insecurity and violence

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.


~ from the introduction to a course in miracles

The major cause of violence, I think, 

is that each one of us is inwardly, psychologically, 

seeking security. 

In each one of us the urge for psychological security

 that inward sense of being safe -projects the demand, 

the outward demand, for security. 

Inwardly each one of us wants to be secure, sure, certain. 

That is why we have all these marriage laws; 

in order that we may possess a woman, or a man,

 and so be secure in our relationship.

 If that relationship is attacked we become violent, 

which is the psychological demand, the inward demand,

to be certain of our relationship to everything.

 But there is no such thing as certainty, security, in any relationship. 

Inwardly, psychologically, we should like to be secure,

 but there is no such thing as permanent security.

So all these are the contributory causes of the violence that is prevalent, 

rampaging, throughout the world. I think anybody who has observed, 

even if only a little, what is going on in the world, 

and especially in this unfortunate country, can also, 

without a great deal of intellectual study, 

observe and find out in himself those things which,

 projected outwardly, are the causes of this extraordinary brutality, 

callousness, indifference, violence.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

no past or future

 

Have you not noticed

that love is silence?

It may be while holding the hand of another

or looking lovingly at a child,

or taking in the beauty of an evening.

Love has no past or future, and so it is

with this extraordinary state of silence.

~ J. Krishnamurti

truth

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, 

and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, 

by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and 

I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable 

by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; 

nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people 

along any particular path.

If you first understand that, then you will see 

how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, 

and you cannot and must not organize it.

If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; 

it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, 

to be imposed on others.

~ J. Krishnamurti

art by zahra darvisharian

awareness which allows experience to unfold itself

The desire to be secure in things and in relationship only brings about conflict and sorrow,

 dependence and fear; the search for happiness in relationship without understanding

 the cause of conflict leads to misery. When thought lays emphasis on sensate value

 and is dominated by it there can be only strife and pain. Without self-knowledge

 relationship becomes a source of struggle and antagonism, a device for covering up

 inward insufficiency, inward poverty.

Does not craving for security in any form indicate inward insufficiency?

 Does not this inner poverty make us seek, accept and cling to formulations, hopes,

 dogmas, beliefs, possessions; is not our action then merely imitative and compulsive?

 So anchored to ideology, belief, our thinking becomes merely a process of enchainment.

Our thought is conditioned by the past; the I, the me and the mine,

 is the result of stored up experience, ever incomplete. The memory of the past

 is always absorbing the present; the self which is memory of pleasure and pain

 is ever gathering and discarding, ever forging anew the chains of its own conditioning.

 It is building and destroying but always within its own self-created prison.

 To the pleasant memory it clings and the unpleasant it discards. 

Thought must transcend this conditioning for the being of the Real.

Is evaluating right thinking? Choice is conditioned thinking; right thinking 

comes through understanding the chooser, the censor. As long as thought

 is anchored in belief, in ideology, it can only function within its own limitation;

 it can only feel-act within the boundaries of its own prejudices;

 it can only experience according to its own memories which give continuity

 to the self and its bondage. Conditioned thought prevents right thinking

 which is non-evaluation, non-identification.

There must be alert self-observation without choice; choice is evaluation

 and evaluation strengthens the self-identifying memory. If we wish to understand 

deeply there must be passive and choiceless awareness which allows experience

 to unfold itself and reveal its own significance. The mind that seeks security

 through the Real creates only illusion. The Real is not a refuge; 

it is not the reward for righteous action;

 it is not an end to be gained.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

 from The Observer Is The Observed

 with thanks to No Mind's Land

desire to become

We all want to become something: 

a pacifist, a war hero, a millionaire, 

a virtuous man, or what you will. 

The very desire to become involves conflict, and that conflict produces war. 

There is peace only when there is no desire to become something, 

and that is the only true state because in that state alone

there is creation, there is reality. 

But that is completely foreign to the whole structure of society, 

which is the projection of yourself. You worship success. 

Your god is success, 

the giver of titles, degrees, 

position, and authority. 

There is a constant battle within yourself, 

the struggle to achieve what you want. 

You never have a peaceful moment, 

there is never peace in your heart because 

you are always striving to become something, to progress. 

Do not be misled by the word progress. 

Mechanical things progress, but thought can never progress 

except in terms of its own becoming.

J. Krishnamurti

from The Collected Works

to clear violence from ourselves

.

