Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Thursday, September 9, 2010

To be absolutly free - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Posted:

Man has always sought something beyond the physical existence. He has always searched, asked, suffered, tortured himself, to find out if there is something which is not of time, which is not of thought, which is not belief or faith. To find that out one must be absolutely free, for if you are anchored to a particular form of belief, that very belief will prevent investigation into what is eternal - if there is such a thing as eternity which is beyond all time, beyond all measure. So one must be free - if one is serious in the enquiry into what religion is - one must be free of all the things that thought has invented about that which is considered religious. That is, all the things that Hinduism, for example, has invented, with its superstitions, with its beliefs, with its images, and its ancient literature such as the Upanishads - one must he completely free of all that. If one is attached to all that then it is impossible, naturally, to discover that which is original. You understand the problem? If my mind, my brain is conditioned by Hindu superstitions, beliefs, dogmas and idolatry, with all the ancient tradition, then it is anchored to that and cannot move, it is not free. Similarly, one must be free totally from all the inventions of thought, the rituals, dogmas, beliefs, symbols, saviours and so on of Christianity. That may be rather more difficult, that is coming nearer home. But all religions, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, are the movement of thought continued through time, through literature, through symbols, through things made by the hand or by the mind - and all that is considered religious in the modern world. To the speaker that is not religious. To the speaker it is a form of illusion, comforting, satisfying, romantic, sentimental but not actual. - The Network of Thought Chapter 9

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Tolerance - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Tolerance

Posted:

You have your beliefs, and another has his; you hold to your particular form of religion and another to his; you are a Christian, another is a Mahomedan, and yet another a Hindu. You have these religious dissensions and distinctions, but yet you talk of brotherly love, tolerance and unity - not that there must be uniformity of thought and ideas. The tolerance of which you speak is merely a clever invention of the mind; this tolerance merely indicates the desire to cling to your own idiosyncrasies, your own limited ideas and prejudices, and allow another to pursue his own. In this tolerance there is no intelligent diversity, but only a kind of superior indifference. There is utter falsity in this tolerance. You say, "You continue in your own way, and I shall continue in mine; but let us be tolerant, brotherly." When there is true brotherliness, friendliness, when there is love in your heart, then you will not talk of tolerance. Only when you feel superior in your certainty, in your position, in your knowledge, only then do you talk of tolerance. You are tolerant only when there is distinction. With the cessation of distinction, there will be no talk of tolerance. Then you will not talk of brotherhood, for then in your hearts you are brothers. - Adyar 1st Public Talk 29th December, 1933

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Solitude - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Solitude

Posted:

For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it is to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it. - Life Ahead Page 14

Monday, September 6, 2010

Your mind goes to sleep - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Your mind goes to sleep

Posted:

Questioner: Why do we want to live in luxury? Krishnamurti: What do you mean by luxury? Having clean clothes, keeping your body clean, eating good food - do you call that luxury? It may seem to be luxury to the man who is starving, clothed in rags, and who can't take a bath every day. So luxury varies according to one's desires; it is a matter of degree. Now, do you know what happens to you if you are fond of luxury if you are attached to comfort and always want to sit on a sofa or in an overstuffed chair? Your mind goes to sleep. It is good to have a little bodily comfort; but to emphasize comfort, to give it great importance, is to have a sleepy mind. Have you noticed how happy most fat people are? Nothing seems to disturb them through their many layers of fat. That is a physical condition, but the mind also puts on layers of fat; it does not want to be questioned or otherwise disturbed, and such a mind gradually goes to sleep. What we now call education generally puts the student to sleep, because if he asks really sharp, penetrating questions the teacher gets very disturbed and says, "Let us get on with our lesson". - Think on These Things Chapter 9

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Sir, what is your idea of a new world? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Sir, what is your idea of a new world?

Posted:

Questioner: Sir, what is your idea of a new world? Krishnamurti: I have no idea about the new world. The `new' world cannot be new if I have an idea about it. This is not just a clever statement, it is a fact. If I have an idea about it, the idea is born of my study and experience, is it not? It is born of what I have learnt, of what I have read, of what other people have said the new world should be. So, the `new' world can never be new if it is a creation of the mind, because the mind is the old. You don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, do you? You may know that there will be no school tomorrow because it is Sunday, and that on Monday you will be going to school again; but what is going to happen outside the school, what kind of feelings you are going to have, what kind of things you are going to see - all that you don't know, do you? Because you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, or the next morning, when it happens it will be new; and to be able to meet the new is what matters. - Life Ahead Part Two Chapter 1

Saturday, September 4, 2010

We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. - JKOnline Daily Quotes

We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

Posted:

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds. This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of a relationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth. Man has killed millions of whales and is still killing them. All that we derive from their slaughter can be had through other means. But apparently man loves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvellous gazelle and the great elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other human beings has never stopped throughout the history of man's life on this earth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war. We have never said that to kill another human being is the greatest sin on earth. - Krishnamurti to Himself 25th February, 1983

Friday, September 3, 2010

Have you ever tried to be alone? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Have you ever tried to be alone?

