Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Friday, April 8, 2011

Sex - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy, because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the 'me'; and desiring more of it, more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness, without the past or the future, demanding that complete happiness through full fusion, integration, naturally it becomes all-important. Isn't that so? Because it is something that gives me unadulterated joy, complete self-forgetfulness, I want more and more of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence, there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially, religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness, which is conflict. After all, you are self-conscious only when there is conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of conflict. . . .So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife. So, there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Dying to Little Things - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Dying to Little Things

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Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly? Ordinarily when you die you don't want to; death comes and takes you away; it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide. But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily, felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure? Obviously not! At present your ideals, your pleasures, your ambitions are the things which give so-called significance to them. Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the 'I' having significance. That is mere intellection. If you experiment with dying to little things, that is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures with ease, with comfort, with a smile is enough, for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things, dying to all memories. Machines are taking over the functions of memory-the computers- but the human mind is something more than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory. But it cannot be that something else if it does not die to everything it knows.Now to see the truth of all this, a young mind is essential, a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time. The young mind dies to everything. Can you see the truth of that immediately, feel the truth of it instantly? You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it, the immense subtlety, the beauty of that dying, the richness of it, but even to listen to it sows the seed, and the significance of these words takes root, not only at the superficial, conscious level, but right through all the unconscious. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A Healthy, Normal Reaction - JKOnline Daily Quotes

A Healthy, Normal Reaction

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I have to find out why desire has such potency in my life. It may be right or it may not be right. I have to find out. I see that. Desire arises, which is a reaction, which is a healthy, normal reaction; otherwise, I would be dead. I see a beautiful thing and I say, "By Jove, I want that." If I didn't, I'd be dead. But in the constant pursuit of it there is pain. That's my problem;there is pain as well as pleasure. I see a beautiful woman, and she is beautiful; it would be most absurd to say, "No, she's not." This is a fact. But what gives continuity to the pleasure? Obviously it is thought, thinking about it,I think about it. It is no longer the direct relationship with the object, which is desire, but thought now increases that desire by thinking about it, by having images, pictures, ideas. Thought comes in and says, "Please, you must have it; that's growth; that is not important; that is not important; this is vital for your life; this is not vital for your life."But I can look at it and have a desire, and that's the end of it, without interference of thought. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Why should not one have pleasure? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Why should not one have pleasure?

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You see a beautiful sunset, a lovely tree, a river that has a wide, curving movement, or a beautiful face, and to look at it gives great pleasure, delight. What is wrong with that? It seems to me the confusion and the misery begin when that face, that river, that cloud, that mountain becomes a memory, and this memory then demands a greater continuity of pleasure; we want such things repeated. We all know this. I have had a certain pleasure, or you have had a certain delight in something, and we want it repeated. Whether it be sexual, artistic, intellectual, or something not quite of this character, we want it repeated; and I think that is where pleasure begins to darken the mind and create values which are false, not actual.What matters is to understand pleasure, not try to get rid of it, that is too stupid. Nobody can get rid of pleasure. But to understand the nature and the structure of pleasure is essential; because if life is only pleasure, and if that is what one wants, then with pleasure go the misery, the confusion, the illusions, the false values which we create, and therefore there is no clarity. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Monday, April 4, 2011

The Quality of Desire - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The Quality of Desire

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What happens if you do not condemn desire, do not judge it as being good or bad, but simply be aware of it? I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware when you enter a room, to see all the furniture, the carpet or its absence, and so on, just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgment is very difficult. Have you ever tried to look at a person, a flower, at an idea, an emotion, without any choice, any judgment?And if one does the same thing with desire, if one lives with it, not denying it or saying, "What shall I do with this desire? It is so ugly, so rampant, so violent," not giving it a name, a symbol, not covering it with a word; then, is it any longer the cause of turmoil? Is desire then something to be put away, destroyed? We want to destroy it because one desire tears against another creating conflict, misery, and contradiction; and one can see how one tries to escape from this everlasting conflict. So can one be aware of the totality of desire? What I mean by totality is not just one desire or many desires, but the total quality of desire itself. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Desire Has to Be Understood - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Desire Has to Be Understood

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Let us go on to consider desire. We know, do we not, the desire which contradicts itself, which is tortured, pulling in different directions; the pain, the turmoil, the anxiety of desire, and the disciplining, the controlling. And in the everlasting battle with it we twist it out of all shape and recognition; but it is there, constantly watching, waiting, pushing. Do what you will, sublimate it, escape from it, deny it or accept it, give it full rein: it is always there. And we know how the religious teachers and others have said that we should be desireless, cultivate detachment, be free from desire, which is really absurd, because desire has to be understood, not destroyed. If you destroy desire, you may destroy life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Understanding Desire - JKOnline Daily Quotes

Understanding Desire

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We have to understand desire; and it is very difficult to understand something which is so vital, so demanding, so urgent, because in the very fulfillment of desire passion is engendered with the pleasure and the pain of it. And if one is to understand desire, obviously, there must be no choice. You cannot judge desire as being good or bad, noble or ignoble, or say, "I will keep this desire and deny that one." All that must be set aside if we are to find out the truth of desire, the beauty of it, the ugliness or whatever it may be. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Friday, April 1, 2011

There Is Only Craving - JKOnline Daily Quotes

There Is Only Craving

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There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests.The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving.But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. He is his loneliness, his emptiness; and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself; he will be in illusion and endless conflict. When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear. - J.Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Root of All Fear - JKOnline Daily Quotes

The Root of All Fear

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The craving to become causes fears; to be, to achieve, and so to depend engenders fear. The state of the nonfear is not negation, it is not the opposite of fear nor is it courage. In understanding the cause of fear, there is its cessation, not the becoming courageous, for in all becoming there is the seed of fear. Dependence on things, on people, or on ideas breeds fear; dependence arises from ignorance, from the lack of self-knowledge, from inward poverty; fear causes uncertainty of mind-heart, preventing communication and understanding. Through self-awareness we begin to discover and so comprehend the cause of fear, not only the superficial but the deep casual and accumulative fears. Fear is both inborn and acquired; it is related to the past, and to free thought-feeling from it, the past must be comprehended through the present. The past is ever wanting to give birth to the present which becomes the identifying memory of the "me" and the "mine" the "I". The self is the root of all fear. - J.Krisnamurti, The Book of Life

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

How Do I Look at Anger? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

How Do I Look at Anger?

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Obviously, I look at it as an observer being angry. I say, "I am angry." At the moment of anger there is no "I"; the "I" comes in immediately afterwards;which means time. Can I look at the fact without the factor of time, which is the thought, which is the word? This happens when there is the looking without the observer. See where it has led me. I now begin to perceive a way of looking;perceiving without the opinion, the conclusion, without condemning, judging. Therefore, I perceive that there can be "seeing" without thought, which is the word. So the mind is beyond the clutches of ideas, of the conflict of duality and all the rest of it. So, can I look at fear not as an isolated fact?If you isolate a fact that has not opened the door to the whole universe of the mind, then let us go back to the fact and begin again by taking another fact so that you yourself will begin to see the extraordinary thing of the mind, so that you have the key, you can open the door, you can burst into that.By considering one fear:the fear of death, the fear of the neighbor, the fear of your spouse dominating over you, you know the whole business of domination, will that open the door? That is all that matters:not how to be free of it because the moment you open the door, fear is completely wiped away. The mind is the result of time, and time is the word;how extraordinary to think of it! Time is thought; it is thought that breeds fear, it is thought that breeds the fear of death; and it is time which is thought, that has in its hand the whole intricacies and the subtleties of fear.p> - J Kirshnamurti, The Book of Life