Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

Despair exists only when there is hope.

Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Society, in which we all live, is corrupt, immoral, aggressive, destructive. This society has been going on in primitive or modified form for thousands of years upon thousands of years, but it is the same pattern being repeated. These are all facts, not opinion or judgment. Facing this enormous crisis, one asks not only what one is to do but also who is responsible, who has brought the chaos, the confusion, the utter misery of humanity. Is the economic crisis, the social crisis, the crisis of war, the building of enormous armaments, the appalling waste, outside of us? Inwardly, psychologically, we are also very confused; there is constant conflict, struggle, pain, anxiety.

We are together taking a journey into the whole structure that mankind has created, the disorder that human beings have brought about in this world. There is misery, chaos, confusion outwardly in society; and also inwardly, psychologically, in the psyche, the consciousness, there are pain and struggles. What are you going to do about all this? Turn to leaders, better politicians? This one isn't good, but the next one will be better; and the next one still better. We keep this game going. We have looked to various so-called spiritual leaders, the whole hierarchy of the Christian world. They are as confused, as uncertain, as we are. If you turn to the psychologists or the psychotherapists, they are confused like you and me.

And there are all the ideologies: communist ideologies, Marxis

Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we are. All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other.

How can one be compassionate if you belong to any religion, follow any guru, believe in something, believe in your scriptures, and so on, attached to a conclusion? When you accept your guru, you have come to a conclusion, or when you strongly believe in god or in a saviour, this or that, can there be compassion? You may do social work, help the poor out of pity, out of sympathy, out of charity, but is all that love and compassion?

It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.

I think one has to understand, not as a theory, not as a speculative, entertaining concept, but rather as an actual fact - that we are the world and the world is us. The world is each one of us; to feel that, to be really committed to it and to nothing else, brings about a feeling of great responsibility and an action that must not be fragmentary, but whole.

How is the mind which functions on knowledge how is the brain which is recording all the time to end, to see the importance of recording and not let it move in any other direction? Very simply: you insult me, you hurt me, by word, gesture, by an actual act; that leaves a mark on the brain which is memory. That memory is knowledge, that knowledge is going to interfere in my meeting you next time obviously.

Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.

Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect, and space is divided for him into dimensions; time, into past, present, and future.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Truth is more in the process than in the result.

If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower.

So, to meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched it is innocent. Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being. This whole process is meditation.

A man who says, 'I want to change, tell me how to', seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder.

Nothing can disturb the calm peace of my soul.

The world is broken up by tribalism - the British, the German, the Swiss, the Hindu, the Buddhist, are tribes. See the fact that they are tribes, glorified as nations, and that this tribalism is creating havoc in the world, bringing wars in the world. Each tribe thinks in its own culture opposed to other cultures. But tribalism is the root, not the culture. Observing the fact of that is the action that frees the brain from the condition of tribalism. You see actually, not theoretically or ideationally, the fact that tribalism glorified as nations is one of the causes of war. That is a fact. There are other causes of war, economics and so on, but one of the causes is tribalism. When you see that, perceive that, and see that cannot bring about peace, the very perception frees the brain from its conditioning of tribalism.

One of the factors of contention throughout the world is religion. You are a Catholic, I am a Muslim, based on ideas, propaganda of hundreds or thousands of years; the Hindu and the Buddhist ideas are of thousands of years. We have been programmed like a computer. That programming has brought about great architecture, great paintings, great music, but it has not brought peace to mankind. When you see the fact of that, you do not belong to any religion. When there are half a dozen gurus in the same place, they bring about misery, contradiction, conflict: "My guru is better than yours; my group is more sanctified than yours; I have been initiated, you

The enemy is not the other, the enemy is you

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

To inquire and to learn is the function of the mind, By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information of knowledge is to not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion through influence, thought attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement or subtle forms of reward. Most people think that learning is encouraged through comparison, whereas the contrary is the fact. Comparison brings about frustration and merely encourages envy, which is called competition. Like other forms of persuasion, comparison prevents learning and breeds fear.

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

Desire is the outcome of sensation - the outcome with all the images that thought has built. And this desire not only breeds discontent but a sense of hopelessness.
Never suppress it, never discipline it but probe into the nature of it - what is the origin, the purpose, the intricacies of it? To delve deep into it is not another desire, for it has no motive; it is like understanding the beauty of a flower, to sit down beside it and look at it.

Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the "I," with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.

To meditate is to observe yourself, for you are totally responsible for your body, mind, thought.

Can't two people be in love and both be so intelligent and so sensitive that there is freedom and absence of a center that makes for conflict? Conflict is not the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. The loss of energy is in the tail, in everything that follows - jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, doubt, the fear of losing that love, the constant demand for reassurance and security. Surely, it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows. Of course it is.

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything - to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.

When you love, you are not lonely. The sense of loneliness arises only when you are frightened of being alone and of not knowing what to do. When you are controlled by ideas, isolated by beliefs, then fear is inevitable; and when you are afraid, you are completely blind.

And as we are - the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are.

This is what I am, and I am going to understand this.

Do you decide to observe? Or do you merely observe?

