freedom - it comes unexpectedly

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Freedom is of the highest importance, but we place it within the borders of our own conceit.

  We have preconceived ideas of what freedom is, or what it should be; we have beliefs, ideals,

 conclusions about freedom.  But freedom is something that cannot be preconceived. 

 It has to be understood.  Freedom does not come through mere intellection, 

through a logical reasoning from conclusion to conclusion.  It comes darkly, unexpectedly;

 it is born of its own inward state.  To realize freedom requires an alert mind,

 a mind that is deep with energy, a mind that is capable of immediate perception

 without the process of gradation, without the idea of an end to be slowly achieved. 

 So, if I may, I would like to think aloud with you about freedom this evening.

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I think it is very important to understand this problem for oneself,

 because it is only in freedom that there is love; it is only in freedom that there is creation;

 it is only in freedom that Truth can be found.  Do what it will, a slavish mind can never find Truth;

 a slavish mind can never know the beauty and the fullness of life.

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What matters is to observe your own mind without judgement - just to look at it, to watch it,

 to be conscious of the fact that your mind is a slave, and no more; because that very perception 

releases energy, and it is this energy that is going to destroy the slavishness of the mind... 

We are concerned only with perceiving 'what is', and it is the perception of 'what is'

 that releases the creative fire.

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We are the product of our environment, of our culture; we are the product of the food we eat,

 of our climate, our customs, our traditions. ...As long as I accept the dictates of tradition,

 of a particular culture, as long as I carry the weight of my memories, my experiences -

 which after all are the result of my conditioning - I am not an individual, but merely a product. 

 When you call yourself a Hindu, a Muslim, a Parsi, a Buddhist, a communist, a Catholic, 

or what you will, are you not the product of your culture, your environment?

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Our minds are the result of a thousand yesterdays; being conditioned by the culture

 in which they live, and by the memory of past experiences, they devote themselves

 to the acquisition of knowledge and technique. ...most of us prefer to be slaves;

 it is less troublesome, more respectable, more comfortable.  In slavery there is little danger,

 our lives are more or less secure, and that is what we want - security, certainty, a way of life

 in which there will be no serious disturbance.  

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I wonder whether you have ever taken the trouble actually to look at a flower?  

And when you do look at a flower, what happens?  You immediately name the flower,

you are concerned with what species it belongs to, or you say, 'What lovely colours it has. 

 I would like to grow it in my garden; I would like to give it to my wife, 

or put it in my button-hole', and so on.  In other words, the moment you look at a flower, 

your mind begins chattering about it; therefore you never perceive the flower. 

 

 You perceive something only when your mind is silent, when there is no chattering of any kind. 

 If you can look at the evening star over the sea without a movement of the mind,

 then you really perceive the extraordinary beauty of it; and when you perceive beauty,

 do you not also experience the state of love?  Surely, beauty and love are the same. 

 Without love there is no beauty, and without beauty there is no love.  

Beauty is in form, beauty is in speech, beauty is in conduct.  

You don't have to do something to bring it about; 

there is no discipline, no method by which

 you can learn to perceive.

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Your minds are slaves to patterns, to systems, to methods and techniques. 

 I am talking of something entirely different.  Perception is instantaneous, timeless;

  there is no gradual approach to it.  It is on the instant that perception takes place;

 it is a state of effortless attention.  The mind is not making an effort,

 therefore it does not create a border, a frontier, it does not place a limitation 

on its own consciousness.  But to be aware of that timeless state, 

to feel the tremendous depth and ecstasy of it, 

one must begin by understanding the slavish mind.  

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You know, when you love something without any motive, without any want,

such love brings its own results, it finds its own way, it is its own beauty.

  ...if you really perceive for yourself that your mind is accumulating, that is enough. 

 To perceive requires complete attention; and when you give your whole mind, 

your whole heart, your total being to something, there is no problem.  

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~ J. Krishnamurti

excerpts from a talk in Bombay, 23 December 1959

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comparison and struggle

One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, 
with what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate.
 This comparison really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one's outlook.
 And on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it 
and so is our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something other than
 what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, 
but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness, ambition, 
which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led so far 
to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known.
 To bring up children without comparison
 is true education.

~ J. Krishnamurti

with thanks to j krishnamurti online

art by van gogh

attached to the known

Now if you see how it is still the action of thought and is therefore based on fear,
 on imagination, on the past, that is the field of the known.  That is,
 I am attached to the field of the known, with all its varieties, changes,
 its activities, and what I demand is comfort.  Because I have found comfort
 in the past,  I have lived within the field of the known; that is my territory, 
 I know its borders, the frontiers.  

