Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes: 2010

Friday, December 31, 2010

Now, what is beauty? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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Now, what is beauty? This is one of the most fundamental questions, it is not superficial, so don't brush it aside. To understand what beauty is, to have that sense of goodness which comes when the mind and heart are in communion with something lovely without any hindrance so that one feels completely at ease - surely, this has great significance in life; and until we know this response to beauty our lives will be very shallow. One may be surrounded by great beauty, by mountains and fields and rivers, but unless one is alive to it all one might just as well be dead. - J. Krishnamurti Think On These Things

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Decent living - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Decent living

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Questioner: The problem of earning a decent living is predominant with most of us. Since economic currents of the world are hopelessly interdependent I find that almost anything I do either exploits others or contributes to the cause of war. How is one who honestly wishes to achieve right means of livelihood to withdraw from the wheels of exploitation and war? Krishnamurti: For him who truly wishes to find a right means of livelihood economic life, as at present organized, is certainly difficult. As the questioner says, economic currents are interrelated and so it is a complex problem, and as with all complex human problems it must be approached with simplicity. As society is becoming more and more complex and organized, regimentation of thought and action is being enforced for the sake of efficiency. Efficiency becomes ruthlessness when sensory values predominate, when eternal value is set aside. Obviously there are wrong means of livelihood. He who helps in manufacturing arms and other methods to kill his fellowman is surely occupied with furthering violence which never brings about peace in the world; the politician who, either for the benefit of his nation or of himself or of an ideology, is occupied in ruling and exploiting others, is surely employing wrong means of livelihood which lead to war, to the misery and sorrow of man; the priest who holds to a specialized prejudice, dogma or belief, to a particular form of worship and prayer is also using wrong means of livelihood, for he is only spreading ignorance and intolerance which set man against man. Any profession that leads to and maintains the divisions and conflict between man and man is obviously a wrong means of livelihood. Such occupations lead to exploitation and strife. Our means of livelihood are dictated, are they not, through tradition or through greed and ambition? Generally we do not deliberately set about choosing the right means of livelihood. We are only too thankful to get what we can and blindly follow the economic system that is about us. But the questioner wants to know how to withdraw from exploitation and war. To withdraw from them he must not allow himself to be influenced, nor follow traditional occupation, nor must he be envious and ambitious. Many of us choose some profession because of tradition or because we are of a family of lawyers or soldiers or politicians or traders; or our greed for power and position dictates our occupation; ambition drives us to compete and be ruthless in our desire to succeed. So he who would not exploit or contribute to the cause of war must cease to follow tradition, cease to be greedy, ambitious, selfseeking. If he abstains from these he will naturally find right occupation. But though it is important and beneficial, right occupation is not an end in itself. You may have a right means of livelihood but if you are inwardly insufficient and poor you will be a source of misery to yourself and so to others; you will be thoughtless, violent, selfassertive. Without that inward freedom of Reality you will have no joy, no peace. In the search and discovery of that inward Reality alone can we be not only content with little, but aware of something that is beyond all measure. It is this which must be first sought out; then other things will come into being in its wake. - J. Krishnamurti The Collected Works Volume IV

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Self-esteem is the cause of our shame - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Self-esteem is the cause of our shame

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We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall. If there is no pedestal on which you have put yourself, how can there be any fall? Why have you put yourself on a pedestal called self-esteem, human dignity, the ideal, and so on? If you can understand this, then there will be no shame of the past; it will have completely gone. You will be what you are without the pedestal. If the pedestal is not there, the height that makes you look down or look up, then you are what you have always avoided. It is this avoidance of what is, of what you are, that brings about confusion and antagonism, shame and resentment. You do not have to tell me or another what you are, but be aware of what you are, whatever it is, pleasant or unpleasant: live with it without justifying or resisting it. Live with it without naming it; for the very term is a condemnation or an identification. Live with it without fear, for fear prevents communion, and without communion you cannot live with it. To be in communion is to love. Without love, you cannot wipe out the past; with love, there is no past. - J. Krishnamurti Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 57, Self-Esteem

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Patience is not time. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Patience is not time.

