Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes: July 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Self-knowledge - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Posted:

...in answering these questions, I would like to say that I am not persuading you to think along my particular line. We are trying to find the right answer together. I am not answering for you just to accept or deny. We are going to find out together what is true, and that requires an open mind, an intelligent mind, an enquiring mind, an alert mind; not a mind that is so prejudiced that it merely denies, or so eager that it accepts. And, in answering these questions, one fundamental thing must be borne in mind. It is that they are merely a reflection of the ways of our own thinking, they reveal to us what we think. They should act as a mirror in which we perceive ourselves. After all, these discussions, these talks, have only one purpose, and that is the pursuit of self-knowledge. For, as I said, it is only in knowing ourselves first deeply, profoundly, not superficially - that we can know truth. And it is extremely arduous to know ourselves deeply, not superficially. It is not a matter of time, but a question of intensity; it is direct perception and experience that are important. - Ojai 9th Public Talk 13th August 1949

Friday, July 30, 2010

Have a complete break with the past and see what happens. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Have a complete break with the past and see what happens.

Posted:

I think it is essential sometimes to go into retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like machines whether you believe or don't believe. You would let fresh air into your minds. Wouldn't you? That means you must be insecure, must you not? If you can do so, you would be open to the mysteries of nature and to things that are whispering about us, which you would not otherwise reach; you would reach the god that is waiting to come, the truth that cannot be invited but comes itself. But we are not open to love, and other finer processes that are taking place within us, because we are all too enclosed by our own desires. Surely, it is good to retreat from all that. Stop being a member of some society. Stop being a Brahmin, a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim. Stop your worship, rituals, take a complete retreat from all those and see what happens. In a retreat, do not plunge into something else, do not take some book and be absorbed in new knowledge and new acquisitions. Have a complete break with the past and see what happens. Sirs, do it, and you will see delight. You will see vast expanses. When your heart is open, then reality can come. Then the whisperings of your own prejudices, your own noises are not heard. That is why it is good to take a retreat, to go away and to stop the routine, not only the routine of outward existence but the routine which the mind establishes for its own safety and convenience. Try it sirs, those who have the opportunity. - Madras Jan. 5th, 1952, The Collected Works, Vol. VI

Thursday, July 29, 2010

To be religious is to be so choicelessly aware. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

To be religious is to be so choicelessly aware.

Posted:

Questioner: What do you mean by freedom from the past? Krishnamurti: The past is all our accumulated memories. These memories act in the present and create our hopes and fears of the future. These hopes and fears are the psychological future: without them there is no future. So the present is the action of the past, and the mind is this movement of the past. The past acting in the present creates what we call the future. This response of the past is involuntary, it is not summoned or invited, it is upon us before we know it. Questioner: In that case, how are we going to be free of it? Krishnamurti: To be aware of this movement without choice - because choice again is more of this same movement of the past - is to observe the past in action: such observation is not a movement of the past. To observe without the image of thought is action in which the past has ended. To observe the tree without thought is action without the past. To observe the action of the past is again action without the past. The state of seeing is more important than what is seen. To be aware of the past in that choiceless observation is not only to act differently, but to be different. In this awareness memory acts without impediment, and efficiently. To be religious is to be so choicelessly aware that there is freedom from the known even whilst the known acts wherever it has to. Questioner: But the known, the past, still sometimes acts even when it should not; it still acts to cause conflict. Krishnamurti: To be aware of this is also to be in a state of inaction with regard to the past which is acting. So freedom from the known is truly the religious life. That doesn't mean to wipe out the known but to enter a different dimension altogether from which the known is observed. This action of seeing choicelessly is the action of love. The religious life is this action, and all living is this action, and the religious mind is this action. So religion, and the mind, and life, and love, are one. - The Urgency of Change, The Religious Life

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

To be open is to listen - JKOnline Daily Quotes

To be open is to listen

Posted:

