Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Face the fact - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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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