Sunday, February 27, 2011

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What does it mean to die? To give up everything. Death cuts you off with a very, very, very sharp razor from your attachments, from your gods, from your superstitions, from your desire for comfort next life and so on. I am going to find out what death means because it is as important as living. So how can I find out, actually, not theoretically, what it means to die? I actually want to find out, as you want to find out. I am speaking for you, so don't go to sleep. What does it mean to die? Put that question to yourself. While we are young, or when we are very old, this question is always there. It means to be totally free, to be totally unattached to everything that man has put together, or what you have put together totally free. No attachments, no gods, no future, no past. You don't see the beauty of it, the greatness of it, the extraordinary strength of it while living to be dying. You understand what that means? While you are living, every moment you are dying, so that throughout life you are not attached to anything. That is what death means. - The Future is Now, Chapter 10

Do ideas limit action?

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Can ideas ever produce action, or do ideas merely mold thought and therefore limit action? When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man. It is extraordinarily important for us to understand this point. If an idea shapes action, then action can never bring about the solution to our miseries because, before it can be put into action, we have first to discover how the idea comes into being. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Action without idea

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What do we mean by idea? Surely idea is the process of thought, is it not? Idea is a process of mentation, of thinking; and thinking is always a reaction, either of the conscious or of the unconscious. Thinking is a process of verbalisation which is the result of memory. Thinking is a process of time. So, when action is based on the process of thinking, such action must inevitably be conditioned, isolated. Idea must oppose idea; idea must be dominated by idea. There is a gap then between action and idea. What we are trying to find out is whether it is possible for action to be without idea. We see how idea separates people. As I have already explained, knowledge and belief are essentially separating qualities. Beliefs never bind people, they always separate people. When action is based on belief, or an idea, or an ideal, such an action must inevitably be isolated, fragmented. Is it possible to act without the process of thought; thought being a process of time, a process of calculation, a process of self-protection, a process of belief, denial, condemnation, justification? Surely it must have occurred to you, as it has to me, whether action is at all possible without idea. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Complete negation is complete action - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Complete negation is complete action

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Thought is the entity that divides and through thought, that is through analysis, you hope to come upon that state in which there is no division at all; you can't do it, it can only come about when the mind itself sees and understands this whole process, and is then completely quiet. That word 'understanding' is very important; a description doesn't bring understanding, neither does finding out the cause of something. So what brings understanding? What is understanding? Have you ever noticed when your mind is quietly listening - not arguing, judging, criticizing, evaluating, comparing but just listening, then in that state the mind is silent and then only understanding comes. There is this division within ourselves, this everlasting contradiction and we must simply be aware of it, and not try to do anything about it, because whatever we do causes this division. So complete negation is complete action. - Talks with American Students, Chapter 7 2nd Talk at Claremont College California 10th November, 1968

Friday, February 25, 2011

What is experience? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What is experience?

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You must understand what experience is, because it is this accumulated experience which is all the time building images - so what is experience? The word 'experience' means to go right through something, but we never do! Let us take it at the simplest level! You insult me and the experience remains, leaves an imprint on my mind, becomes part of my memory, so you are my enemy; I don't like you. And the same thing happens if you flatter me, then you are my friend; the memory of the flattery remains as does the insult. Please follow this very carefully! Can I, at the moment of the flattery or the insult, go through it completely, so that the experience leaves no mark on the mind at all? This means that when you insult me, I listen to it and look at it, totally, completely, objectively and without emotion, as I look at this microphone, which means giving total attention to it with my whole mind and heart, to find out if what you say is true and if it isn't, then what is the point of holding on to it. This is not a theory; the mind is never free if there is any form of conceptual thinking or image-building. And I do the same if you flatter me, say what a marvellous speaker I am. I listen with my whole mind and heart while you are speaking, not afterwards, to find out why you are saying It and what value it has, whether or not I am a marvellous speaker, then I have both finished with insult and flattery. - Talks with American Students, Chapter 7 2nd Talk at Claremont College California 10th November, 1968

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Distraction from observation - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Distraction from observation