Who cares to listen to the troubles of another? We have so many problems of our own that we have no time for those of others. To make another listen you have to pay either in coin, in prayer, or in belief. The professional will listen, it is his job, but in that there is no lasting release. We want to unburden ourselves freely, spontaneously, without any regrets afterwards. The purification of confusion does not depend on the one who listens, but on him who desires to open his heart. To open one's heart is important, and it will find someone, a beggar perhaps, to whom it can pour itself out. Introspective talk can never open the heart; it is enclosing, depressing and utterly useless. To be open is to listen, not only to yourself, but to every influence, to every movement about you. It may or may not be possible to do something tangibly about what you hear, but the very fact of being open brings about its own action. Such hearing purifies your own heart, cleansing it of the things of the mind. Hearing with the mind is gossip, and in it there is no release either for you or for the other; it is merely a continuation of pain, which is stupidity. - Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 56, Possessiveness

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Problems burden the mind with fear. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Problems burden the mind with fear.

Posted:

Consciously or unconsciously we refuse to see the essentiality of being passively aware because we do not really want to let go of our problems; for what would we be without them? We would rather cling to something we know, however painful, than risk the pursuit of something that may lead who knows where. With the problems, at least, we are familiar; but the thought of pursuing the maker of them, not knowing where it may lead, creates in us fear and dullness. The mind would be lost without the worry of problems; it feeds on problems, whether they are world or kitchen problems, political or personal, religious or ideological; so our problems make us petty and narrow. A mind that is consumed with world problems is as petty as the mind that worries about the spiritual progress it is making. Problems burden the mind with fear, for problems give strength to the self, to the "me" and the "mine." Without problems, without achievements and failures, the self is not. - Commentaries on Living, Series I, Chapter 49, Problems and Escapes.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Doubt is an extraordinarily important thing. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Doubt is an extraordinarily important thing.

Posted:

Doubt is an extraordinarily important thing, not scepticism. To observe every experience that one has, to doubt that very experience, doubt that very thought, doubt that very feeling, so the brain becomes extraordinarily cleansed of all our accumulated experiences, tradition and so on. This is what we are going to do during all these talks. This is no personal, or personality cult. Please understand this. We all want to cling or worship, or feel near some one person. We are accustomed to that. And we are saying this is not a personality cult at all. So please don't build an image about him, the speaker. The speaker is not very valuable. What is valuable, what has significance, is what he is saying. And to understand what he is saying you must question, not accept a thing. Which means you have to observe, one has to observe one's own reactions, one's own attitudes, justifications, defences and so on. Then it is possible for both of us to communicate with each other, not theoretically, not in abstraction but actually. - Saanen 1st Public Talk 8th July 1984

Contradiction exists when there is comparison.

Posted:

Contradiction exists when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely. Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict. The understanding that comes only through observation of what is, is peace; which doesn't mean that you accept what is, on the contrary, one can't possibly accept this monstrous, corrupt society in which one lives, yet it is what is. But observe it, all its psychological structure, which is me, observe that me without any judgment, any evaluation - to see actually what is and as one observes the `what is', be changed completely. Therefore one can live at peace with one's wife or husband, with one's neighbour, with society, because one is oneself, daily, living a life of peace. - Collected Works Collected Works, Volume 4

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Fear dissipates energy. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Fear dissipates energy.

Posted:

When you reject something false, that is, looking to another to help you, and also when you have no longer the authority of your particular little experience - when you reject all that - what takes place? First of all, can you reject it? - which means you are no longer afraid. When you reject something false, which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy haven`t you? You have more capacity, you have more drive, you have greater intensity, vitality. Now does that actually take place? - if it doesn't, you have not thrown off the dead weight of authority. And when you have this energy - in which there is no fear at all, the fear of making a mistake, of not doing right or doing wrong - then is not that energy itself the mutation? One needs a great deal of energy, yet we dissipate energy through fear - through the fear of not achieving, not being successful outwardly, or the psychological fears, the fears that are caused by acceptance, by obedience. Fear dissipates energy and when we see that, - not theoretically or verbally, but actually see that as a danger, - then you have the energy. Then when there is that energy, - which has thrown off every form of fear - that energy itself produces the radical revolution. You don't have to do a thing about it. - Freedom From The Known Chapter 1

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Immediate revolution - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Immediate revolution

Posted:

Individual transformation brings about immediate revolution in the world in which we live. Individual revolution is of the highest importance and not mass revolution. The mass is only an invention of the capitalists and others; it does not exist. - Madras 2nd Group Discussion 13th April, 1948

Friday, July 23, 2010

Contradiction exits when there is comparison. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Contradiction exits when there is comparison.

