Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes: August 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

To understand what is - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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We are in conflict with each other and our world is being destroyed. There is crisis after crisis, war after war; there is starvation, misery; there are the enormously rich clothed in their respectability, and there are the poor. To solve these problems, what is necessary is not a new system of thought, not a new economic revolution, but to understand what is -the discontent, the constant probing of what is- which will bring about a revolution which is more far-reaching than the revolution of ideas. And it is this revolution that is so necessary to bring about a different culture, a different religion, a different relationship between man and man. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Keep discontent alive - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Keep discontent alive

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Is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to probing, to finding out what is the real, what is Truth, what is essential in life? I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good job and this discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my family, I have to earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed, destroyed, and I become a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life, and I am not discontent. But the flame has to be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true inquiry, true probing into the problem of what discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it content with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it establishes a routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive, vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside discontent and wallow in some form of contentment.Is it not essential to be discontented in order to find what is true? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Monday, August 29, 2011

A contentment not of the mind - JKOnline Daily Quotes

A contentment not of the mind

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Is not discontent essential, not to be smothered away, but to be encouraged, inquired into, probed, so that with the understanding of what is there comes contentment? That contentment is not the contentment which is produced by a system of thought; but it is that contentment which comes with the understanding of what is. That contentment is not the product of the mind -the mind which is disturbed, agitated, incomplete, when it is seeking peace, when it is seeking a way away from what is. And so the mind, through justification, comparison, judgment, tries to alter what is, and thereby hopes to arrive at a state when it will not be disturbed, when it will be peaceful, when there will be quietness. And when the mind is disturbed by social conditions, by poverty, starvation, degradation, by the appalling misery, seeing all that, it wants to alter it; it gets entangled in the way of altering, in the system of altering. But if the mind is capable of looking at what is without comparison, without judgment, without the desire to alter it into something else, then you will see that there comes a kind of contentment which is not of the mind.The contentment which is the product of the mind is an escape. It is sterile. It is dead. But there is contentment which is not of the mind, which comes into being when there is the understanding of what is, in which there is profound revolution which affects society and individual relationship. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Effort is distraction from what is - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Effort is distraction from what is

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We must understand the problem of striving. If we can understand the significance of effort, then we can translate it into action in our daily life. Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what it is not, or what it should be, or what it should become? We are constantly escaping from what is, to transform or modify it. He who is truly content is he who understands what is, who gives the right significance to what is. True contentment lies not in few or many possessions, but in understanding the whole significance of what is. Only in passive awareness is the meaning of what is understood. I am not, at the moment, talking of the physical struggle with the earth, with construction or a technical problem, but of psychological striving. The psychological struggles and problems always overshadow the physiological. You may build a careful social structure, but as long as the psychological darkness and strife are not understood, they invariably overturn the carefully built structure.Effort is distraction from what is. In the acceptance of what is, striving ceases. There is no acceptance when there is the desire to transform or modify what is. Striving, an indication of destruction, must exist so long as there is a desire to change what is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Discontent has no answer - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Discontent has no answer

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What is it that we are discontented with? Surely with what is. The what is may be the social order, the what is may be the relationship, the what is may be what we are, the thing we are essentially -which is, the ugly, the wandering thoughts, the ambitions, the frustrations, the innumerable fears; that is what we are. In going away from that, we think we shall find an answer to our discontent. So we are always seeking a way, a means to change the what is -that is what our mind is concerned with. If I am discontent and if I want to find a way, the means to contentment, my mind is occupied with the means, the way and the practicing of the way in order to arrive at contentment. So I am no longer concerned with discontent, with the embers, the flame that is burning, which we call discontent. We do not find out what is behind that discontent. We are only concerned with going away from that flame, from that burning anxiety.This is enormously difficult because our mind is never satisfied, never content in the examination of what is. It always wants to transform what is into something else,which is the process of condemnation, justification or comparison. If you observe your own mind you will see that when it comes face to face with what is, then it condemns, then it compares it with 'what it should be', or it justifies it and so on, and thereby pushes away what is, setting aside the thing which is causing the disturbance, the pain, the anxiety. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Friday, August 26, 2011

Escape breeds conflict - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Escape breeds conflict