...is it possible to eradicate violence in ourselves?

I am asking whether it is possible for a human being living psychologically

 in any society to clear violence from himself inwardly? 

 If it is, the very process will produce a different way of living in this world.

Some of us, in order to rid ourselves of violence, have used a concept, 

and ideal, called non-violence, and we think by having an ideal of the opposite

 to violence, non-violence, we can get rid of the fact, the actual - but we cannot.

  We have had ideals without number, all the sacred books are full of them,

 yet we are still violent - so why not deal with violence itself

 and forget the word altogether?

If you want to understand the actual you must give your whole attention,

 all your energy, to it.  That attention and energy are distracted when you create

 a fictitious, ideal world.  So can you completely banish the ideal?  

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, 

what love is, has no concept at all. 

 He lives only in what is. 

To investigate the fact of your own anger you must pass no judgement on it,

 for the moment you conceive of its opposite you condemn it and therefore

 you cannot see it as it is.  When you say you dislike or hate someone,

 that is a fact, although it sounds terrible.  If you look at it, go into it completely,

 it ceases, but if you say, "I must not hate; I must have love in my heart,"

 then you are living in a hypocritical world with double standards.  

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,

 the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification -

 then you understand it so totally that you are finished with it.  

When you see clearly the problem is solved.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known

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

observation of ourselves becomes very superficial

 

 

 

 

Everywhere society is conditioning the individual, 

and this conditioning takes the form of self-improvement, 

which is really the perpetuation of the 'me', 

the ego, in different forms.

 

 Self-improvement may be gross, or it may be very, 

very refined when it becomes the practice of virtue,

 goodness, the so-called love of one's neighbor, 

but essentially it is the continuance of the 'me', 

which is a product of the conditioning influences of society. 

 

 All your endeavor has gone into becoming something, 

either here, if you can make it, or if not, in another world;

 but it is the same urge, the same drive to maintain and continue the self.

  ...

 

Being free of society implies not being ambitious, 

not being covetous, not being competitive; 

it implies being nothing in relation to that society 

 which is striving to be something.  

 

But you see, it is very difficult to accept that because you may be trodden on, 

you may be pushed aside; you will have nothing.  In that nothingness

 there is sanity, not in the other...  

 

As long as one wants to be part of this society, 

one must breed insanity, wars, destruction, and misery; 

but to free oneself from this society - the society of violence,

 of wealth, of position, of success - requires patience, inquiry, 

discovery, not the reading of books, the chasing after teachers,

 psychologists, and all the rest of it.

 ...

 

If one is capable of studying, watching oneself,

 one begins to discover how cumulative memory is acting 

on everything one sees; one is forever evaluating,

 discarding or accepting, condemning or justifying, 

so one's experience is always within the field

 of the known, of the conditioned. 

 

  But without cumulative memory as a directive, most of us feel lost, 

we feel frightened, and so we are incapable of observing ourselves as we are. 

 

 When there is the accumulative process, which is the cultivation of memory, 

our observation of ourselves becomes very superficial.  Memory is helpful

 in directing, improving oneself, but in self-improvement there can never 

 be a revolution, a radical transformation. It is only when 

the sense of self-improvement completely ceases, 

but not by volition, that there is a possibility

 of something transcendental, 

something totally new coming into being.

.

 

 

 

~ J. Krishnamurti

from talks given:
August 7th, 1955

 August 28th, 1955

 

 

 

Do you believe in God?

Question: Do  you believe in God?

Krishnamurti: It is easy to ask questions, and it is very important to know how to ask a right question.  In this particular question, the words ‘believe’ and ‘God’ seem to me so contradictory.  A man who merely believes in God will never know what God is, because his belief is a form of conditioning – which again is very obvious.   In Christianity you are taught from childhood to believe in God, so from the very beginning your mind is conditioned.  In the communist countries, belief in God is called sheer nonsense – at which you are horrified.  You want to convert them, and they want to convert you.  They have conditioned their minds not to believe, and you call them godless, while you consider yourself God-fearing, or whatever it is.  I do not see much difference between the two.  You may go to church, pray, listen to sermons, or perform certain rituals and get some kind of stimulation out of it – but none of that,  surely,  is the experiencing of the unknown.  And can the mind experience the unknown, whatever name one may give it?  The name does not matter.  That is the question – not whether one believes or does not believe in God.