Posted:

Contradiction exits when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely. Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict. The understanding that comes only through observation of what is, is peace; which doesn't mean that you accept what is, on the contrary, one can't possibly accept this monstrous, corrupt society in which one lives, yet it is what is. But observe it, all its psychological structure, which is me, observe that me without any judgment, any evaluation - to see actually what is and as one observes the `what is', be changed completely. Therefore one can live at peace with one's wife or husband, with one's neighbour, with society, because one is oneself, daily, living a life of peace. - Collected Works Collected Works, Volume 4

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Self-interest - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Self-interest

Posted:

In this relationship called society, every human being is cutting himself off from another by his position, by his ambition, by his desire for fame, power, and so on; but he has to live in this brutal relationship with other men like himself, so the whole thing is glossed over and made respectable by pleasant-sounding words. In everyday life, each one is devoted to his own interests, though it may be in the name of the country, in the name of peace, or God, and so the isolating process goes on. One becomes aware of this whole process in the form of intense loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation. Thought, which has been giving all importance to itself, isolating itself as the `me', the ego, has finally come to the point of realizing that it's held in the prison of its own making. - Commentaries On Living Series III Aloneness Beyond Loneliness

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Meditative Mind - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The Meditative Mind

Posted:

If you say: "I will begin today to control my thoughts, to sit quietly in the meditative posture, to breathe regularly" - then you are caught in the tricks with which one deceives oneself. Meditation is not a matter of being absorbed in some grandiose idea or image: that only quietens one for the moment, as a child absorbed by a toy is for the time being quiet. But as soon as the toy ceases to be of interest, the restlessness and the mischief begin again. Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imagined bliss. The meditative mind is seeing watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion - attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. And at night, when the whole organism is at rest, the meditative mind has no dreams for it has been awake all day. It is only the indolent who have dreams; only the half-asleep who need the intimation of their own states. But as the mind watches, listens to the movement of life, the outer and the inner, to such a mind comes a silence that is not put together by thought. - The Only Revolution India Part 3

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The flower is none of these things.. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The flower is none of these things..

Posted:

There is a flower by the wayside, a clear, bright thing open to the skies; the sun, the rains, the darkness of the night, the winds and thunder and the soil have gone into make that flower. But the flower is none of these things. It is the essence of all flowers. The freedom from authority, from envy, fear, from loneliness will not bring about that aloneness, with its extraordinary austerity. It comes when the brain is not looking for it; it comes when your back is turned upon it. Then nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. Then it has a life of its own, a movement which is the essence of all life, without time and space. - Notebook

Monday, July 19, 2010

The desire to conserve energy is greed. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The desire to conserve energy is greed.

Posted:

The desire to conserve energy is greed. This essential energy cannot be conserved or accumulated; it comes into being with the cessation of contradiction within oneself. By its very nature, desire brings about contradiction and conflict. Desire is energy, and it has to be understood; it cannot merely be suppressed, or made to conform. Any effort to coerce or discipline desire makes for conflict, which brings with it insensitivity. All the intricate ways of desire must be known and understood. You cannot be taught and you cannot learn the ways of desire. To understand desire is to be choicelessly aware of its movements. If you destroy desire, you destroy sensitivity, as well as the intensity that is essential for the understanding of truth. - Krishnamurti Commentaries On Living Series III, Asceticism And Total Being

Sunday, July 18, 2010

What will bridge the gap between the mind and the heart? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What will bridge the gap between the mind and the heart?

