a simple life

 

 

Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few things
 but in the freedom from possession and non-possession, 
in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding.
 Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness, 
greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits thought
 and prevents it from flowering and discovering reality. 

To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result,
 is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful. Simplicity of life
 comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from craving,
 with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction, from distraction.
 From this simple life there comes that necessary one-pointedness
 which is not the outcome of self-enclosing concentration 
but of extensional awareness and meditative understanding. 

Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances;
 contentment with little comes with the riches of inward understanding. 
If you depend on circumstances to make you satisfied with life
 then you will create misery and chaos, for then you are a plaything
 of environment, and it is only when circumstances are transcended 
through understanding that there is order and clarity. 

To be constantly aware of the process of acquisitiveness,
 of addiction, of distraction, brings freedom from them 
and so there is a true and simple life.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Collected Works Volume III Ojai 

8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944