Krishnamurti quotes 2
It is the
understanding of the process of thought that is important, and not what we are
thinking about.
(Krishnamurti)
Attention is a strange thing.
We never look but through a screen of words, explanations and prejudices;
we never listen save through judgements, comparisons and remembrances.
The very naming of the flower, the bird, is a distraction.
The mind is never still to look, to listen.
(Krishnamurti)
If there was no fixed point, no conclusion, there would be no contradiction.
(Krishnamurti)
The true is not an ideal, a myth, but the actual. The actual can be understood
and dealt with. The understanding of the actual cannot breed enmity, whereas
ideals do.
Ideals can never bring about a fundamental revolution, but only a modified
continuity of the old.
There is a fundamental and constant revolution only in action from moment to
moment which is not based on an ideal and so is free of conclusion.
(Krishnamurti)
If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it,
because the answer is not separate from the problem.
(Krishnamurti)
So, does it require competition to understand oneself?
Must I compete with you in order to understand myself? And why this worship of
success? The man who is uncreative, who has nothing in himself - it is he who is
always reaching out, hoping to gain, hoping to become something, and as most of
us are inwardly poor, inwardly poverty-stricken, we compete in order to become
outwardly rich.
The outward show of comfort, of position, of authority, of power, dazzles us
because that is what we want.
(Krishnamurti)
Meditation is the ending of thought.
(Krishnamurti)
When you perceive for
yourself
that violence only leads to greater harm,
is it difficult to drop violence?
(Krishnamurti)
Education is the cultivation of the mind so that action is not self-centred:
it is learning throughout life to break down the walls which the mind builds
in order to be secure.
(Krishnamurti)
Immaturity is the craving for greater and wider experience.
(Krishnamurti)
One may depend on belief, or on an experience,
or on a conclusion attached to a particular prejudice;
how deeply does this attachment go?
I do not know if you have observed it in yourself.
We were watching it all throughout the day,
to find out if there is any form of attachment coming here regularly,
living in a particular chalet going to one country after another,
talking addressing people, being looked up to, criticized, exposed.
If one has watched throughout the day
one discovers naturally how deeply one is attached to something,
or to someone, or not at all.
If there is any form of attachment - it doesn't matter what it is -
to a book, to a particular diet, to a particular pattern of thought,
to a certain social responsibility - such attachment invariably breeds fear.
And a mind that is frightened, though it may not know it is because it is
attached, obviously is not free and must therefore live in a constant state of
conflict.
One may have a particular gift, like a musician,
who is tremendously attached to his instrument or to the cultivation of his
voice.
And when the instrument or the voice fails, he is completely lost, his days are
ended.
He may insure his hands or his fiddle, or he can become a conductor,
but he knows through attachment the inevitable darkness of fear is waiting.
I wonder if each one of us - if we are at all serious - has gone into this
question,
because freedom means freedom from all attachment
and therefore from all dependency.
A mind that is attached is not objective,
not clear, cannot think sanely and observe directly.
(Krishnamurti)
The other day someone said that he was a
"Krishnamurti-ite,"
whereas so-and-so belonged to another group.
As he was saying it, he was utterly unconscious of the implications of this
identification.
He was not by any means a foolish person;
he was well read. cultured and all the rest of it.
Nor was he sentimental or emotional over the matter;
on the contrary, he was clear and definite.
Why had he become a "Krishnamurti-ite"?
He had followed others, belonged to many wearisome groups and organizations,
and at last found himself identified with this particular person.
From what he said, it appeared that the journey was over.
He had taken a stand and that was the end of the matter;
he had chosen, and nothing could shake him.
He would now comfortably settle down
and follow eagerly all that had been said and was going to be said.
(Krishnamurti)
Thought is born of experience and knowledge,
and there is nothing sacred whatsoever about thought.
Thinking is materialistic, it is a process of matter.
And we have relied on thinking to solve all our problems in politics and
religions and in our relationships.
Our brains, our minds, are conditioned, educated to solve problems.
Thinking has created problems and then our brains,
our minds, are trained to solve them with more thinking.
All problems are created, psychologically and inwardly, by thought.
Follow what is happening.
Thought creates the problem, psychologically;
the mind is trained to solve problems with further thinking,
so thought in creating the problem then tries to solve it.
So it is caught in a continuous process, a routine.
Problems are becoming more and more complex, more and more insoluble,
so we must find out if it is at all possible to approach life in a different
way,
not through thought because thought does not solve our problems;
on the contrary thought has brought about greater complexity.
We must find out - if it is possible or not -
whether there is a different dimension, a different approach, to life
altogether.
And that is why it is important to understand the nature of our thinking.