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I realize my life is wrong. Nobody has to point that out; it is so. That is a fact and you come along and tell me that you can do something instantly. I don't believe you. I feel it can never happen. You come and tell me this whole struggle, this monstrous way of living, can be ended immediately. My brain says, sorry, you are cuckoo, I don't believe you. But K says, look, I will show it to you step by step. You may be god, you may be the Buddha, but I don't believe you. And K tells you, listen, take time, in the sense, have patience. Patience is not time. Impatience is time. Patience has no time. - J. Krishnamurti The Way of Intelligence Chapter 2

Monday, December 27, 2010

Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved?

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Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved? Listen carefully. You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways. - J. Krishnamurti Think On These Things

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Love can do nothing, but without it nothing can be done - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Love can do nothing, but without it nothing can be done

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Love is not sorrow nor is it made up of jealousy but it is dangerous for it destroys. It destroys everything that man has built around himself except bricks. It cannot build temples nor reform the rotting society; it can do nothing, but without it nothing can be done, do what you will. Every computer and automation can alter the shape of things and give man leisure which will become another problem when there are already so many problems. Love has no problem and that is why it is so destructive and dangerous. Man lives by problems, those unresolved and continuous things; without them, he wouldn't know what to do; he would be lost and in the losing gain nothing. So problems multiply endlessly; in the resolving of the one there is another, but death, of course, is destruction; it is not love. Death is old age, disease and the problems which no computer can solve. It is not the destruction that love brings; it is not the death that love brings. It is the ashes of a fire that has been carefully built up and it is the noise of automatic machines that go on working without interruption. Love, death, creation are inseparable; you cannot have one and deny the others; you cannot buy it on the market or in any church; these are the last places where you would find it. - J. Krishnamurti Krishnamurtis Notebook

Saturday, December 25, 2010

The book of mankind is you. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The book of mankind is you.

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Q: I am a student of chartered accountancy. Even though I could understand each and every word of JK, the message remains vague. What should I do to understand his message fully? Krishnamurti: Don't understand his message! He is not bringing a message. He is pointing out your life, not his life, or his message, he is pointing out how you live, what's your daily life. And we are unwilling to face that. We are unwilling to go into our sorrow, our tortures of anxiety, loneliness, the depressions we go through, the desire to fulfil, to become something. You are unwilling to face all that, and wanting to be led by somebody, wanting to understand the message of the Gita, or some other nonsensical book, including the speaker. The speaker says over and over again, he acts as a mirror into which you can look, the activity of your own self. And to look very carefully you have to pay attention, you have to listen - if you are interested - listen and find out the art of listening, the art of seeing, the art of learning. It's all there as a book, which is yourself. The book of mankind is you. - J. Krishnamurti Madras 1st Public Question & Answer Meeting 6th January 1981

Friday, December 24, 2010

Awareness - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Awareness

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When one is aware of the total process of obsession or of any other problem, only then is there freedom from the problem. To be extensively aware, there must be no condemnation or justification of the problem; awareness must be choiceless. To be so aware demands wide patience and sensitivity; it requires eagerness and sustained attention so that the whole process of thinking can be observed and understood. - J. Krishnamurti Commentaries on Living Series I Obsession

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Awareness reveals the problem completely - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Awareness reveals the problem completely

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Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of selfprotective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will. Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively. Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and nonrepetitive; nor does it create habit. Take, for instance, the habit of smoking and experiment with it in awareness. Be aware of smoking, do not condemn, rationalize or accept, simply be aware. If you are so aware there is the cessation of the habit; if you are so aware there will be no recurrence of it but if you are not aware the habit will persist. This awareness is not the determination to cease or to indulge. Be aware; there is a fundamental difference between being and becoming. To become aware you make effort and effort implies resistance and time, and leads to conflict. If you are aware in the moment there is no effort, no continuance of the self-protective intelligence. You are aware or you are not; the desire to be aware is only the activity of the sleeper, the dreamer. Awareness reveals the problem completely, fully, without denial or acceptance, justification or identification, and it is freedom which quickens understanding. Awareness is a unitary process of the observer and the observed. - J. Krishnamurti The Collected Works Volume IV Ojai 4th Public Talk 1946

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Where there is no anonymity there is violence. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Where there is no anonymity there is violence.

