is changing, you are getting older, your senses are changing. And inwardly you do not want to change because you have found a belief, an idea, some superstition, a conclusion, and an experience; from that you do not want to move because it is pleasurable, profitable. If it is painful, you want to change it, you put it away.The Collected Works vol XII, p 291

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

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How do you change?

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Do you see yourself as you are? Have you ever been self-critically aware of yourself? Have you known what you are—angry, jealous, envious, ambitious, hating, and all the rest of it? Now, what will make you change? Let us start with it. How do you change? What makes you change? Do you change because it helpsyou? Do you change because it is pleasurable? Do you change because fear is involved? Or because you think that by changing, you will be a better man? Or because if you conform, you will get more money, you will be more respectable, and so on? Is that the way you change, if you have changed at all? And have you changed in anything? Do ask these questions, please. Don’t let me put these questions to you; you are asking the questions yourself. Have you changed in anything? And if you have, what made you change?The Collected Works vol XII, p 291

Monday, July 27, 2009

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It is not mere selfish investigation

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You are the world psychologically, and the world is you; and when you understand yourself you are understanding the whole human structure and nature. It is not mere selfish investigation, because when you understand yourself you go beyond yourself, a different dimension comes into being. What will make us change? More shocks? More catastrophes? Different forms of government? Different images? Different ideals? You have had varieties of these, and yet you have not changed. The more sophisticated our education, the more civilized we become—civilized in the sense of being moreremoved from nature—the more inhuman we become. So what shall we do? As none of these thingsoutside of me are going to help, including all the gods, then it becomes obvious that I alone have to understand myself. I have to see what I am and change myself radically. This Light in Oneself, pp 14-15

Sunday, July 26, 2009

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The true function of man

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You and I have to be free from the causes that are producing conflict in ourselves. And the centre of conflict is the self, the “me”. But most of us do not want to be free from that “me”. That is the difficulty. Most of us like the pleasures and the pains that the “me” brings; and as long as we are controlled by the pleasures and the pains of the “me”, there will be conflict between the “me” and society, between the “me” and the collective; and the collective will dominate the “me”, and destroy the “me” if it can. But the “me” is much stronger than the collective; so it always circumvents it, and tries to get a position in it, to expand, to fulfil. Surely, the freedom from the self, and therefore the search for reality, the discovery and the coming into being of reality, is the true function of man.The Collected Works vol V, p 278

Saturday, July 25, 2009

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You are nothing

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Why do we store up flattery and insult, hurt and affection? Without this accumulation of experiences and their responses, we are not; we are nothing if we have no name, no attachment, no belief. It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate; and it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free.You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it. You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there.Commentaries on Living First Series, p 92

Friday, July 24, 2009

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The self hides under every stone

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The self hides in many ways, under every stone, the self can hide in compassion, going to India and looking after poor people, because the self is attached to some idea, faith, conclusion, belief, which makes me compassionate because I love Jesus or Krishna, and I go up to heaven. The self has many masks, the mask of meditation, the mask of achieving the highest, the mask that I am enlightened, that “I know of what I speak.” All this concern about humanity is another mask. So one has to have an extraordinary, subtle, quick brain to see where it is hiding. It requires great attention, watching, watching, watching.On Mind and Thought, p 133

Thursday, July 23, 2009

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The self is nothing but words and memories

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So what are you? You are a name, a form, the result of a society, a culture which has emphasized throughout the ages that you are separate, something indefinitely identifiable. Right? You have your character, your particular tendency, either aggressive or yielding. Is that not put together by the culture which has been brought about by thought? It is very difficult for people to accept a very simple, logical examination, because they would like to think that the self is something most extraordinary. We are pointing out that the self is nothing but words and memories. On Mind and Thought, pp 68-69

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

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The mind is the “me”