Posted:

Questioner: Of course we can go on endlessly analysing, describing the cause, but will that bridge the gap between the mind and the heart? That's what I want to know. I have read some of the psychological books and our own ancient literature but it doesn't set me on fire, so now I have come to you, though perhaps it may be too late for me. Krishnamurti: Do you really care that the mind and heart should come together? Aren't you really satisfied with your intellectual capacities? Perhaps the question of how to unite the mind and the heart is only academic? Why do you bother about bringing the two together? This concern is still of the intellect and doesn't spring, does it, from a real concern at the decay of your feeling, which is part of you? You have divided life into the intellect and the heart and you intellectually observe the heart withering away and you are verbally concerned about it. Let it wither away! Live only in the intellect. Is that possible? Questioner: I do have feelings. Krishnamurti: But aren't those feelings really sentimentality, emotional selfindulgence? We are not talking about that, surely. We are saying: Be dead to love; it doesn't matter. Live entirely in your intellect and in your verbal manipulations, your cunning arguments. And when you do actually live there - what takes place? What you are objecting to is the destructiveness of that intellect which you so worship. The destructiveness brings a multitude of problems. You probably see the effect of the intellectual activities in the world - the wars, the competition, the arrogance of power - and perhaps you are frightened of what is going to happen, frightened of the hopelessness and despair of man. So long as there is this division between the feelings and the intellect, one dominating the other, the one must destroy the other; there is no bridging the two. You may have listened for many years to the talks, and perhaps you have been making great efforts to bring the mind and the heart together, but this effort is of the mind and so dominates the heart. Love doesn't belong to either, because it has no quality of domination in it. It is not a thing put together by thought or by sentiment. It is not a word of the intellect or a sensuous response. You say, "I must have love, and to have it I must cultivate the heart". But this cultivation is of the mind and so you keep the two always separate; they cannot be bridged or brought together for any utilitarian purpose. Love is at the beginning, not at the end of an endeavour. - The Only Revolution India Part 3

Saturday, July 17, 2010

What is there to understand about a fact? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What is there to understand about a fact?

Posted:

Now, what is there to understand about a fact? There is nothing, is there? A fact is a fact, it is self-evident. The struggle to understand comes only when the thinker is trying to do something about the fact. The action of the thinker upon the fact is shaped by his memory, by his past experience; therefore, the fact is always shaped by the thinker, and therefore he never understands the fact. But if there is no thinker, but only the fact, then the fact has not to be understood - it is a fact; and when you are face to face with a fact, what happens? When there is no escape, when there is no thinker trying to give the fact a meaning to suit himself or shape it according to his particular pattern, what happens? When you are face to face with a fact, surely then you have understood it, have you not? Therefore, there is freedom from it. And such freedom is a radical freedom, it is not just a superficial reaction, a result of the mind's trying to identify itself with a particular opposite. As long as we are seeking a result there must be the thinker, there must be the process of isolation; and a person who, in his thoughts, is isolated as the thinker, can never find what is true. The so - called religious person who is seeking God is merely establishing himself as a permanent entity apart from his thoughts, and such a person can never find reality. - New York 1st Public Talk 4th June 1950 Collected Works, Volume 6

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The thinker is not separate from the thought - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The thinker is not separate from the thought

Posted:

Is it possible not to name a feeling? Because, by calling a particular feeling `anger', `fear', `jealousy', we have given it strength, have we not? We have fixed it. The very naming is a process of confirming that feeling, giving it strength, and therefore enclosing it in memory. Observe it and you will see. It is possible to be free fundamentally only when the process of naming is understood - naming being terming, symbolizing, which is the action of memory; because memory is the `you'. Without your memory, without your experiences, the `you' is not; and the mind clings to those experiences as essential in order to be secure. So, we cultivate memory, which is experience, knowledge, and through that process we hope to control the reactions and feelings which we call distortions. If we would be free of any particular quality, we must understand the whole process of the thinker and the thought, we must see the truth that the thinker is not separate from thought, but that they are a single, unitary process. If you actually realize that, you will see what an extraordinary revolution takes place in your life. By revolution I do not mean economic revolution, which is no revolution at all, but merely a modified continuity of what is. But when the thinker realizes that he is not different from thought, then you will see that radically, deeply, there is an extraordinary transformation; because, then there is only the fact of thought, and not the translation of that fact to suit the thinker. - New York 1st Public Talk 4th June 1950 Collected Works, Volume 6