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On every table there were daffodils, young, fresh, just out of the garden, with the bloom of spring on them still. On a side table there were lilies, creamy-white with sharp yellow centres. To see this creamy-white and the brilliant yellow of those many daffodils was to see the blue sky, ever expanding, limitless, silent. Almost all the tables were taken by people talking very loudly and laughing. At a table nearby a woman was surreptitiously feeding her dog with the meat she could not eat. They all seemed to have huge helpings, and it was not a pleasant sight to see people eating; perhaps it may be barbarous to eat publicly. A man across the room had filled himself with wine and meat and was just lighting a big cigar, and a look of beatitude came over his fat face. His equally fat wife lit a cigarette. Both of them appeared to be lost to the world. And there they were, the yellow daffodils, and nobody seemed to care. They were there for decorative purposes that had no meaning at all; and as you watched them their yellow brilliance filled the noisy room. Colour has this strange effect upon the eye. It wasn't so much that the eye absorbed the colour, as that the colour seemed to fill your being. You were that colour; you didn't become that colour - you were of it, without identification or name: the anonymity which is innocence. Where there is no anonymity there is violence, in all its different forms. - J. Krishnamurti The Only Revolution Europe Part 13 The Collected Works Volume IV

Mental exploration is superficial

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Understanding obviously does not come through fragmentation; and most of us think in terms of fragmentation, all our relationships in life are fragmentary. With one part of ourselves we are politicians, with another part we are religious, with a third part we are business-people, and so on. Psychologically we are all broken up, and with these fragments of ourselves we look at life. And then we say, "Intellectually I understand, but I cannot act". So, mental examination or exploration is fragmentary, superficial, and it does not bring about understanding. Intellectually we agree, for example, that it is immature to have the world broken up into conflicting nationalities and religious groups, but at heart we are still English, German, Hindu, Christian, and so on. Our difficulty is to bring about a direct emotional contact with the fact, and this demands that we approach the fact negatively, that is, without any obsession of opinion. There is a vast difference, then, between the mental examination of a fact and the understanding of that fact. Mental examination of the fact leads nowhere. But the understanding born of approaching the fact negatively, without opinion or interpretation - this understanding of the fact gives tremendous energy to deal with the fact. - J. Krishnamurti The Collected Works Volume XIII Saanen 1st Public Talk 22nd July 1962

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

What are you educated for, anyway? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What are you educated for, anyway?

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You may be a sociologist, an anthropologist or a scientist, with your specialized mind working away at a fragment of the whole field of life. You are filled with knowledge and words, with capable explanations and rationalizations. And perhaps in the future the computer will be able to do all this infinitely better than you can. So education may have a different meaning altogether - not merely transferring what is printed on a page to your brain. Education may mean opening the doors of perception on to the vast movement of life. It may mean learning how to live happily, freely, without hate and confusion, but in beatitude. Modern education is blinding us; we learn to fight each other more and more, to compete, to struggle with each other. Right education is surely finding a different way of life, setting the mind free from its own conditioning. And perhaps then there can be love which in its action will bring about true relationship between man and man. - J. Krishnamurti Five Conversations 5th Conversation The Collected Works Volume XIII

Monday, December 20, 2010

Truth - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Truth

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One day a man was walking along the street and instead of looking at the beautiful sky he was watching the pavement as he went along. Then he saw in the distance something very brilliant. He went rapidly towards it, picked it up and looked at this extraordinary thing, and he was in a state of beatitude, because it was extraordinarily beautiful. So he looked at it and put it in his pocket. Behind were two people, also walking. One of them says to the other "What was it that he picked up? Did you see his expression, what an ecstasy he was in by the very act of looking at it?" And the other - who happened to be the devil - said, "What he picked up was truth." And the friend said "That is a very bad business for you that he has found it". He said "Not at all. I am going to help him to organize it." And that is what we have done - we have the systems, the methods, the practices of the gurus. And so a mind that is enquiring into the nature of truth must be free totally from all organized pursuit, all organized practice, all organized enquiry. - J. Krishnamurti 4th Public Talk New Delhi 20th December 1970

Sunday, December 19, 2010

What does it mean to die? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What does it mean to die?