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So we are going to find out what this extraordinary thing called the mind is, because that is the problem and nothing else. It is the mind that creates the problem; it is the thought, the conditioned mind, the mind that is petty, narrow, bigoted, which has created beliefs, ideas and knowledge, and which is crippled by its own concepts, vanities, greeds, ambitions and frustrations. So it is the mind which has to be understood, and that mind is the “me”, that mind is the self—not some higher self. The mind invents the higher self and then says it is only a tool for the higher. Such thinking is absurd, immature. It is the mind which invents all these avenues of escape and then proceeds from there to assert.So we are going to find out what the mind is. Now, you cannot find out from my description. I am going to talk about it, but if you merely recognize it through the description then you are not knowing the state of your own mind. The Collected Works vol XI, p 64

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

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Egotism, one of the major factors of our life

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Man has never tackled or inquired into, come to grips with, the whole structure of the mind—the mind that has built the egocentric activity. Egotism has been one of the major factors of our life, probably the only factor. Human beings have accepted it as inevitable, natural. We say, “It exists in animals, so it exists in us; it is right we should be concerned with ourselves, with improvement, with our position in society”, and so on and so on. I do not know if you have ever inquired whether it is not the human mind throughout the world, under different guises, in different forms, which has been the central factor of man’s cruelty, man’s barbarity and suffering. To understand the “me”, the ego, we must first of all understand our consciousness, at the very centre of which is the “me”.Talks in Saanen 1974, p 38

Monday, July 20, 2009

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The self is a book of many volumes

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To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found. The Collected Works vol III, p 219

Sunday, July 19, 2009

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To learn about oneself one needs humility

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…To learn about oneself one needs a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, “I know myself”, you’ve already stopped learning about yourself. Or if you say, “There is nothing much to learn about myself because I know what I am—I’m a bundle of memories, ideas, experiences, tradition, a conditioned entity with innumerable contradictory reactions”—you’ve stopped learning about yourself. To learn about oneself requires considerable humility, never assuming that you know anything: that is, learning about oneself from the beginning and never accumulating. The moment you accumulate knowledge about yourself through your own discovery, that becomes the platform from which you begin to examine, learn, and therefore what you learn is merely further addition to what you already know. Humility is a state of mind that never acquires, never says, “I know”.Talks & Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 212

Saturday, July 18, 2009

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When I don’t compare I…understand what I am

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…Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself. In a school, in an ordinary school where there are a lot of boys, when one boy is compared with another who is very clever, who is the head of the class, what is actually taking place? You are destroying the boy. That’s what we are doing throughout life. Now, can I live without comparison—without comparison with anybody? This means there is no high, no low—there is not the one who is superior and the other who is inferior. You are actually what you are and to understand what you are, this process of comparison must come to an end. If I am always comparing myself with some saint or some teacher, some businessman, writer, poet, and all the rest, what has happened to me—what have I done? I only compare in order to gain, in order to achieve, in order to become—but when I don’t compare I am beginning to understand what I am. Beginning to understand what I am is far more fascinating, far more interesting; it goes beyond all this stupid comparison. Talks & Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 86

Friday, July 17, 2009

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Can I be a light to myself?

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We depend on experiences—pleasant or painful—to keep us awake; every form of challenge we want to keep us awake. When one realizes that this dependence on challenges and experiences only makes the mind more dull and that they do not really keep us awake—when one realizes that we have had thousands of wars and haven’t learnt a thing, that we are willing to kill our neighbour tomorrow on the least provocation—then one asks, why do we want them and is it all possible to keep awake without any challenge? That is the real question—you follow? I depend on a challenge, experience, hoping it will give me more excitement, more intensity, make my mind more sharp, but it does not. So I ask myself if it is possible to keep awake totally, not peripherally at a few points of my being, but totally awake, without any challenge, without any experience? That means, can I be a light to myself, not depending on any other light? That doesn’t mean I am vain in not depending on any stimulation. Can I be a light that never goes out? To find that out I must go deeply within myself, I must know myself totally, completely, every corner of myself, there must be no secret corners, everything must be exposed. I must be aware of the total field of my own self, which is the consciousness of the individual and of society. It is only when the mind goes beyond this individual and social consciousness that there is a possibility of being a light to oneself which never goes out.Talks & Dialogues Saanen 1967, pp 111-112

Thursday, July 16, 2009

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A whole laboratory inside you