Is it not necessary for each to know for oneself what is the right means of livelihood? If we were avaricious, envious, seeking power, then our means of livelihood will correspond to our inward demands and so produce a world of competition, ruthlessness, oppression, ultimately ending in war.

Our conflict is in relationship, at all levels of our existence; and the understanding of this relationship, completely and extensively, is the only real problem that each one has.

Without ending sorrow there is no love. Sorrow is part of your self-interest, part of your egotistic, self-centred activity. You cry for another, for your son, for your brother, for your mother. Why? Because you have lost something that you are attached to, something which gave you companionship, comfort, and all the rest of it. With the ending of that person, you realize how utterly empty, how lonely your life is. Then you cry. And there are many, many people ready to comfort you, and you slip very easily into that network, that trap, of comfort.

There is the comfort in God, which is an image put together by thought, or comfort in some illusory concept or idea. And that's all you want. But you never question the very urge, the desire for comfort, never ask whether there is any comfort at all. One needs to have a comfortable bed or chair - that's all right. But you never ask whether there is any comfort at all psychologically, inwardly. Is it an illusion which has become your truth? You understand? An illusion can become your truth - the illusion that you are God, that there is God. That God has been created by thought, by fear. If you had no fear, there would be no God.

So this is a very complex problem of our life - why we are so shallow, empty, filled with other people's knowledge and with books; why we are not independent, free human beings to find out; why we are slaves. This is not a rhetorical question; it is a question each one of us must as

It would be a marvelous thing if in the process of your listening - unemotionally, not sentimentally - to what is being said … you could really understand sorrow and be totally free of it; because then there would be no self-deception, no illusions, no anxieties, no fear, and the brain could function clearly, sharply, logically. And then, perhaps, one would know what love is.

Without love there is no art. When the artist is playing beautifully there is no 'me; there is love and beauty, and this is art. This is skill in action.

The mind finds security and strength in religious and political patterns, and this is what gives stamina to the organizations.

As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

Your "self" is a very complex thing; it is not merely the entity that goes to school, that quarrels, that plays games, that is afraid, but it is also something hidden, not obvious. It is made up, not only of all the thoughts that you think, but also of all the things that have been put into your mind by other people, by books, by the newspapers, by your leaders; and it is possible to understand all that only when you don't want to be somebody, when you don't imitate, when you don't follow - which means, really, when you are in revolt against the whole tradition of trying to become something. That is the only true revolution, leading to extraordinary freedom. To cultivate this freedom is the real function of education.

You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don't know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn't find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn't answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.

I think that will be enough, won't it?

The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself, and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

We are human beings, not Asiatics and Americans, Russians and Germans, communists and capitalists. We all have the same human problems.

As I said, relationship has true significance only when it is a process of self-revelation, when it is revealing oneself in the very action of relationship. But most of us do not want to be revealed in relationship.

Intelligence is not discernment and judgment or critical evaluation.

Love implies great freedom - not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all. And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth.

There is a marvellous Indian story of a boy who leaves home in search of truth. He goes to various teachers, walking endlessly in various parts of the country, every teacher asserting something or other. After many years, as an old man, after searching, searching, asking, meditating, taking certain postures, breathing rightly, fasting, no sex and all that, he comes back to his old house. As he opens the door there it is: the truth is just there. You understand? You might say, 'It wouldn't have been there if he hadn't wandered all over the place.' That's a cunning remark, but you miss the beauty of the story if you don't see that truth is not to be sought after. Truth is not something to be attained, to be experienced, to be held. It is there for those who can see it.

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine ...

Intuition is the only true guide in life.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

I am
asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of.
I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have
certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of
existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't
want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state
of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything
I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of
things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a
pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which
may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is
what I call fear.

The ambitious man has never found his true vocation ...

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.

Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind-that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level.

This whole problem of naming a feeling, of giving it a term, is part of the problem of consciousness. Take a word like 'love'. How immediately your mind rejoices in that word! It has such significance, such beauty, ease, and all the rest of it. And the word 'hate' immediately has quite another significance, something to be avoided, to be got rid of, to be shunned, and so on. So words have an extraordinary psychological effect on the mind, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Now, to go beyond, to transcend all that, requires tremendous attention. This total attention, in which there is no choice, no sense of becoming, of changing, altering, wholly frees the mind from the process of self-consciousness; there is then no experiencer who is accumulating, and it is only then that the mind can be truly said to be free from sorrow. It is the accumulation that is the cause of sorrow.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence.

One was watching the other day a red-tailed hawk, high in the heavens, circling effortlessly, without a beat of the wing, just for the fun of flying, just to be sustained by the air-currents. Then it was joined by another, and they were flying together for quite a while. They were marvellous creatures in that blue sky, and to hurt them in any way is a crime against heaven. Of course there is no heaven; man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly. This life has become a turmoil, a travail of endless striving. One wonders if man, a human being, will ever live on this earth peacefully. Conflict has been the way of his life - within the skin and outside the skin, in the area of the psyche and in the society which that psyche has created.

we do not ask. We want to be told. One of the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be told because we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years. We want to have our thinking confirmed and corroborated by another, whereas to ask a question is to ask it of yourself.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight.