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What is death, what does it mean to die? - and that is an absolute certainty that we are all going to die, and what does that mean? One has continued from childhood till the moment of death - continued with one's thoughts, with one's ideas or new set of ideas, thoughts, trouble, pain, anxieties, loneliness and all the travail of life, that is what we call continuity. And in that process time is a factor. And when we die all the Asiatic world believes, at least some of them, majority of them, including India and so on - this continuity will continue after death - which is called rebirth, reincarnation. That's a very comforting idea! What you sow you reap. If you are not good in this life then in next life you pay for it, or you pay for it now. Right? Cause and effect. Causation separate, as though it was separate from the effect. We are saying causation has in it inherently effect. It is not two separate things. I wonder if you get all this? This is not philosophy, it is not some kind of exotic nonsense. You can see one's own life, if you do something ugly it has its own reward, or its own pain. If you do something correctly, without the self, then that brings about its own goodness. So continuity is a form of causation, effect and the effect becomes the cause, and so it is a chain. And we are asking what is death? Biologically, when the brain has not sufficient blood, breath and so on, it decays very rapidly and that is called death, physical death. Either this is brought about by some kind of disease, natural old age or some accident. We acknowledge that because that is inevitable but we think we have gathered all this experience, all my life I've worked, all my life I have tried to do this and that and what is the good of it all if I come to an end of all that? Don't you ask these questions? So we have to ask: what is it to end? - to end something in which there is no continuity. You understand? To end. - J. Krishnamurti Brockwood Park 4th Public Talk 2nd September 1984

Saturday, December 18, 2010

If you only had an hour to live... - JKOnline Daily Quotes

If you only had an hour to live...

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"May I ask just one question?" put in one of the others. "In what manner should one live one's daily life?" As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour. "How?" If you had only one hour to live, what would you do? "I really don't know," he replied anxiously. Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, your will, and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask their forgiveness for the harm that you might have done to them, and forgive them for whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour then it can also be done for the days and years that may remain. "Is such a thing really possible, sir?" Try it and you will find out. - Commentaries On Living Series III, Sorrow From Self-Pity

Friday, December 17, 2010

Joy has no motive - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Joy has no motive

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Happiness and pleasure you can buy in any market at a price. But bliss you cannot buy for yourself or for another. Happiness and pleasure are time-binding. Only in total freedom does bliss exist. Pleasure, like happiness, you can seek, and find, in many ways. But they come, and go. Bliss that strange sense of joy has no motive. You cannot possibly seek it. Once it is there, depending on the quality of your mind, it remains timeless, causeless, and a thing that is not measurable by time. Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind. Once it is there, conflict has ceased. But the ending of conflict is not necessarily the total freedom. Meditation is a movement of the mind in this freedom. In this explosion of bliss the eyes are made innocent, and love is then benediction. - J. Krishnamurti Meditations 1969 Part 10

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Simplicity of life comes with inner richness - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Simplicity of life comes with inner richness

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Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few things but in the freedom from possession and non-possession, in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding. Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness, greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits thought and prevents it from flowering and discovering reality. To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result, is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful. Simplicity of life comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from craving, with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction, from distraction. From this simple life there comes that necessary one-pointedness which is not the outcome of self-enclosing concentration but of extensional awareness and meditative understanding. Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances; contentment with little comes with the riches of inward understanding. If you depend on circumstances to make you satisfied with life then you will create misery and chaos, for then you are a plaything of environment, and it is only when circumstances are transcended through understanding that there is order and clarity. To be constantly aware of the process of acquisitiveness, of addiction, of distraction, brings freedom from them and so there is a true and simple life. - The Collected Works Volume III Ojai 8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

