Quotations | Anveekshana: Krishnamurti's work in Thailand

Actuality

When you are observing the actual fact of what you are, no one can hurt you. Then, if one is a liar and is told that one is a liar it does not mean that one is hurt; it is a fact. But when you are pretending you are not a liar and are told that you are, then you get angry, violent. So we are always living in an ideational world, a world of myth and never in a world of actuality. To observe what is, to see it, actually be familiar with it, there must be no judgement, no evaluation, no opinion, no fear.

- Paris: 4th Public Talk : 12th September 1961

Most of our lives are wasted through conflict. We do not face facts but run away from them, seeking various forms of escape. This is dissipated energy and the result of that dissipation is confusion. If one does not escape, if one does not translate the facts in terms of one's own pleasure and pain, but merely observes, then that act of pure seeing in which there is not resistance is the releasing of energy.

- Madras : 3rd Public Talk : 29th November 1961

Whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it.

- This Matter of Culture, Chapter 2

Awareness is that state of mind which observes something without any condemnation or acceptance, which merely faces the thing as it is.

- The Book of Life

It is important to see, is it not?, that no one can give us freedom from the conflict of relationship. We can hide behind the screen of words, or follow a teacher, or run to a church, or lose ourselves in a cinema or a book, or keep on attending talks; but it is only when the fundamental process of thinking is uncovered through awareness in relationship that it is possible to understand and be free of that friction which we instinctively seek to avoid. Most of us use relationship as a means of escape form ourselves, from our own loneliness, from our own inward uncertainty and poverty, and so we cling to the outer things of relationship, which become very important to us. But if, instead of escaping through relationship, we can look into that relationship as a mirror and see very clearly, without any prejudice, exactly what is, then that very perception brings about a transformation of what is, without any effort to transform it. There is nothing to transform about a fact; it is what is it. But we approach the fact with hesitation, with fear, with a sense of prejudice, and so we are always acting upon the fact and therefore never perceiving the fact as it is. When we see the fact as it is, then that very fact is the truth which resolves the problem.

- New York : 5th Public Talk : 2nd July 1950

Surely, the mind is the instrument of recognition, and anything that the mind recognizes is already known, therefore, it is not the new. It is still within the field of thought, of memory, and hence mechanistic. So the mind must be in a state where it perceives without the process of recognition.

-New Delhi : 2nd Public Talk : 17th February 1960

Beauty

But there is a beauty that is not the outcome of a reaction or a stimulation. Now that sense of beauty is not merely color, proportion, texture, quality, but it is something far greater, much deeper; and it has nothing whatsoever to do with a passing stimulation. It is difficult to convey that feeling, the feeling of that sense of beauty where the mind, the heart, the nerves, the whole sensory organism is in complete coordination. That feeling is not induced or brought about by any stimulation, but actually is there, because you are throughout the day sensitive to everything - to your words, to your gesture, to your walk, to the dirt on the road, to the squalor of a house, to its disorderliness, the ugliness of the office, the brutal travail of man. You are aware, sensitive; and because you are so sensitive, you have activated every field of your being, activated every corner of your consciousness, of your state. It is only then that there is a sense of beauty, not stimulated by the lake, or by the mountain, or by a poem, or by the movement of a bird on the wing.

- Bombay: 6th Public Talk: 28th February 1965

Conformity

Student: What do you mean by ordinary?

Krishnamurti: To be like the rest of men; with their worries, with their corruption, violence, brutality, indifference, callousness. To want a job, to want to hold on to a job, whether you are efficient or not, to die in the job. That is what is called ordinary - to have nothing new, nothing fresh, no joy in life, never to be curious, intense, passionate, never to find out, but merely to conform. That is what I mean by ordinary. It is called being bourgeois. It is a mechanical way of living, a routine, a boredom.

- Talks to Students, Chapter 1, Part 6

Education

Do you know the world is mad, that all this is madness - this fighting, quarrelling, bullying, tearing at each other? And you will grow up to fit into this. Is this right, is this what education is meant for, that you should willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called society? And do you know what is happening to religions throughout the world? Here also man is disintegrating, nobody believes in anything any more. Man has no faith and religions are merely the result of a vast propaganda.

-Talks to Students, Chapter 1, Part 2

Education, rightly speaking, is not just a matter of reading books, passing examinations and getting a job. Education is quite a

different process; it extends from the moment you are born to the moment you die.