One can see that any form of conditioning will never set the mind free, and that only the free mind can discover, experience.  Experiencing is a very strange thing.  The moment you know you are experiencing, there is the cessation of that experience.  The moment I know I am happy, I am no longer happy.  To experience this immeasurable  Reality, the experiencer must come to an end.  The experiencer is the result of the known, of many centuries of cultivated memory;  he is an accumulation of the things he has experienced.  So when he says, ‘I must experience Reality’, and is cognizant of that experience, then what he experiences is not Reality, but a projection of his own past, his own conditioning.

That is why it is very important to understand that the thinker and the thought, or the experiencer and the experience, are the same; they are not different.  When there is an experiencer separate from the experience, then the experiencer is constantly pursuing further experience, but that experience is always a projection of himself.

So Reality, the timeless state, is not to be found through mere verbalization, or acceptance, or through the repetition of what one has heard – which is all folly.  To really find out, one must go into this whole question of the experiencer.  So long as there is the ‘me’ who wants to experience, there can be no experiencing of Reality.  That is why the experiencer – the entity who is seeking God, who believes in God, who prays to God – must  totally cease.  Only then can that immeasurable Reality come into being.

~ J. Krishnamurti, from his second talk in Brussels (June 25th, 1956)

no desire for security

Surely, the mind has abandoned itself and its moorings only when

 there is no desire for security. A mind that is seeking security

can never know what love is. Self-abandonment is not the state

 of the devotee before his idol or his mental image. Self-abandonment

 can come about only when you do not cultivate it,

 and when there is self-knowing.

When the mind has understood the significance of knowledge,

 only then is there self-knowing, and self-knowing implies self-abandonment. 

You have ceased to rest on any experience as a center from which to observe,

 to judge, to weigh; therefore, the mind has already plunged into the movement

 of self-abandonment. In that abandonment there is sensitivity. 

But the mind which is enclosed in its habits of eating, of thinking,

 in its habit of never looking at anything - such a mind obviously cannot

 be sensitive, cannot be loving. 

In the very abandonment of its own limitations, the mind becomes sensitive

 and therefore innocent. And only the innocent mind knows what love is

 not the calculating mind, not the mind that has divided love

 into the carnal and the spiritual. In that state there is passion and, 

without passion, reality will not come near you. It is only the enfeebled mind

 that invites reality; it is only the dull, grasping mind that pursues truth, 

God. But the mind that knows passion in love

 to such a mind the nameless comes.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Collected Works, Vol. XI,251

with thanks to J. Krishnamurti Online

illustration by glen wexler 

a problem thought cannot resolve

The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve. 

There must be an awareness which is not of thought. 

To be aware, without condemnation or justification, of the activities of the self - 

just to be aware - is sufficient. 

If you are aware in order to find out how to resolve the problem, 

in order to transform it, in order to produce a result, 

then it is still within the field of the self, of the 'me'. 

So long as we are seeking a result, whether through analysis, 

through awareness, through constant examination of every thought, 

we are still within the field of thought, 

which is within the field of the 'me', of the 'I', of the ego, or what you will. 

As long as the activity of the mind exists, surely there can be no love. 

When there is love, we shall have no social problems.

~ J. Krishnamurti

with thanks to j. krishnamurti online

die to everything that you know

 

 

 

 

We have to understand another phenomenon in life, which is death: death from old age, or disease, and accidental death, through disease, or naturally.  We grow old inevitably, and that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows in our face, whether we have satisfied our appetites crudely, brutally.  We lose sensitivity, the sensitivity we had when young, fresh, innocent.  And as we grow older we become insensitive, dull, unaware, and gradually enter the grave.

 

So there is old age.  And there is this extraordinary thing called death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened.  If we are not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually and have accepted the edicts of the intellect.  But it is still there.  And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body.  And we accept that naturally, because we see everything dying.  But what we do not accept is the psychological ending, of the "me," with the family, with the house, with success, the things I have done, and the things I have still to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations - and there is something more to do before I end!  And the psychological entity, we're afraid that will come to an end - the "me," the "I," the "soul," in the various forms, words, that we give to the center of our being.

