Top 681 Quotes & Sayings by Jiddu Krishnamurti - Page 3

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.

Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident-prone.

Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind.

What you believe you experience.

Those who play a safe game die very safely.

To know yourself you need not go to any book, to any priest, to any psychologist. The whole treasure is within yourself.

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.

It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.

Truth is more in the process than in the result.

What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.

Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.

The mind has to be empty to see clearly.

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

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

Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect ... Your have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In our relationships each of us builds an image about the other, and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.

Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is.

Knowledge is an addiction, as drink; knowledge does not bring understanding. Knowledge can be taught, but not wisdom; there must be freedom from knowledge for the coming of wisdom.

Silence is difficult and arduous; it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware - aware of your speech, aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence.

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Seeing, observing, listening, these are the greatest acts

A mind that is always comparing, always measuring, will always engender illusion. If I am measuring myself against you, who are clever, more intelligent, I am struggling to be like you and I am denying myself as I am. I am creating an illusion.

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.

Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.

To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction, and certainly not in isolation.

When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her-your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy. You do not dominate. You are not the man and she is not the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name. When there is love, the word duty disappears.

I do not know if you have ever noticed that the more you struggle to understand, the less you understand any problem. But, the moment you cease to struggle and let the problem tell you the whole story, give all its significance - then there is understanding, which means, obviously, that to understand, the mind must be quiet.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

As long as you ask questions you are breaking through, but the moment you begin to accept, you are psychologically dead. So right through life don't accept a thing, but inquire, investigate. Then you will find that your mind is something really extraordinary, it has no end, and to such a mind there is no death.

We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Because we really don't love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems, if you really loved it you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not.

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.

Free yourself from the psychological structure of society, which is to free yourself from the essence of conflict.

The ambitious man has never found his true vocation.

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.

What sex gives you momentarily is the total abandonment of yourself, then you are back again with your turmoil, so you want a repetition over and over again of that state in which there is no worry, no problem, no self.

When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane, one lives in a world of illusion.

We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.

Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not.

If you find out what it is you love to do and give your whole life to it, then there is no contradiction, and in that state your being is your doing.

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?

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.

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.

Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability.

Despair exists only when there is hope.

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

Where there is love, do what you will, it will be right action. It will never bring conflict to one's life. In the flame of love, all fear is consumed.

Again, I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality.

Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy.

The enemy is not the other, the enemy is you

Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery. Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be. When you love, everything will come right. Love has its own action.

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time.

The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure the timeless, the eternal, that immensity which has no beginning and no end... when we try to measure something which is not measurable, we only get caught in words.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another... It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life.