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When you name a thing, the very word acts as a distraction from observation. When you use the word 'cypress', you are looking at that tree through the word; so you are not actually looking at the tree. You are looking at that tree through the image that you have built up, and so the image prevents you from looking. In the same way, if you try to look at yourself without the image this is quite strange and deeply disturbing. To look when you are angry, when you are jealous, to look at that feeling without naming it, without putting it into a category. Because when you put it into a category or name it, you are looking at that present state of feeling through the past memory. I don't know if you are following this. So you are actually not looking at the feeling, but you are looking through the memory which has been accumulated when other similar types of feeling arose. - Talks with American Students, Chapter 4 1st Talk at Morcelo, Puerto Rico 14th September, 1968

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Psychological time exists only when there is comparison - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Psychological time exists only when there is comparison

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Psychological time exists only when there is comparison, when there is a distance to be covered between 'what is' and 'what should be', which is the desire to become somebody or nobody, all that involves psychological time and the distance to be covered. So one says, is there a tomorrow, psychologically? And this you will not be able to answer. Is there tomorrow - 'tomorrow' having come into being because I have had a moment of complete freedom, a complete feeling of something, and it has gone. I would like to keep it, to make it last. Making it last is a form of greed. We struggle to achieve that thing again. All this is implied in psychological time. When you have some experience of joy, of pleasure or whatever it is, live it completely and do not demand that it should endure, because then you are caught in time. - Talks with American Students, Chapter 4 1st Talk at Morcelo, Puerto Rico 14th September, 1968

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Energy to inquire. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Energy to inquire.

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After all, to find out anything you must have energy, and you need a great deal of energy to inquire into something totally new. And to have that energy, you must have listened to the old pattern of life, neither condemning nor approving. You must have listened to it totally - which means you have understood it, you have understood the futility of living that way. When you have listened to the futility of it, you are already out of it. Then you have - not intellectually but deeply - felt the uselessness of living that way and have listened to it completely, totally; then you have the energy to inquire. If you have not the energy, you cannot inquire. That is, when you deny that which has brought about this misery, this conflict - which we have gone into - that denial, that very negation of it is positive action. - Talks by Krishnamurti In India 1966 (Authentic Report) Madras-Bombay-New Delhi

Acting without idea is the way of love

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Thought must always be limited by the thinker who is conditioned. The thinker is always conditioned and is never free. If thought occurs, immediately idea follows. Idea in order to act is bound to create more confusion. Knowing all this, is it possible to act without idea? Yes. It is the way of love. Love is not an idea; it is not a sensation; it is not a memory; it is not a feeling of postponement, a self protective device. We can only be aware of the way of love when we understand the whole process of idea. Now, is it possible to abandon the other ways and know the way of love, which is the only redemption? No other way, political or religious, will solve the problem. This is not a theory which you will have to think over and adopt in your life; it must be actual... ...When you love, is there idea? Do not accept it; just look at it, examine it, go into it profoundly because every other way we have tried, and there is no answer to misery. Politicians may promise it. The so called religious organisations may promise future happiness, but we have not got it now and the future is relatively unimportant when I am hungry. We have tried every other way; and we can only know the way of love if we know the way of idea and abandon idea, which is to act. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Action without ideation - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Action without ideation

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The idea is the result of the thought process, the thought process is the response of memory, and memory is always conditioned. Memory is always in the past, and that memory is given life in the present by a challenge. Memory has no life in itself; it comes to life in the present when confronted by a challenge. And all memory, whether dormant or active, is conditioned, is it not? Therefore there has to be quite a different approach. You have to find out for yourself, inwardly, whether you are acting on an idea, and if there can be action without ideation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Ideology prevents action - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Ideology prevents action

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The world is always close to catastrophe. But it seems to be closer now. Seeing this approaching catastrophe, most of us take shelter in idea. We think that this catastrophe, this crisis, can be solved by an ideology. Ideology is always an impediment to direct relationship, which prevents action. We want peace only as an idea, but not as an actuality. We want peace on the verbal level which is only on the thinking level, though we proudly call it the intellectual level. But the word peace is not peace. Peace can only be when the confusion which you and another make ceases. We are attached to the world of ideas and not to peace. We search for new social and political patterns and not for peace; we are concerned with the reconciliation of effects and not in putting aside the cause of war. This search will bring only answers conditioned by the past. This conditioning is what we call knowledge, experience; and the new changing facts are translated, interpreted, according to this knowledge. So, there is conflict between what is and the experience that has been. The past, which is knowledge, must ever be in conflict with the fact, which is ever in the present. So, this will not solve the problem but will perpetuate the conditions which have created the problem. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Friday, February 18, 2011

Do ideas limit action?   - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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Do ideas limit action?   - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Do ideas limit action?  