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Questioner: What value do you place on social sciences and the understanding of man?Krishnamurti: Sir, when you have got the whole laboratory inside you, why do you want to “study man”? Study yourself, the whole human being, the whole complexity, beauty, extraordinary sensitivity which is you. Why do you want to study what somebody else says about man? The whole of mankind is you. And you in relationship with another is society. You have created this terrible, ugly world which has become so utterly meaningless, and that is why young people are revolting throughout the world. To me it is such a meaningless life. The society which man has created is the outcome of his own demands, his own urgencies, instincts, ambitions, greed and envy. You think that by reading all the books about man and going in for social study, you are going to understand yourself. Would it not be much more simple to begin with yourself?Talks with American Students, p 45

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

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The best way to help another

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Question: I want to help people, serve them. What is the best way? Krishnamurti: The best way is to begin to understand yourself and change yourself. In this desire to help another, to serve another, there is hidden pride, conceit. If you love you serve. The clamour to help is born of vanity. If you want to help another, you must know yourself for you are the other. Outwardly we may be different—yellow, black, brown, or white—but we are all driven by craving, by fear, by greed, or by ambition; inwardly we are very much alike. Without self-knowledge, how can you have knowledge of another’s needs? Without understanding yourself, you cannot understand another, serve another. Without self-knowledge you are acting in ignorance, and so creating sorrow… The Collected Works vol III, p 219

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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We do not have to beg for help

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To follow another, however great, prevents the discovery of the ways of the self; to run after the promise of some ready-made utopia makes the mind utterly unaware of the enclosing action of its own desire for comfort, for authority, for someone else’s help. The priest, the politician, the lawyer, the soldier are all there to “help” us; but such help destroys intelligence and freedom. The help we need does not lie outside ourselves. We do not have to beg for help; it comes without our seeking it when we are humble in our dedicated work, when we are open to the understanding of our daily trials and accidents.We must avoid the conscious or unconscious craving for support and encouragement, for such craving creates its own response, which is always gratifying. It is comforting to have someone to encourage us, to give us a lead , to pacify us; but this habit of turning to another as a guide, as an authority soon becomes a poison in our system. The moment we depend on another for guidance, we forget our original intention, which was to awaken individual freedom and intelligence. Education and the Significance of Life, p 109

Monday, July 13, 2009

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You have to be your own teacher

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The speaker is not important at all; what is important is for you to find out these things for yourself, so that you are free and not second-hand human beings. You must look to find out, to find out whether or not it is possible for the mind to be completely and totally free of this violence, pride and arrogance, and so come upon a different quality altogether. And to find that out you must look most intimately and discover for yourself; then it is your own, not somebody else’s, not something that you have been told, because there is no teacher and no follower. Unfortunately that word “guru” has been bandied about recently in this country; the word in Sanskrit means “the one who points”, like a signpost by the roadside. However, you don’t worship that post, hang garlands around it; neither do you follow it around and carry out all the mysterious orders a guru is supposed to give; he is just a signpost by the roadside, you read and pass by. So you have to be your own teacher and your own disciple, and there is no teacher outside, no saviour, no master; you yourself have to change, and therefore you have to learn to observe, to know yourself. This learning about yourself is a fascinating and joyous business…Talks with American Students, p 98

Sunday, July 12, 2009

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All authority must come to an end

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What we are going to do is to learn about ourselves—not according to the speaker, or to Freud, or to Jung, to some analyst or philosopher—but to learn actually what we are. If we learn about ourselves according to Freud we learn about Freud, not about ourselves. To learn about oneself, all authority must come to an end, all authority—whether it be the authority of the church or of the local priest, or the famous analyst, or of the greatest philosophers with their intellectual formulas, and so on. So the first thing that one has to realize when we become serious, demanding a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, is that there is no authority of any kind. That is very difficult, for there is not only the outward authority, which one can easily reject, but there is inward authority: the inward authority of one’s own experience, of one’s own accumulated knowledge, of the opinions, ideas, ideals which guide one’s life and according to which one tries to live. Talks & Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 11