When the individual is in conflict within himself he must inevitably create conflict without, and only he can bring about peace within himself and so in the world, for he is the world.

To go far you must begin near, and the nearest step is the most important one.

Most people are unhappy; and they are unhappy because there is no love in their hearts.

The idea is not love. The idea, the word is not love. But only when you have seen the whole movement of desire, attachment, pleasure, then out of that depth of perception comes this strange flower with its extraordinary perfume. That is love.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

Process of comparison and condemnation prevents you from observing, studying. So a real student is one who observes everything in life, outwardly as well as inwardly, without comparing, approving, or condemning.

Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.

Organized religion is the frozen thought of man, out of which he builds temples and churches; it has become a solace for the fearful, an opiate for those who are in sorrow. But God or truth is far beyond thought and emotional demands.

Fear is nonacceptance of what is.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

That which is immeasurable cannot be measured by words. We are always trying to put the immeasurable into a frame of words, and the symbol is not the actual. But we worship the symbol, therefore we always live in a limited state.

Find out for yourself what are the possesions and ideals that you do not desire. By knowing what you do not want, by elimination, you will unburden the mind, and only then will it understand the essential which is ever there.

Questioner: How can we know ourselves?

Krishnamurti: You know your face because you have often looked at it reflected in the mirror. Now, there is a mirror in which you can see yourself entirely – not your face, but all that you think, all that you feel, your motives, your appetites, your urges and fears. That mirror is the mirror of relationship: the relationship between you and your parents, between you and your teachers, between you and the river, the trees, the earth, between you and your thoughts. Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself, not as you would wish to be, but as you are.
I may wish, when looking in an ordinary mirror, that it would show me to be beautiful, but that does not happen because the mirror reflects my face exactly as it is and I cannot deceive myself. Similarly, I can see myself exactly as I am in the mirror of my relationship with others. I can observe how I talk to people: most politely to those who I think can give me something, and rudely or contemptuously to those who cannot. I am attentive to those I am afraid of. I get up when important people come in, but when the servant enters I pay no attention. So, by observing myself in relationship, I have found out how falsely I respect people, have I not?
And I can also discover myself as I am in my relationship with the trees and the birds, with ideas and books.

After all, conflict arises, does it not, through the desire to be something, to be other than what is.

I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom.
It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes,
deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what.

A problem exists only when the mind desires to get somewhere, to achieve, to become something.

Freedom from something is not freedom.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

All paths do not lead to truth. There is no path to truth, it must come to you.

One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority.

Words entangle. But if one can understand the whole significance of the ways of one's thought, the ways of our desires and their pursuits and ambitions, then there is a possibility of having or understanding that which is love. But that requires an extraordinary understanding of oneself.

[...]

Love is not a sentiment, not romanticism, not dependent on something, and that state is extremely arduous and difficult to understand, or to be in - because our minds are always interfering, limiting, encroaching upon its functioning. Therefore it is important to understand first the mind and its ways; otherwise we shall be caught in illusions, caught in words and sensations that have very little significance.

To be whole, nonfragmented in action, in life, in every kind of relationship, that is the very essence of sanity. Sanity means to be whole, healthy and holy.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it means to live. We don't know how to live, therefore we don't know how to die. As long as we are frightened of life we shall be frightened of death.

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is ... Matter and energy are interrelated.

We want a purpose so that we can guide our everyday life towards an end. That is obviously what we mean by purpose. But if I understand how to live, then the very living is in itself sufficient, is it not? Do we then want a purpose? If I love you, if I love another, is that not sufficient in itself? Do I then want a purpose? Surely, we want a purpose only when we do not understand or when we want a mode of conduct with an end in view. After all, most of us are seeking a way of life, a way of conduct, and we either look to others, to the past, or we try to find a mode of behavior through our own experience. When we look to our own experience for a pattern of behavior, our experience is always conditioned, is it not? However wide the experiences one may have had, unless these experiences dissolve the past conditioning, any new experiences only further strengthen the past conditioning. That is a fact which we can discuss. And if we look to another, to the past, to a guru, to an ideal, to an example for a pattern of behavior, we are merely forcing the extraordinary vitality of life into a mold, into a particular shape, and thereby we lose the swiftness, the intensity, the richness of life.

space and silence are necessary because it is only when the mind is alone, uninfluenced, untrained, not held by infinite varieties of experience, that it can come upon something totally new.

That is, sir, there can only be communication, communion, when you and I are on the same level, and with the same intensity, at the same time.

Woe beside those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.
The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us. Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you? Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul, You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that?
There is only one way and that is your way.
You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.
May each go his own way.
I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.
Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowship and love it.
Power stands against power, con

Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist.

Aloneness is obviously not isolation, and it is not uniqueness. To be unique is merely to be exceptional in some way, whereas to be completely alone demands extraordinary sensitivity, intelligence, understanding.

Sentimentality and emotionalism have nothing whatsoever to do with love.

To be aware of inattention is to be attentive. Complete attention is love. It alone can see, and the seeing is the doing.