So I ask myself: my life has been the past; I live in the past; I act in the past;
 that is my life.  Listen to this!  My life, living in the past is a dead life. 
 You understand?  My mind, which lives in the past , is a dead mind.  

  I see this as something enormously real.  Therefore the mind, realizing that,
 actually dies to the past; it will use the past, but it has lost its grip;  
the past has lost its values, grip, its, vitality.  So the mind has its own energy,
 which is not derived from the past.  
Therefore living is dying - you understand? 

Therefore living is love, which is dying.  Because if there is no attachment, 
then there is love.  If there is no attachment to the past - the past has its value,
 which can be used, which must be used as knowledge - then my living
 is a constant renewal, is a constant movement in the field of the unknown
 in which there is learning, moving





J. Krishnamurti
from a talk in Saanen, July 27th, 1972
art by Van Gogh

on passion

In a state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment;
but when passion has a cause, there is attachment , and attachment
 is the beginning of sorrow.  Most of us are attached; we cling to a person,
 to a country , to a belief, to an idea, and when the object of our attachment 
is taken away or otherwise loses its significance, we find ourselves empty,
 insufficient.  This emptiness we try to fill by clinging to something else, 
which again becomes the object of our passion.

When passion has a cause, it becomes lust.  When there is a passion for something
 - for a person, for an idea, for some kind of fulfillment - then out of the passion
 there comes contradiction, conflict, effort.  You strive to achieve or maintain
 a particular state, or to recapture one that has been and is gone. 
 But the passion of which I am speaking goes not give rise to contradiction, conflict. 
 It is totally unrelated to a cause, and therefore it is not an effect.

There can be passion only when there is total self-abandonment.  
One is never passionate unless there is a complete absence of what we call thought. 
 What we call thought is the response of the various patterns and experiences of memory, 
and where this conditioned response exists, there is no passion, there is no intensity. 
 There can be intensity only when there is a complete absence of the 'me'.

You will find out what love is, and what sorrow is, only when your mind
 has rejected all explanations and is no longer imagining, no longer seeking 
the cause, no longer indulging in words or going back in memory 
to its own pleasures and pains.  Your mind must be completely quiet, 
without a word, without a symbol, without an idea.  And then you will discover
 - or there will come into being - that state in which what we have called love, 
and what we have called sorrow and what we have called death are the same.  
 There is no longer any division between love and sorrow and death;  
and there being no division, there is beauty.  But to comprehend, to be in this state
 of ecstasy, there must be that passion which comes with the
 total abandonment of oneself.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Saanen, Aug. 5th 1962

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why am I so lonely

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So I am interested in understanding why I am lonely, for I see it is that which makes me attached. That loneliness has forced me to escape through attachment to this or to that and I see that as long as I am lonely the sequence will always be this. What does it mean to be lonely? How does it come about? Is it instinctual, inherited, or is it brought about by my daily activity? If it is an instinct, if it is inherited, it is part of my lot; I am not to blame. But as I do not accept this, I question it and remain with the question. I am watching and I am not trying to find an intellectual answer. I am not trying to tell the loneliness what it should do, or what it is; I am watching for it to tell me. There is a watchfulness for the loneliness to reveal itself. It will not reveal itself if I run away; if I am frightened; if I resist it. So I watch it. I watch it so that no thought interferes. Watching is much more important than thought coming in. And because my whole energy is concerned with the observation of that loneliness thought does not come in at all. The mind is being challenged and it must answer. Being challenged it is in a crisis. In a crisis you have great energy and that energy remains without being interfered with by thought. This is a challenge which must be answered.

So there is this tremendous energy to answer the question: why is there this loneliness? I have rejected ideas, suppositions and theories that it is inherited, that it is instinctual. All that means nothing to me. Loneliness is `what is'. Why is there this loneliness which every human being, if he is at all aware, goes through, superficially or most profoundly? Why does it come into being? Is it that the mind is doing something which is bringing it about? I have rejected theories as to instinct and inheritance and I am asking: is the mind, the brain itself, bringing about this loneliness, this total isolation? Is the movement of thought doing this? Is the thought in my daily life creating this sense of isolation? In the office I am isolating myself because I want to become the top executive, therefore thought is working all the time isolating itself. I see that thought is all the time operating to make itself superior, the mind is working itself towards this isolation.

So the problem then is: why does thought do this? Is it the nature of thought to work for itself? Is it the nature of thought to create this isolation? Education brings about this isolation; it gives me a certain career, a certain specialization and so, isolation. Thought, being fragmentary, being limited and time binding, is creating this isolation. In that limitation, it has found security saying: "I have a special career in my life; I am a professor; I am perfectly safe." So my concern is then: why does thought do it? Is it in its very nature to do this? Whatever thought does must be limited.