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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Action without idea   - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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Action without idea   - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Action without idea  

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What do we mean by 'idea'? Surely idea is the process of thought, is it not? Idea is a process of mentation, of thinking; and thinking is always a reaction, either of the conscious or of the unconscious. Thinking is a process of verbalisation which is the result of memory. Thinking is a process of time. So, when action is based on the process of thinking, such action must inevitably be conditioned, isolated. Idea must oppose idea; idea must be dominated by idea. There is a gap then between action and idea. What we are trying to find out is whether it is possible for action to be without idea. We see how idea separates people. As I have already explained, knowledge and belief are essentially separating qualities. Beliefs never bind people, they always separate people. When action is based on belief, or an idea, or an ideal, such an action must inevitably be isolated, fragmented. Is it possible to act without the process of thought; thought being a process  of time, a process of calculation, a process of self-protection, a process of belief, denial, condemnation, justification? Surely it must have occurred to you, as it has to me, whether action is at all possible without idea. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Ideas are not truth

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It is only when the mind is free from idea that there can be experiencing. Ideas are not truth, and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. It is not an experience which you want, which is then merely sensation. Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas - which is the 'me', which is the mind which has a partial or complete continuity; only when one can go beyond that, when thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Direct observation - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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Direct observation - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Direct observation

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Why do ideas take root in our minds? Why do not facts become all-important -not ideas? Why do theories, ideas, become so significant rather than the fact? Is it that we cannot understand the fact, or have not the capacity, or are afraid of facing the fact? Therefore, ideas, speculations, theories are a means of escaping away from the fact... You may run away, you may do all kinds of things; the facts are there the fact that one is angry, the fact that one is ambitious, the fact that one is sexual, a dozen things. You may suppress them, you may transmute them, which is another form of suppression; you may control them, but they are all suppressed, controlled, disciplined with ideas...Do not ideas waste our energy? Do not ideas dull the mind? You may be clever in speculation, in  quotations; but it is obviously a dull mind which quotes, that has read a lot and quotes. ...You remove the conflict of the opposite at one stroke if you live with the fact and  therefore liberate the energy to face the fact. For most of us, contradiction is an  extraordinary field in which the mind is caught. I want to do this, and I do something  entirely different; but if I face the fact of wanting to do this, there is no contradiction; and  therefore, at one stroke I abolish altogether all sense of the opposite, and my mind then is  completely concerned with what is, and with the understanding of what is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Belief hinders true understanding

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If we had no belief, what would happen to us? Shouldn't we be very frightened of what might happen? If we had no pattern of action based on a belief either in God, or in communism, or in socialism, or in imperialism, or in some kind of religious formula, some dogma in which we are conditioned, we should feel utterly lost, shouldn't we? And is not this acceptance of a belief the covering up of that fear - the fear of being really nothing, of being empty? After all, a cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations, is really an uncreative mind; it is merely a repetitive mind. To escape from that fear - that fear of emptiness, that fear of loneliness, that fear of stagnation, of not arriving, not succeeding, not achieving, not being something, not becoming something, is surely one of the reasons, is it not, why we accept beliefs so eagerly and greedily? And, through acceptance of belief, do we understand ourselves? On the contrary. A belief, religious or political, obviously hinders the understanding of ourselves. It acts as a screen through which we look at ourselves. And can we look at ourselves without beliefs? If we remove these beliefs, the many beliefs that one has, is there anything left to look at? If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is, and then surely there is the beginning of the understand of oneself. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Life anew - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Life anew

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One of the things, it seems to me, that most of us eagerly accept and take for granted is the question of beliefs. I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it. One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism which is an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up. There is the Hindu belief, the Christian belief, the Buddhist innumerable sectarian and national beliefs, various political ideologies, all contending with one other, trying to convert one other. One can see, obviously, that belief is separating people, creating intolerance; is it possible to live without belief? One can find that out only if one can study oneself in relationship to a belief. Is it possible to live in this world without a belief not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another, but be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute? This, after all, is the truth: to have the capacity of meeting everything anew, from moment to moment, without the conditioning reaction of the past, so that there is not the cumulative effect which acts as a barrier between oneself and that which is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The screen of belief - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The screen of belief