There is no path to truth - JKOnline Daily Quotes

There is no path to truth

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When you speak of a path to truth, it implies that truth, this living reality, is not in the present, but somewhere in the distance, somewhere in the future. Now to me, truth is fulfillment, and to fulfillment there can be no path. So it seems, to me at least, that the first illusion in which you are caught is this desire for assurance, this desire for certainty, this inquiry after a path, a way, a mode of living whereby you can attain the desired goal, which is truth. Your conviction that truth exists only in the distant future implies imitation. When you inquire what truth is, you are really asking to be told the path which leads to truth. Then you want to know which system to follow, which mode, which discipline, to help you on the way to truth. But to me there is no path to truth; truth is not to be understood through any system, through any path. A path implies a goal, a static end, and therefore a conditioning of the mind and the heart by that end, which necessarily demands discipline, control, acquisitiveness. This discipline, this control, becomes a burden; it robs you of freedom and conditions your action in daily life. Inquiry after truth implies a goal, a static end, which you are seeking. And that you are seeking a goal shows that your mind is searching for assurance, certainty. To attain this certainty, mind desires a path, a system, a method which it can follow, and this assurance you think to find by conditioning mind and heart through self-discipline, self-control, suppression. But truth is a reality that cannot be understood by following any path. Truth is not a conditioning, a shaping of the mind and heart, but a constant fulfillment, a fulfillment in action. That you inquire after truth implies that you believe in a path to truth, and this is the first illusion in which you are caught. - The Collected Works Volume I Adyar 5th Public Talk 2nd January, 1934

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Help them to be intelligent - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Help them to be intelligent

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Question: Which is the wiser course to take - to protect and shelter the ignorant by advice and guidance, or to let them find out through their own experience and suffering, even though it may take them a whole lifetime to extricate themselves from the effects of such experience and suffering? Krishnamurti: I would say neither; I would say help them to be intelligent, which is quite a different thing. When you want to guide and protect the ignorant, you are really giving them a shelter which you have created for yourself. And to take the opposite point of view, that is, to let them drift through experiences, is equally foolish. But we can help another by true education - not this modern disease we call education, this passing through examinations and universities. I don't call that education at all. It is merely stultifying the mind. But that is a different question. If we can help another to become intelligent, that is all we need do. But that is the most difficult thing in the world, for intelligence does not offer shelter from the struggles and turmoils of life, nor does it give comfort; it only creates understanding. Intelligence is free,untrammelled, without fear or superficiality. We can help another to free himself from acquisitiveness, from the many illusions and hindrances which bind him, only when we begin to free ourselves. But we have this extraordinary attitude of wanting to improve the masses while we ourselves are still ignorant, still caught up in superstition, in acquisitiveness. When we begin to free ourselves, then we shall help another naturally and truly. - The Collected Works Volume II Adyar 6th Public Talk 3rd January, 1934

Monday, December 13, 2010

Find out what you really feel and think - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Find out what you really feel and think

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In talking to groups of listeners all over the world, I find that more and more people seem not to understand what I am saying, because they come with fixed ideas; they listen with their biased attitude, without trying to find out what I have to say, but only expecting to find what they secretly desire. It is vain to say, "Here is a new ideal after which I must mould myself." Rather find out what you really feel and think. How can you find out what you really feel and think? From my point of view, you can do that only by being aware of your whole life. Then you will discover to what extent you are a slave to your ideals, and by discovering that, you will see that you have created ideals merely for your consolation. - J. Krishnamurti Alpino, Italy 1st Public Talk 1st July, 1933 The Collected Works Volume II

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Observation is not detachment - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Observation is not detachment

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A mind that is indifferent, is aware of the shoddiness of our civilization, the shoddiness of our thought, the ugly relationships; it is aware of the street, of the beauty of a tree, or of a lovely face, a smile; and it neither denies it nor accepts it, but merely observes - not intellectually, not coldly, but with that warm affectionate indifference. Observation is not detachment, because there is no attachment. It is only when the mind is attached - to your house, to the family, to some job - , that you talk about detachment. But, you know, when you are indifferent, there is a sweetness to it, there is a perfume to it, there is a quality of tremendous energy this may not be the meaning of that word in the dictionary. One has to be indifferent - to health, to loneliness, to what people say or do not say; indifferent whether you succeed or do not succeed; indifferent to authority. Now, if you observe, you hear somebody is shooting, making a lot of noise with a gun. You can very easily get used to it; probably you have already got used to it, and you turn a deaf ear - that is not indifference. Indifference comes into being when you listen to that noise with no resistance, go with that noise, ride on that noise infinitely. Then that noise does not affect you, does not pervert you, does not make you indifferent. Then you listen to every noise in the world - the noise of your children, of your wife, of the birds, the noise of the chatter the politicians make - , you listen to it completely with indifference and therefore with understanding. - J. Krishnamurti Bombay 6th Public Talk 7th March 1962