Now the problem is: can thought realize that whatever it does is limited, fragmented and therefore isolating and that whatever it does will be thus? This is a very important point: can thought itself realize its own limitations? Or am I telling it that it is limited? This, I see, is very important to understand; this is the real essence of the matter. If thought realizes itself that it is limited then there is no resistance, no conflict; it says, "I am that". But if I am telling it that it is limited then I become separate from the limitation. Then I struggle to overcome the limitation, therefore there is conflict and violence, not love.

Thought has created this sense of loneliness, this emptiness, because it is limited, fragmentary, divided and when it realizes this, loneliness is not, therefore there is freedom from attachment. I have done nothing; I have watched the attachment, what is implied in it, greed, fear, loneliness, all that and by tracing it, observing it, not analyzing it, but just looking, looking and looking, there is the discovery that thought has done all this. Thought, because it is fragmentary, has created this attachment. When it realizes this, attachment ceases. There is no effort made at all. For the moment there is effort conflict is back again.

In love there is no attachment; if there is attachment there is no love. There has been the removal of the major factor through negation of what it is not, through the negation of attachment. I know what it means in my daily life: no remembrance of anything my wife, my girl friend, or my neighbor did to hurt me; no attachment to any image thought has created about her; how she has bullied me, how she has given me comfort, how I have had pleasure sexually, all the different things of which the movement of thought has created images; attachments to those images has gone.

And there are other factors: must I go through all those step by step, one by one? Or is it all over? Must I go through, must I investigate--as I have investigated attachment--fear, pleasure and the desire for comfort? I see that I do not have to go through all the investigation of all these various factors; I see it at one glance, I have captured it.

So, through negation of what is not love, love is. I do not have to ask what love is? I do not have to run after it. If I run after it, it is not love, it is a reward. So I have negated, I have ended, in that enquiry, slowly, carefully, without distortion, without illusion, everything that it is not--the other is.

~ J. Krishnamurti

taken from A dialogue with oneself

a discussion meeting on August 30, 1977
photo by Shreve Stockton

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self-isolation

We know loneliness, don’t we?, the fear, the misery, the antagonism, the real fright of a mind that is aware of its own loneliness. We all know that. Don’t we? That state of loneliness is not foreign to any one of us. You may have all the riches, all the pleasures, you may have great capacity and bliss; but within there is always the lurking shadow of loneliness.

The rich man, the poor man who is struggling, the man who is writing, creating, the worshiper – they all know this loneliness. When it is in that state, what does the mind do? The mind turns on the radio, picks up a book, runs away from `what is’ into something which is not. Sirs, do follow what I am saying – not the words but the application, the observation of your own loneliness.

When the mind is aware of its loneliness, it runs away, escapes. The escape, whether into religious contemplation or going to a cinema, is exactly the same; it is still an escape from `what is’. The man who escapes through drinking is no more immoral than the one who escapes by the worship of God; they are both the same, both are escaping.

When you observe the fact that you are lonely, if there is no escape and therefore no struggle into the opposite, then, generally, the mind tends to condemn it according to the frame of its knowledge; but if there is no condemnation, then the whole attitude of the mind towards the thing it has called lonely, has undergone a complete change, has it not?

After all, loneliness is a state of self-isolation, because the mind encloses itself and cuts itself away from every relationship, from everything. In that state, the mind knows loneliness; and if, without condemning it, the mind be aware and not create the escape, then surely that loneliness undergoes a transformation. The transformation might then be called `aloneness’ – it does not matter what word you use. In that aloneness, there is no fear.

The mind that feels lonely because it has isolated itself through various activities, is afraid of that loneliness. But if there is awareness in which there is no choice – which means no condemnation – then the mind is no longer lonely but it is in a state of aloneness in which there is no corruption, in which there is no process of self-enclosure. One must be alone, there must be that aloneness, in that sense. Loneliness is a state of frustration, aloneness is not; and aloneness is not the opposite of loneliness.

Surely, Sirs, we must be alone, alone from all influences, from all compulsions, from all demands, longings, hopes, so that the mind is no longer in the action of frustration. That aloneness is essential, it is a religious thing. But the mind cannot come to it without understanding the whole problem of loneliness. Most of us are lonely, all our activities are the activities of frustration. The happy man is not a lonely man. Happiness is alone, and the action of aloneness is entirely different from the activities of loneliness.

All this requires, does it not?, awareness, a total awareness of one’s whole being, conscious as well as the unconscious. As most of us only live on the superficial consciousness, on the surface level of our mind, the deep underground forces, loneliness, desperations and hopes are always frustrating the superficial activity. So it is important to understand the total being of the mind; and that understanding is denied when there is awareness in which there is choice, condemnation.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from On Love and Loneliness

without ambition?