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You believe in God, and another does not believe in God, so your beliefs separate you from each other. Belief throughout the world is organized as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, and so it divides man from man. We are confused, and we think that through belief we shall clear the confusion; that is, belief is superimposed on the confusion, and we hope that confusion will thereby be cleared away. But belief is merely an escape from the fact of confusion; it does not help us to face and to understand the fact but to run away from the confusion in which we are. To understand the confusion, belief is not necessary, and belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. So, religion, which is organized belief, becomes a means of escape from what is, from the fact of confusion. The man who believes in God, the man who believes in the hereafter, or who has any other form of belief, is escaping from the fact of what he is. Do you not know those who believe in God, who do puja, who repeat certain chants and words, and who in their daily life are dominating, cruel, ambitious, cheating, dishonest? Shall they find God? Are they really seeking God? Is God to be found through repetition of words, through belief? But such people believe in God, they worship God, they go to the temple every day, they do everything to avo id the fact of what they are and such people you consider respectable because they are yourself. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Friday, February 11, 2011

Beyond belief

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We realize that life is ugly, painful, sorrowful; we want some kind of theory, some kind of speculation or satisfaction, some kind of doctrine, which will explain all this, and so we are caught in explanation, in words, in theories, and gradually, beliefs become deeply rooted and unshakable because behind those beliefs, behind those dogmas, there is the constant fear of the unknown. But we never look at that fear; we turn away from it. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. And when we examine these beliefs the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist we find that they divide people. Each dogma, each belief has a series of rituals, a series of compulsions which bind man and separate man. So, we start with an inquiry to find out what is true, what the significance is of this misery, this struggle, this pain; and we are soon caught up in beliefs, in rituals, in theories.Belief is corruption because, behind belief and morality lurks the mind, the self the self growing big, powerful and strong. We consider belief in God, the belief in something, as religion. We consider that to believe is to be religious. You understand? If you do not believe, you will be considered an atheist, you will be condemned by society. One society will condemn those who believe in God, and another society will condemn those who do not. They are both the same. So, religion becomes a matter of belief and belief acts and has a corresponding influence on the mind; the mind then can never be free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Agitated by belief

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So, your religion, your belief in God, is an escape from actuality, and therefore it is no religion at all. The rich man who accumulates money through cruelty, through dishonesty, through cunning exploitation believes in God; and you also believe in God, you also are cunning, cruel, suspicious, envious. Is God to be found through dishonesty, through deceit, through cunning tricks of the mind? Because you collect all the sacred books and the various symbols of God, does that indicate that you are a religious person? So, religion is not escape from the fact; religion is the understanding of the fact of what you are in your everyday relationships; religion is the manner of your speech, the way you talk, the way you address your servants, the way you treat your wife, your children, and neighbors. As long as you do not understand your relationship with your neighbor, with society, with your wife and children, there must be confusion; and whatever it does, the mind that is confused will only create more confusion, more problems and conflict. A mind that escapes from the actual, from the facts of relationship, shall never find God; a mind that is agitated by belief shall not know truth. But the mind that understands its relationship with property, with people, with ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love such a mind alone can understand reality. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

What is

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Surely, a man who is understanding life does not want beliefs. A man who loves, has no beliefs he loves. It is the man who is consumed by the intellect who has beliefs, because intellect is always seeking security, protection; it is always avoiding danger, and therefore it builds ideas, beliefs, ideals, behind which it can take shelter. What would happen if you dealt with violence directly, now? You would be a danger to society; and because the mind foresees the danger, it says "I will achieve the ideal of nonviolence ten years later which is such a fictitious, false process... ; To understand what is, is more important than to create and follow ideals because ideals are false, and what is is the real. To understand what is requires an enormous capacity, a swift and unprejudiced mind. It is because we dont want to face and understand what is that we invent the many ways of escape and give them lovely names as the ideal, the belief, God. Surely, it is only when I see the false as the false that my mind is capable of perceiving what is true. A mind that is confused in the false, can never find the truth. Therefore, I must understand what is false in my relationships, in my ideas, in the things about me because to perceive the truth requires the understanding of the false. Without removing the causes of ignorance, there cannot be enlightenment; and to seek enlightenment when the mind is unenlightened is utterly empty, meaningless. Therefore, I must begin to see the false in my relationships with ideas, with people, with things. When the mind sees that which is false, then that which is true comes into being and then there is ecstasy, there is happiness. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life