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Why are we ambitious? Why do we want to succeed, to be somebody? Why do we struggle to be superior? Why all this effort to assert oneself, whether directly, or through an ideology or the State? Is not this self-assertion the main cause of our conflict and confusion? Without ambition, would we perish? Can we not physically survive without being ambitious?Why are we clever and ambitious? Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is? Is not this cleverness really stupid, which is what we are? Why are we so frightened of what is? What is the good of running away if whatever we are is always there? We may succeed in escaping, but what we are is still there, breeding conflict and misery. Why are we so frightened of our loneliness, or our emptiness? Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow and antagonism. Conflict is the denial of what is or the running away from what is; there is no conflict other than that. Our conflict becomes more and more complex and insoluble because we do not face what is. There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Observing thought - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Observing thought

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I must love the very thing I am studying. If you want to understand a child, you must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements, his idiosyncrasies, his ways of behavior; but if you merely condemn, resist or blame him, there is no comprehension of the child. Similarly, to understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels and does from moment to moment. That is the actual. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Freedom from what is - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Freedom from what is

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Being virtuous comes through the understanding of what is, whereas becoming virtuous is postponement, the covering up of what is with what you would like to be. Therefore in becoming virtuous you are avoiding action directly upon what is. This process of avoiding what is through the cultivation of the ideal is considered virtuous; but if you look at it closely and directly you will see that it is nothing of the kind. It is merely a postponement of coming face to face with what is. Virtue is not the becoming of what is not; virtue is the understanding of what is and therefore the freedom from what is. Virtue is essential in a society that is rapidly disintegrating. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Face the fact - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Face the fact

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I'm in sorrow. Psychologically, I'm terribly disturbed; and I have an idea about it: what I should do, what I should not do, how it should be changed. That idea, that formula, that concept prevents me from looking at the fact of what is. Ideation and the formula are escapes from what is. There is immediate action when there is great danger. Then you have no idea. You don't formulate an idea and then act according to that idea.The mind has become lazy, indolent through a formula which has given it a means of escape from action with regard to what is. Seeing for ourselves the whole structure of what has been said, not because it has been pointed out to us, is it possible to face the fact: the fact that we are violent, as an example? We are violent human beings, and we have chosen violence as the way of life -war and all the rest of it. Though we talk everlastingly, especially in the East, of nonviolence, we are not nonviolent people; we are violent people. The idea of nonviolence is an idea, which can be used politically. That's a different meaning, but it is an idea, and not a fact. Because the human being is incapable of meeting the fact of violence, he has invented the ideal of nonviolence, which prevents him from dealing with the fact.After all, the fact is that I'm violent; I'm angry. What is the need of an idea? It is not the idea of being angry; it's the actual fact of being angry that is important, like the actual fact of being hungry. There's no idea about being hungry. The idea then comes as to what you should eat, and then according to the dictates of pleasure, you eat. There is only action with regard to what is when there is no idea of what should be done about that which confronts you, which is what is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Immediate action - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Immediate action

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If you are in contact with anything, with your wife, with your children, with the sky, with the clouds, with any fact, the moment thought interferes with it you lose contact. Thought springs from memory. Memory is the image, and from there you look and therefore there is a separation between the observer and the observed.You have to understand this very deeply. It is this separation of the observer from the observed that makes the observer want more experience, more sensations, and so he is everlastingly pursuing, seeking. It has to be completely and totally understood that as long as there is an observer, the one that is seeking experience, the censor, the entity that evaluates, judges, condemns, there is no immediate contact with what is. When you have pain, physical pain, there is direct perception; there is not the observer who is feeling the pain; there is only pain. Because there is no observer there is immediate action. There is not the idea and then action, but there is only action when there is pain, because there is a direct physical contact. The pain is you; there is pain. As long as this is not completely understood, realized, explored and felt deeply, as long as it is not wholly grasped, not intellectually, not verbally, that the observer is the observed, all life becomes conflict, a contradiction between opposing desires, the 'what should be' and the 'what is'. You can do this only if you are aware whether you are looking at it as an observer, when you look at a flower or a cloud or anything. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, August 20, 2011

What is accumulated is not truth - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What is accumulated is not truth