- Life Ahead, Part Two, Chapter 2

An educator is not merely a giver of information; he is one who points the way to wisdom, to truth.

- Book "Education and Significance of Life"

The purpose of education is to cultivate right relationship, not only between individuals, but also between the individual and society.

- Book "Education and Significance of Life", Chapter 2

Escapism

The reason for escape is obvious - we are dissatisfied with ourselves, with our state, outwardly and inwardly. And so we have many escapes; and we think we shall understand, dissolve the escape, the drinking, when we discover the cause. When we know the cause of escape, do we stop escaping? When I know that I am drinking because I am quarelling with my wife, or because I have a rotten job - when I know the cause, do I stop drinking? Surely not. I stop drinking only when I establish right relationship with my wife, with another, and remove the conflict which is causing pain.

- London : 2nd Public Talk : 9th October 1949

Image

What have I, who have lived forty, fifty, sixty, or whatever number of years it is that one has lived - why have I gathered this storehouseful - of what I think, what I feel, what I am, what I should be, this accumulcation of experience, knowledge? And if I had not done that, what would happen? If I had no concept about myself, what would happen to me? I would be lost, wouldn't I? I would be uncertain, terribly frightened of life. So I build an image, a myth, a concept, a conclusion about myself, because without this framework life would become for me utterly meaningless, uncertain, fearful...

Now what happens when I am aware of the fact that I have built an image of myself - as aware of it as I am of hunger?

- Facing Fact as Fact (Choiceless Awareness Part 1)

Knowledge

If you have no intelligence, no sensitivity, then knowledge can become very dangerous. It can be used for destructive purposes. This is what the whole world is doing.

Krishnamurti's Notebook

I wrote it [Krishnamurti's Notebook] as a diary while I was traveling but I did not write it for publication. I describe what I call the process-my sensation of being outside the ordinary world, of being completely at peace and removed from conflict. This happens only from time to time and clearly it is impossible to describe to anybody who has not experienced it. But I have attempted to put into words the actual pain and sensation which goes with the heightened consciousness. It is not intended in a romantic way: if you lead a certain type of disciplined, quiet life you realize a kind of energy-that's scientific fact-and this affects the non-mechanical part of your brain so that you enter into a new dimension. The physical organism is incapable of meetings it and so you get the pain. I am not suggesting that everyone should try to attain this, but it may be of interest to some people who have followed my thoughts and ideas to know what happens on a more personal level.

- J. Krishnamurti
[Interview with The Guardian]

Love

Love is not of time; you cannot come upon it through any conscious effort, through any discipline, through identification, which is all of the process of time. The mind, knowing only the process of time, cannot recognize love. Love is the only thing that is eternally new. Since most of us have cultivated the mind, which is the result of time, we do not know what love is. We talk about love; we say we love people, that we love our children, our wife, our neighbour, that we love nature; but the moment we are conscious that we love, self-activity has come into being; therefore it ceases to be love.

- Book "The First and Last Freedom"

Meditation

Meditation is to be aware of thought, of feeling, never to correct it, never to say it is right or wrong, never to justify it, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching and moving with that thought, with that feeling, you begin to understand and to be aware of the whole nature of thought and feeling. Silence comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, how all thought is never free but always old. To see all this, to see the movement of every thought, to understand it, to be aware of it, is to come to that silence which is meditation, in which the `observer' never is.

Observation

Now, is it possible to see, to observe, to be aware of the beautiful and the ugly things in life, and not say "I must have" or "I must not have"? Have you ever just observed anything? Do you understand, sirs? Have you ever observe your wife, your children, your friends, just looked at them? Have you ever look at a flower without calling it rose, without want to put it in your buttonhole, or take it home and give it to somebody? If you are capable of so observing, without all the values attributed by the mind, then you will find that desire is not such as monstrous thing. You can look at a car, see the beauty of it, and not be caught in the turmoil or contradiction of desire. But that requires an immense intensity of observation, not just a casual glance. It is not that you have no desire, but simply that the mind is capable of looking without describing.

- Bombay : 2nd Public Talk : 10th February 1957

Relationship

To be related means to be in contact. Contact must be something direct, not between two images. It requires a great deal of attention, an awareness, to look at another without the image which I have about that person, the image being my memories of that person, how he has insulted me, pleased me, given me pleasure, this or that. Only when there are no images between the two is there a relationship.