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Ambition is corrupting - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Ambition is corrupting

Posted:

As long as there is the desire to gain, to achieve, to become, at whatever level, there is inevitably anxiety, sorrow, fear. The ambition to be rich, to be this or that, drops away only when we see the rottenness, the corruptive nature of ambition itself. The moment we see that the desire for power in any form - for the power of a prime minister, of a judge, of a priest, of a guru - is fundamentally evil, we no longer have the desire to be powerful. But we don't see that ambition is corrupting, that the desire for power is evil; on the contrary, we say that we shall use power for good which is all nonsense. A wrong means can never be used towards a right end. If the means is evil, the end will also be evil. Good is not the opposite of evil; it comes into being only when that which is evil has utterly ceased. So, if we don't understand the whole significance of desire, with its results, its by-products, merely to try to get rid of desire has no meaning. - This Matter of Culture /Think On These Things Chapter 3

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The good is not the opposite of the evil. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The good is not the opposite of the evil.

Posted:

The good is not the opposite of the evil. It has never been touched by that which is evil, though it is surrounded by it. Evil cannot hurt the good but the good may appear to do harm and so evil gets more cunning, more mischievous. It can be cultivated, sharpened, expansively violent; it is born within the movement of time, nurtured and skilfully used. But goodness is not of time; it can in no way be cultivated or nurtured by thought; its action is not visible; it has no cause and so no effect. Evil cannot become good for that which is good is not the product of thought; it lies beyond thought, like beauty. The thing that thought produces, thought can undo but it is not the good; as it is not of time, the good has no abiding place. Where the good is, there is order, not the order of authority, punishment and reward; this order is essential, for otherwise society destroys itself and man becomes evil, murderous, corrupt and degenerate. For man is society; they are inseparable. The law of the good is everlasting, unchanging and timeless. Stability is its nature and so it is utterly secure. There is no other security. - Krishnamurti Journal Ojai 14th April 1975

Monday, July 12, 2010

Continuity - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Continuity

Posted:

What has continuity can never be other than that which it is, with certain modifications; but these modifications do not give it a newness. It may take on a different cloak, a different colour; but it is still the idea, the memory, the word. This centre of continuity is not a spiritual essence, for it is still within the field of thought, of memory, and so of time. It can experience only its own projection, and through its self-projected experience it gives itself further continuity. Thus, as long as it exists, it can never experience beyond itself. It must die; it must cease to give itself continuity through idea, through memory, through word. Continuity is decay, and there is life only in death. There is renewal only with the cessation of the centre; then rebirth is not continuity; then death is as life, a renewal from moment to moment. This renewal is creation. - Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 38, Continuity

Sunday, July 11, 2010

without self-knowing there is no intelligence. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

without self-knowing there is no intelligence.

Posted:

Ignorance is not the lack of knowledge but of self-knowing; without self-knowing there is no intelligence. Self-knowing is not accumulative as knowledge; learning is from moment to moment. It is not an additive process; in the process of gathering, adding, a centre is formed, a centre of knowledge, of experience. In this process, positive or negative, there is no understanding, for as long as there is an intention of gathering or resisting, the movement of thought and feeling are not understood, there is no self-knowing. Without self-knowing there's no intelligence. Self-knowing is active present, not a judgment; all self-judgment implies an accumulation, evaluation from a centre of experience and knowledge. It is this past that prevents the understanding of the active present. In the pursuit of self-knowing there is intelligence. - Krishnamurti Notebook Part 4

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Truth must be discovered - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Truth must be discovered

Posted:

There is no path to truth. Truth must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery. Discovery brings joy - not the remembered, comparative joy, but joy that is ever new. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquillity and silence there is the immeasurable. - Commentaries on Living Series I, My Path and Your Path