Is it not possible to live in this world without ambition, just being what you are?

 If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, 

then what you are undergoes a transformation. 

I think one can live in this world anonymously, 

completely unknown, 

without being famous, ambitious, cruel. 

One can live very happily when no importance is given to the self; 

and this also is part of right education.

The whole world is worshiping success. 

You hear stories of how the poor boy studied at night and eventually became a judge, 

or how he began by selling newspapers and ended up a multi-millionaire. 

You are fed on the glorification of success. 

J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

thanks to j. krishnamurti online

love? ... find out

So to go into the question of what love is we must first free it from the encrustation of centuries, put away all ideals and ideologies of what it should or should not be. To divide anything into what should be and what is is the most deceptive way of dealing with life.

Now how am I going to find out what this flame is which we call love—not how to express it to another but what it means in itself? I will first reject what the church, what society, what my parents and friends, what every person and every book, has said about it because I want to find out for myself what it is.

Here is an enormous problem that involves the whole of mankind. There have been a thousand ways of defining it and I myself am caught in some pattern or another according to what I like or enjoy at the moment—so shouldn’t I, in order to understand it, free myself from my own inclinations and prejudices? I am confused, torn by my own desires, so I say to myself, “First clear up your own confusion. Perhaps you may be able to discover what love is through what it is not.”

. . .

The government says go and kill for the love of your country. Is that love? Religion says give up sex for the love of God. Is that love? Is love desire? Don’t say no. For most of us it is desire with pleasure, the pleasure that is derived through the senses, through sexual attachment and fulfillment.

I am not against sex, but see what is involved in it. 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.

You say you love your wife. In that love is involved sexual pleasure, the pleasure of having someone in the house to look after your children, to cook. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well-being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don’t like, is called jealousy. There is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. 

So what you are really saying is, “As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you. As long as I can rely on you to satisfy my demands, sexual and otherwise, I love you, but the moment you cease to supply what I want I don’t like you.” So there is antagonism between you, there is separation, and when you feel separate from another there is no love.

But if you live with your wife without thought creating all these contradictory states, these endless quarrels in yourself, then perhaps—perhaps—you will know what love is. Then you are completely free and so is she, whereas is you depend on her for all your pleasure you are a slave to her. So when one loves there must be freedom, not only from the other but from oneself.

This belonging to another, being psychologically nourished by another, depending on another—in all this there must always be anxiety, fear, jealousy, guilt; and so long as there is fear there is no love; a mind ridden with sorrow will never know what love is; sentimentality and emotionalism have nothing whatsoever to do with love. And so love is not to do with pleasure and desire.

Love is not the product of thought, which is the past. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Love is not hedged about and caught in jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. Love is always active, present. It is not “I will love” or “I have loved.” If you know love you will not follow anybody. Love does not obey. When you love there is neither respect not disrespect.

Do you know what it really means to love somebody, to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing—don’t you know what it means? Where there is love is there comparison? When you love someone with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is there comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love there is not the other.

~ J. Krishnamurti

excerpt from Freedom from the Known

art by nancy poucher

far away

Keep far away.

You should never be here too much; be so far away that they can’t find you,

 they can’t get at you to shape, to mold.

Be so far away, like the mountains, like the unpolluted air;

 be so far away that you have no parents, no relations, no family, no country;

 be so far away that you don’t know even where you are.

Don’t let them find you; don’t come into contact with them too closely.

Keep far away where even you can’t find yourself; keep a distance 

which can never be crossed over; keep a passage open always 

through which no one can come.

Don’t shut the door for there is no door, only an open, endless passage;

 if you shut any door, they will be very close to you, then you are lost.

Keep far away where their breath can’t reach you

 and their breath travels very far and very deeply; 

don’t get contaminated by them, by their word, by their gesture,

 by their great knowledge; they have great knowledge

 but be far away from them where even you cannot find yourself.

For they are waiting for you, at every corner, in every house to shape you, 

to mold you, to tear you to pieces and then put you together in their own image.

Their gods, the little ones and the big ones, are the images of themselves,

 carved by their own mind or by their own hands.

They are waiting for you, the churchman and the Communist,

 the believer and the non-believer, for they are both the same;

 they think they are different but they are not for they both brainwash you, 

till you are of them, till you repeat their words, till you worship their saints,

 the ancient and the recent; they have armies for their gods 

and for their countries and they are experts in killing.

Keep far away but they are waiting for you, the educator and the businessman; 

one trains you for the others to conform to the demands of their society, 

which is a deadly thing.