 

Does it come to an end?  Does it have a continuity?  The East has said it has a continuity: there is reincarnation, being born better in the next life if you have lived rightly.  If you believe in reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does (I don't know why they do, but it gives them a great deal of comfort), then in that idea is implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now, every day, matters tremendously.  Because in the next life you're going to pay for it or be rewarded depending on how you have lived.  So what matters is not what you believe will happen in the next life but what you are and how you live.  And that is implied also when you talk about resurrection.  Here (in the West) you have symbolized it in one person and worship that person, because you yourself don't know how to be reborn again in your life now (not "in heaven at the right hand of God," whatever that may mean).

 

So what matters is how you live now- not what your beliefs are - but what you are, what you do.  But we are afraid that the center, called the "I," may come to an end.  We ask: Does it come to an end?  Please listen to this!

 

You have lived in thought; that is, you have given tremendous importance to thinking.  But thinking is old; thinking is never new; thinking is the continuation of memory.  If you have lived there, obviously there is some kind of continuity.  And it is a continuity that is dead, over, finished.  It is something old; only that which ends can have something new.  So dying is very important to understand; to die; to die to everything that one knows. 

 

 I don't know if you have ever tried it.  To be free from the known, to be free from your memory, even for a few days, to be free from your pleasure, without any argument, without any fear, to die to your family, to your house, to your name, to become completely anonymous.  It is only the person who is completely anonymous who is in a state of non-violence, who has no violence.  And so to die every day, not as an idea but actually-do do it sometime!

 

You know, one has collected so much, not only books, houses, the bank account, but inwardly, the memories of insults, the memories of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of holding on to your own particular experience, which gives you a position.  To die to all that without argument, without discussion, without any fear, just to give it up.  Do it sometime, you'll see.  

 

It used to be the tradition in the East that a rich man every five years or so gave up everything, including his money, and began again.  You can't do that nowadays; there are too many people, everyone wanting your job, the population explosion, and all the rest of it.  But to do it psychologically-not give up your wife, your clothes, your husband, your children, or your house, but inwardly-is not to be attached to anything.  In that there is great beauty.  After all, it is love, isn't it?  Love is not attachment.  When there is attachment, there is fear.  And fear inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.

 

So meditation is the understanding of life, which is to bring about order.  Order is virtue, which is light.  This light is not to be lit by another, however experienced, however clever, however erudite, however spiritual.  Nobody on earth or in heaven can light that except yourself in your own understanding and meditation.

 

To die to everything within oneself!  For love is innocent and fresh, young, and clear.  Then, if you have established this order, this virtue, this beauty, this light in yourself, then you can go beyond.  This means that the mind, having laid order-which is not of thought-the mind then becomes utterly quiet, silent, naturally, without any force, without any discipline.  And in the light of that silence all actions can take place, the daily living, from that silence.  And if one were lucky enough to have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not measurable by thought, because it is always new.  It is that immeasurable something that man has everlastingly sought.  But you have to come upon it; it cannot be given to you. 

 

 It is not the word or the symbol; those are destructive.  But for it to come, you must have complete order, beauty, love.  Therefore you must die to everything that you know psychologically, so that you mind is clear, not tortured, so that it sees things as they are, both outwardly and inwardly.

 

 

 

 

~ J. Krishnamurti,

 from talks in Europe 1968

May 19, 1968

Amsterdam

 

 

why is there a fear of death?

.

Questioner:  The fact of death stares everybody in the face,

 yet its mystery is never solved.  Must it always be so?

Krishnamurti:  Why is there a fear of death? 

 When we cling to continuity, there is the fear of death.

 Incomplete action brings the fear of death. 

 There is a fear of death as long as there is the desire for continuity

 in character, continuity in action, in capacity, in the name, and so on.

  As long as there is action seeking a result, there must be the thinker 

who is seeking continuity.  Fear comes into being when this continuity 

is threatened through death.  So, there is fear of death as long

 as there is the desire for continuity. 

     That which continues disintegrates.  Any form of continuity, 

however noble, is a process of disintegration.  In continuity there is never renewal, 

and only in renewal is there freedom from the fear of death.  If we see the truth 

of this, then we will see the truth in the false.  Then there would be the liberation 

from the false.  Then there would be no fear of death.  Thus living, experiencing,

 is in the present and not a means of continuity.

     Is it possible to live from moment to moment with renewal?

  There is renewal only in ending and not in continuity.  In the interval 

between the ending and the beginning of another problem,

 there is renewal.