- The Mirror of Relationship (Choiceless Awareness Part 2)

What do we mean by that word 'relationship'? Are we ever related to anyone, or is the relationship between two images which we have created about each other? I have an image about you and you have an image about me. I have an image about you as my wife or husband, or whatever it is, and you an image about me also. The relationship is between these two imagee and nothing else. To have relationship with one another is only possible when there is no image. When I can look at you and you can look at me, without the image of memory, of insults and all the rest, then there is a relationship...

- The Mirror of Relationship (Choiceless Awareness Part 2)

Most of us use relationship as a means of escape from ourselves, from our own loneliness, from our own inward uncertainty and poverty, and so we cling to outer things of relationship, which become very important to us. But if, instead of escaping through relationship, we can look into relationship as a mirror and see very clearly, without any prejudice, exactly what is, then that very perception brings about a transformation of what is, without any effort to transform it. There is nothing to transform about a fact; it is what it is. But we approach the fact with hesitation, with fear, with a sense of prejudice, and so we are always acting upon the fact and therefore never perceiving the fact as it is. When we see the fact as it is, then that very fact is the truth which resolves the problem.

-New York : 5th Public Talk : 2nd July 1950

The egotistic seperateness is perhaps the very root of the degeneration of the wholeness of the mind with which we are deeply concerned. This does not mean that there is no personal relationship, with its affection, with its tenderness, with its encouragement and support. But when the personal relationship becomes all-important and responsible only to the few, then the mischief has begun; the reality of this is known to every human being. This fragmentation of relationship is the degenerating factor in our life. We have broken up relationship so that it is to the personal, to a group, to a nation, to certain concepts and so on. That which is fragmented can never comprehend the wholeness of responsibility. From little we are always trying to capture the greater. The better is not the good, and all our thought is based on the better, the more -- better at exams, better jobs, better status, better gods, nobler ideas.

- Letters to the Schools, 15th May 1979

Revolution

To understand this problem of change, it is necessary first of all, to understand the process of thinking and the nature of knowledge. Unless we go into this rather deeply, any change will have very little meaning, because merely to change on the surface is to perpetuate the very things we are trying to alter. All revolutions set out to change the relationship of man to man, to create a better society, a different way of living; but through the gradual process of time the very abuses which the revolution was supposed to remove recur in another way with a different group of people, and the same old process goes on. We start out to change, to bring about a classless society, only to find that, through time, through the pressure of circumstances, a different group becomes the new upper class. The revolution is never radical, fundamental.

- New Delhi : 2nd Public Talk : 17th February 1960

A man who is passionate about the world and the necessity for change, must be free from political activity, religious conformity and tradition - which means, free from all action of will; this is the new human being. This only is the social, psychological, and even the political revolution.

- The Urgency of Change, Part 2

Be concerned with radical change, with total revolution. The only revolution is the revolution between man and man, between human beings. That is our only concern. In this revolution there are no blueprints, no ideologies, no conceptual utopias. We must take the fact of the actual relationship between men and change that radically. That is the real thing.

- The Urgency of Change, Part 1

Transformation is not in the future, can never be in the future. It can only be now, from moment to moment. So what do we mean by transformation? Surely it is very simple: seeing the false as the false and the true as the true. Seeing the truth in the false and seeing the false in that which has been accepted as the truth. Seeing the false as the false and the true as the true is transformation, because when you see something very clearly as the truth, that truth liberates.

- Book "The First and Last Freedom"

Suffering

The lives of most of us are pretty ugly, sordid, miserable, petty. Our existence is a series of conflicts, contradictions, a process of struggle, pain, fleeting joy, momentary satisfaction. We are bound by so many adjustments, conformity, patterns, and there is never a moment of freedom, never a sense of complete being. There is always frustration, because there is always the seeking to fulfill. We have no tranquility of mind, but are always tortured by various demands. So, to understand all these problems and go beyond them, it is surely necessary that we begin by understanding the nature of knowledge and the process of the mind.

- The Silent Mind (Choicless Awareness Part 3)

Thought

Thought is not the means of resolving any of our problems, because thought is the response of memory, and memory is the result of accumulated knowledge as experience.

- New Delhi : 2nd Public Talk : 17th February 1960

Transformation

Transformation can come only when every problem is immediately understood. You can understand it when there is no choice and the seeking of a result, when there is no condemnation or justification. Where there is love, there is neither choice nor search for an end, nor condemnation, nor justification. It is this love that brings about transformation.

- Bombay : 11th Public Talk : 28th March 1948