Our thinking is based on remembrance of things past
- which is thinking about what happened a week ago,
thinking about it modified in the present, and projected into the future.
This is actually the movement of our life.
So knowledge has become all-important for us but knowledge is never
complete.
Therefore knowledge always lives within the shadow of ignorance.
That is a fact.
It is not the speaker's invention or conclusion, but it is so.
(Krishnamurti)
Questioner: You tell us to observe our
actions in daily life but what is the entity that decides what to observe
and when? Who decides if one should observe?
Krishnamurti:
Do you decide to observe? Or do you merely observe?
Do you decide and say, `I am going to observe and learn'?
For then there is the question: `Who is deciding?'
Is it will that says, `I must'?
And when it fails, it chastises itself further and says, `I must, must,
must';
in that there is conflict; therefore the state of mind that has decided to
observe is not observation at all.
You are walking down the road, somebody passes you by, you observe and you
may say to yourself, `How ugly he is; how he smells; I wish he would not do
this or that'.
You are aware of your responses to that passer-by,
you are aware that you are judging, condemning or justifying; you are
observing.
You do not say, `I must not judge, I must not justify'.
In being aware of your responses, there is no decision at all.
You see somebody who insulted you yesterday.
Immediately all your hackles are up, you become nervous or anxious, you
begin to dislike. Be aware of your dislike, be aware of all that, do not
`decide' to be aware.
Observe, and in that observation there is neither the `observer' nor the
`observed'
- there is only observation taking place.
The `observer' exists only when you accumulate in the observation;
when you say, `He is my friend because he has flattered me',
or, `He is not my friend, because he has said something ugly about me,
or something true which I do not like',
that is accumulation through observation and that accumulation is the
observer.
When you observe without accumulation, then there is no judgement.
You can do this all the time;
in that observation naturally certain definite decisions are made,
but the decisions are natural results,
not decisions made by the observer who has accumulated.
(Krishnamurti)
Questioner:
Did you seriously mean what you said when you suggested last week that one
should retire from the world when one is around forty-five or so?
Krishnamurti:
I suggested this seriously.
Almost all of us, till death overtakes us, are so caught up in worldliness
that we have no time to search out deeply, to discover the real.
To retire from the world necessitates a complete change in educational and
economic systems, does it not?
If you did retire, you would be unprepared, you would be lost, you would be
lonely, you would not know what to do with yourself.
You would not know how to think.
You would probably form new groups, new organizations with new beliefs,
badges and labels, and once again be active outwardly, doing reforms which
will need further reform. But this is not what I mean.
To retire from the world you must be prepared: by right kind of occupation,
by creating right kind of environment, by setting up the right State, by
right education and so on.
If you have been so prepared then to withdraw from worldliness at any age is
the natural not abnormal sequence; you withdraw to flow into deep and pure
awareness, you withdraw not into isolation but to find the real; to help to
transform the ever congealing, conflicting society and State.
All this would involve a wholly different kind of education, an upheaval in
our social and economic order.
Such a group of people would be completely disassociated from authority,
from politics, from all those causes which produce war and antagonism
between man and man.
A stone may direct the course of a river; so a small number may direct the
course of a culture.
Surely any great thing is done in this manner.
You will probably say most of us cannot retire however much we may want to.
Naturally all cannot but some of you can.
To live alone or in a small group requires great intelligence.
But if you really thought it worthwhile then you would set about it, not as
a wonderful act of renunciation but as a natural and intelligent thing for a
thoughtful man to do.
How extraordinarily important it is that there should be at least some who
do not belong to any particular group or race or to any specialized religion
or society!
They will create the true brotherhood of man for they will be seeking truth.
To be free from outward riches there must be the awareness of inward
poverty, which brings untold riches.
The stream of culture may change its course through a few awakened people.
These are not strangers but you and me..
(Krishnamurti)
Please listen quietly: we know that thought
creates fear.
One of the functions of thought is to be occupied,
to be thinking about something all the time.
Like a housewife who thinks about the food,
the children, the washing up - that is all her occupation;
remove that occupation, and she will be lost,
she will feel totally uncomfortable, lonely, miserable.
Or take away the God from the man who worships God,
who is occupied with God; he will be totally lost.
So thought must be occupied with something or the other,
either about itself or about politics,
or about how to bring about a different world,
a different ideology and so on;
the mind must be occupied.
And most of us want to be occupied;
otherwise we shall feel lost, otherwise we do not know what to do,
we will be lonely, we will be confronted with what we actually are.
You understand?
So, you are occupied, thought is occupied
- which prevents you from looking at yourself, at what you actually are.
(Krishnamurti)
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