Posted:

Have you ever tried to be alone? When you do try, you will feel how extraordinarily difficult it is and how extraordinarily intelligent we must be to be alone, because the mind will not let us be alone. The mind becomes restless, it busies itself with escapes, so what are we doing? We are trying to fill this extraordinary void with the known. We discover how to be active, how to be social; we know how to study, how to turn on the radio. We are filling that thing which we do not know with the things we know. We try to fill that emptiness with various kinds of knowledge, relationship or things. Is that not so? That is our process, that is our existence. Now when you realize what you are doing, do you still think you can fill that void? You have tried every means of filling this void of loneliness. Have you succeeded in filling it? You have tried cinemas and you did not succeed and therefore you go after your gurus and your books or you become very active socially. Have you succeeded in filling it or have you merely covered it up? If you have merely covered it up, it is still there; therefore it will come back. If you are able to escape altogether then you are locked up in an asylum or you become very, very dull. That is what is happening in the world. - First and Last Freedom, The

Thursday, September 2, 2010

What is external awareness? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

What is external awareness?

Posted:

Question: What is external awareness? Krishnamurti: Are you not aware that you are sitting in this hall? Are you not aware of the trees, of the sunshine? Are you not aware that the crow is cawing, the birds are calling, the dog is barking? Do you not see the colour of the flowers, the movement of the leaves, the people walking? That is external awareness. The stars at night, the moonlight on the water, the sunset, the birds, all that is external awareness. Is it not? And if you are thus externally aware, you are also inwardly aware of your thoughts, inwardly aware of your feelings, of your motives, of your urges, your prejudices, envies, greed, pride and so on. Are you not aware inwardly? The inward awareness begins to awaken, to become more and more conscious, through reaction - the reaction to what people say, the reaction to what you read. The reaction, the response of your relationship with other people, may be external; but that response is the outcome of an inward suspense, an inward anxiety, an inward fear. The outward awareness and the inward awareness bring about a total integration of human understanding. - Rajghat 14th Talk to Boys and Girls December 1952

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Meditation is not an escape from the world - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Meditation is not an escape from the world

Posted:

Meditation is not an escape from the world; it is not an isolating self-enclosing activity, but rather the comprehension of the world and its ways. The world has little to offer apart from food, clothes and shelter, and pleasure with its great sorrows. Meditation is wandering away from this world; one has to be a total outsider. Then the world has a meaning, and the beauty of the heavens and the earth is constant. Then love is not pleasure. From this all action begins that is not the outcome of tension, contradiction, the search for self-fulfilment or the conceit of power. The room overlooked a garden, and thirty or forty feet below was the wide, expansive river, sacred to some, but to others a beautiful stretch of water open to the skies and to the glory of the morning. You could always see the other bank with its village and spreading trees, and the newly planted winter wheat. From this room you could see the morning star, and the sun rising gently over the trees; and the river became the golden path for the sun. At night the room was very dark and the wide window showed the whole southern sky, and into this room one night came - with a great deal of fluttering - a bird. Turning on the light and getting out of bed one saw it under the bed. It was an owl. It was about a foot-and-a-half high with extremely wide big eyes and a fearsome beak. We gazed at each other quite close, a few feet apart. It was frightened by the light and the closeness of a human being. We looked at each other without blinking for quite a while, and it never lost its height and its fierce dignity. You could see the cruel claws the light feathers and the wings tightly held against the body. One would have liked to touch it, stroke it, but it would not have allowed that. So presently the light was turned out and for some time there was quietness in the room. Soon there was a fluttering of the wings - you could feel the air against your face - and the owl had gone out of the window. It never came again. - The Only Revolution India Part 1

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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

Self-esteem is the cause of our shame

Posted:

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. Love, and time is not. - Commentaries on Living Series I, Self-Esteem