     Death, the state of non-continuity, the state of rebirth, is the unknown.

  Death is the unknown.  The mind, which is the result of continuity,

 cannot know the unknown.  It can know only the known.  It can only act

 and have its being in the known, which is continuous.  So the known is in fear

 of the unknown.  The known can never know the unknown, and so death 

remains the mystery.  If there is an ending from moment to moment,

 from day to day, in this ending the unknown comes into being.

     Immortality is not the continuation of "me".  The me and the mine is of time,

 the result of action towards an end.  So there is no relationship between the me

 and the mine and that which is immortal, timeless.  We would like to think 

there is a relationship, but this is an illusion.  That which is immeasurable 

cannot be caught in the net of time.

     There is fear of death where there is search for fulfillment. 

 Fulfillment has no ending.  Desire is constantly seeking and changing

 the object of fulfillment, and so it is caught in the net of time. 

 So the search for self-fulfillment is another form of continuity, 

and frustration seeks death as a means of continuity.  Truth is not continuous. 

 Truth is a state of being, and being is action without time.  This being

 can be experienced only when desire, which gives birth to continuity,

 is wholly and completely understood.  Thought is founded on the past,

 so thought cannot know the unknown, the immeasurable.  

The thought process must come to an end.  

Then only the unknowable comes into being.

.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Bombay March 14 1948

art by Klimt

who?

 who sees exactly what is taking place in the world, 

and who really wants to find out if God, truth, 

is an actuality or merely a clever invention of the priest? 

After all, you and I are the result of the collective, are we not? 

And there must be individual human beings who have completely broken away from the collective, 

from society, who are free from conditioning, not in layers or in spots, but totally, 

for it is only such individuals who can find out what truth or God is 

-not the man of tradition, not the man who does japa, rings the bell, quotes the Gita,

 and goes to the temple every day. 

It is the irreligious people who do that. 

But the man who really wants to find out 

what this extraordinary movement of living is 

must not only understand the process of his own conditioning, 

but be able to go beyond it. 

Because, the mind can find out what is true 

only when it is free from all conditioning, 

not when it merely repeats certain words or quotes the sacred books. 

Such a mind is not free.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from  Collected Works

extraordinary concentrated affection

You know, when you have a small child with you, you listen to its cries, 
you listen to its words, its murmurs.  You are so concerned you listen;
 you may be asleep, but the moment he cries you wake up.  You are attentive
 all the time because the child is yours, you must care for it, you must love it, 
you must hold it.  You are so tremendously attentive that even though 
you are asleep, you wake up.  Now, with that same quality of attention, affection,
 care, you give to every movement of that child, could you watch the mirror 
which is yourself?  Not me, you are not listening to me: you are listening 
with that extraordinary concentrated affection and care to the mirror
 which is yourself, and to what it is telling you. 
 Will you do it?

J. Krishnamurti

from a talk at Saanen, July 18th, 1978

creating enmity

.

Surely that thing which you fight you become. If I am angry 
and you meet me with anger what is the result? 
More anger. You have become that which I am.
 If I am evil and you fight me with evil means then you also become evil,
 however righteous you may feel. If I am brutal and you use brutal methods 
to overcome me, then you become brutal like me. 

And this we have done for thousands of years. 
Surely there is a different approach than to meet hate by hate.
 If I use violent methods to quell anger in myself then
 I am using wrong means for a right end, 
and thereby the right end ceases to be. In this there is no understanding;
 there is no transcending anger. Anger is to be studied tolerantly
 and understood; it is not to be overcome through violent means.
 Anger may be the result of many causes and without comprehending
 them there is no escape from anger.

We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy
 in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause
 of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. 

This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, 
for what we are the society, the state is. The enemy and the friend 
are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity 
and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action
 than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking 
puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

art by Picasso

the movement of love

Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one

or of the many.  It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar...

it is inexhaustible. 

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life,

 the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order,

 and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order,

 then that very order will bring about its own limitation, 

and the mind will be its prisoner.

 

 In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, 

from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore

 or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water,

 not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation

 is that you never know where you are, 

where you are going, what the end is.

~  J. Krishnamurti

from The Meditative Mind

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

aloneness

But loneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.

But aloneness is not separative. It is something which is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions; we want friends; we want to live in a state of separation, in a state which brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that; it can only know loneliness.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from the talk On Love and Loneliness (1952)

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