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As long as there is the experiencer remembering the experience, truth is not. Truth is not something to be remembered, stored up, recorded, and then brought out. What is accumulated is not truth. The desire to experience creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for the separation of the thinker from his thought; the desire to become, to experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the experiencer and the experience. Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Thursday, August 18, 2011

When the observer is the observed - JKOnline Daily Quotes

When the observer is the observed

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Space is necessary. Without space there is no freedom. We are talking psychologically.It is only when one is in contact, when there is no space between the observer and the observed that one is in total relationship, with a tree for instance. One is not identified with the tree, the flower, a woman, a man or whatever it is, but when there is this complete absence of space as the observer and the observed, then there is vast space. In that space there is no conflict; in that space there is freedom.Freedom is not a reaction. You cannot say, 'Well, I am free'. The moment you say you are free you are not free, because you are conscious of yourself as being free from something, and therefore you have the same situation as an observer observing a tree. He has created a space, and in that space he breeds conflict. To understand this requires not intellectual agreement or disagreement, or saying, 'I don't understand', but rather it requires coming directly into contact with what is. It means seeing that all your actions, every moment of action is of the observer and the observed, and within that space there is pleasure, pain and suffering the desire to fulfill, to become famous. Within that space there is no contact with anything. Contact, relationship has a quite different meaning when the observer is no longer apart from the observed. There is this extraordinary space, and there is freedom. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Thought creates the thinker - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Thought creates the thinker

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Thought is verbalized sensation; thought is the response of memory, the word, the experience, the image. Thought is transient, changing, impermanent, and it is seeking permanency. So thought creates the thinker, who then becomes the permanent; he assumes the role of the censor, the guide, the controller, the molder of thought. This illusory permanent entity is the product of thought, of the transient. This entity is thought; without thought he is not. The thinker is made up of qualities; his qualities cannot be separated from himself. The controller is the controlled, he is merely playing a deceptive game with himself. Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Monday, August 15, 2011

The duality of thinker and thought - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The duality of thinker and thought

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As you watch anything -a tree, your wife, your children, your neighbor, the stars of a night, the light on the water, the bird in the sky, anything -there is always the observer, the censor, the thinker the experiencer, the seeker, and the thing he is observing; the observer and the observed; the thinker and the thought. So, there is always a division. It is this division that is time. That division is the very essence of conflict. And when there is conflict, there is contradiction. There is 'the observer and the observed',that is a contradiction; there is a separation. And hence where there is contradiction, there is conflict. And when there is conflict, there is always the urgency to get beyond it, to conquer it, to overcome it, to escape from it, to do something about it, and all that activity involves time. As long as there is this division, time will go on, and time is sorrow.And a man who will understand the end of sorrow must understand this, must find, must go beyond this duality between the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experienced. That is, when there is a division between the observer and the observed, there is time, and therefore there is no ending of sorrow. Then, what is one to do? You understand the question? I see, within myself, the observer is always watching, judging, censoring, accepting, rejecting, disciplining, controlling, shaping. That observer, that thinker, is the result of thought, obviously. Thought is first; not the observer, not the thinker. If there was no thinking at all, there would be no observer, no thinker; then there would only be complete, total attention. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, August 14, 2011

How do we end fear? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

How do we end fear?

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We are discussing something which needs your attention, not your agreement or disagreement. We are looking at life most rigorously, objectively, clearly -not according to your sentiment, your fancy, what you like or don't like. It's what we like and don't like that has created this misery. All that we are saying is this: 'How do we end fear?' That's one of our great problems, because if a human being can't end it he lives in darkness everlastingly, not everlastingly in the Christian sense but in the ordinary sense; one life is good enough. For me, as a human being, there must be a way out and not by creating a hope in some future. Can I as a human being end fear, totally; not little bits of it? Probably you've never put this question to yourself, and probably you've not put the question because you don't know how to get out of it. But if you did put that question most seriously, with the intention of finding out not how to end it, but with the intention of finding out the nature and the structure of fear, the moment you have found out, fear itself comes to an end; you don't have to do anything about it.When we are aware of it and come into contact with it directly, the observer is the observed. There is no difference between the observer and the thing observed. When fear is observed without the observer, there is action, but not the action of the observer acting upon fear. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, August 13, 2011

You and nothingness are one - JKOnline Daily Quotes

You and nothingness are one

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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. You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are not the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not. You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery. When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then fear -which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them- completely drops away. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Friday, August 12, 2011

Is suffering merely a word or an actuality? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Is suffering merely a word or an actuality?

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Is suffering merely a word, or an actuality? If it is an actuality and not just a word, then the word has no meaning now, so there is merely the feeling of intense pain. With regard to what? With regard to an image, to an experience, to something which you have or have not. If you have it, you call it pleasure; if you haven't it is pain. Therefore pain, sorrow, is in relationship to something. Is that something merely verbalization, or an actuality? -as fear cannot exist by itself but only in relationship to something: to an individual, to an incident, to a feeling. Now, you are fully aware of the suffering. Is that suffering apart from you and therefore you are merely the observer who perceives the suffering, or is that suffering you? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Hankering after the unknowable - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Hankering after the unknowable

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You want me to tell you what reality is. Can the indescribable be put into words? Can you measure something immeasurable? Can you catch the wind in your fist? If you do, is that the wind? If you measure that which is immeasurable, is that the real? If you formulate it, is it the real? Surely not, for the moment you describe something which is indescribable, it ceases to be the real. The moment you translate the unknowable into the known, it ceases to be the unknowable. Yet that is what we are hankering after. All the time we want to know, because then we shall be able to continue, then we shall be able, we think, to capture ultimate happiness, permanency. We want to know because we are not happy, because we are striving miserably, because we are worn out, degraded. Yet instead of realizing the simple fact -that we are degraded, that we are dull, weary, in turmoil-we want to move away from what is the known into the unknown, which again becomes the known and therefore we can never find the real. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

There is only one fact: impermanence - JKOnline Daily Quotes

There is only one fact: impermanence

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We are trying to find out if there is, or is not, a permanent state, not what we would like, but the actual fact, the truth of the matter. Everything about us, within as well as without -our relationships, our thoughts, our feelings- is impermanent, in a constant state of flux. Being aware of this, the mind craves permanency, a perpetual state of peace, of love, of goodness, a security that neither time nor events can destroy; therefore it creates the soul, the Atman, and the visions of a permanent paradise. But this permanency is born of impermanency, and so it has within it the seeds of the impermanent. There is only one fact: impermanence. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Translation of the facts prevents seeing - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Translation of the facts prevents seeing

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A mind that gives an opinion about a fact is a narrow, limited, destructive mind. You can translate the fact in one way, and I can translate it in another way. The translation of the fact is a curse which prevents us from seeing the actual fact and doing something about the fact. When you and I discuss our opinions about the fact, nothing is done about the fact; you can add perhaps more to the fact, see more nuances, implications, significance about the fact, and I may see less significance in the facts. But the fact cannot be interpreted; I cannot offer an opinion about the fact. It is so, and it is very difficult for a mind to accept the fact. We are always translating, we are always giving different meanings to it, according to our prejudices, conditionings, hopes, fears and all the rest of it. If you and I could see the fact without offering an opinion, interpreting, giving a significance, then the fact becomes much more alive -not more alive- the fact is there alone, nothing else matters; then the fact has its own energy which drives you in the right direction. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Monday, August 8, 2011

Understand the actual - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Understand the actual

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It is really not complex, though it may be arduous. You see, we don't start with the actual, with the fact, with what we are thinking, doing, desiring; we start with assumptions, or with ideals, which are not actualities, and so we are led astray. To start with facts, and not with assumptions, we need close attention; and every form of thinking not originating from the actual is a distraction. That's why it is so important to understand what is actually taking place both within and around one.If you are a Christian, your visions follow a certain pattern; if you are a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Muslim, they follow a different pattern. You see Christ or Krishna, according to your conditioning; your education, the culture in which you have been brought up, determines your visions. Which is the actuality: the vision, or the mind which has been shaped in a certain mold? The vision is the projection of the particular tradition which happens to form the background of the mind. This conditioning, not the vision which it projects, is the actuality, the fact. To understand the fact is simple; but it is made difficult by our likes and dislikes, by our condemnation of the fact, by the opinions or judgments we have about the fact. To be free of these various forms of evaluation is to understand the actual, the what is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life