They have a thing called society and family: these two are their real gods,

 the net in which you will be entangled.

They will make you into a scientist, into an engineer,

 into an expert of almost anything from cooking to architecture to philosophy.

Keep far, far away; they are waiting for you, the politician and the reformer;

 the one drags you down into the gutter and then the other reforms you; 

they juggle with words and you will be lost in their wilderness.

Keep far away; they are waiting for you, the experts in God and the bomb throwers: 

the one will convince you and the other show you how to kill;

 there are so many ways to find God and so many, many ways to kill.

But besides all these, there are hoards of others to tell you what to do 

and what not to do; keep away from all of them, 

so far away that you cannot find yourself or any other.

You too would like to play with all of them who are waiting for you 

but then the play becomes so complicated and entertaining that you will be lost.

You should never be here too much, 

be so far away that even you cannot find yourself.

They were all sitting in a row in the fairly well kept garden; 

they had on the light and they were eating and the big house was behind them. 

There was the scent of many flowers in the air and the breeze 

was coming from the restless sea. On that road there was hardly any car 

and your brain was utterly still and the movement of a flash was taking place. 

The meditation was the flash and that flash can only be in emptiness; 

the flash that opens the door into the unknown. 

That flash has no time but it’s only a fleeting second. 

You can never keep that flash any more than you can hold

the winds in your fists.




~ J. Krishnamurti
from his notebook

an instrument of comparison?

Is not the mind also an instrument of comparison?  You say this is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, who is more clever.  There is comparison when you say, 'I remember that particular river that I saw a year ago, and it was still more beautiful'.  Your compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with an example, with the ultimate ideal.  Comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not sharpen the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive, inclusive, because, when you are all the time comparing, what has happened?  You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset.  You see a mountain and you see how beautiful it is.  Then you say, 'I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago'.  When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else.  So comparison prevents you from looking fully.  I look at you, you are nice, but I say, 'I know a much nicer person, a much better person, a more noble person, a more stupid person'.  When I do this, I am not looking at you.  Because my mind is occupied with something else, I am not looking at you at all.   In the same way, I am not looking at the sunset at all.  To really look at the sunset, there must be no comparison; to really look at you, I must not compare you with someone else.  It is only when I look at you without comparative judgment that I can understand you.  But when I compare you with somebody else, then I judge you and I say, 'Oh, he is a very stupid man'.  So stupidity arises when there is comparison.  I compare you with somebody else, and that very comparison brings about a lack of human dignity.  When I look at you without comparing, I am only concerned with you, not with someone else.  The very concern about you, not comparatively, brings about human dignity.

So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is.  So where there is comparison, there is no love.  When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child.  But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love.  You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else.   As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.

And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.

J. Krishnamurti

from a conversation with students at Rajghat School

December 19, 1952

my secret

J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, 

spoke and traveled almost continually all over the world

 for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words

…that which is beyond words. 

At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking,

 “Do you want to know my secret?”

Everyone became very alert. 

Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding.

“This is my secret,” he said.

 “I don’t mind what happens.”

~ from Eckhart Tolle's
A New Earth – Awakening to your Life’s Purpose

to meet it

Do you know what it means to come into contact with death,
 to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, 
does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: 
to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; 
you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, 
to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; 
you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, 
fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death
 if you don't die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. 
A mind that is frightened has no love, it has habits, it has sympathy, 
it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate.
 But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought.

So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living,
 by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, 
so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion.
 That is what is going to take place when you die.
 But we have a limited death to the physical. We know very well logically, 
sanely, that the organism is going to come to an end. So we invent a life 
which we have lived of daily agony, daily insensitivity, the increase of problems,
 and its stupidity; that life we want to carry over, which we call the "soul,"
 which we say is the most sacred thing, a part of the divine, 
but it is still part of your thoughtand therefore it has nothing to do with divinity.
 It is your life!

So one has to live every day dying, 
dying because you are then in contact with life.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

photo by Kathleen Connally

living is relationship

Life is relationship, living is relationship, yet very little attention is given to the question.  What is your relationship with another? Have you any relationship at all; or is your relationship with the past?  The past with its images, experience, knowledge, brings about what you call relationship.  But knowledge in relationship causes disorder.  If you have hurt me, I remember that; you hurt me yesterday, or a week ago, that remains in my mind, that's the knowledge I have about you.  That knowledge prevents relationship; that knowledge in relationship breeds disorder.  So the question is:  When you hurt me, flatter me, when you scandalize me, can the mind wipe it away at the very moment without recording it?

So one asks:  Can you see that sunset, or the beautiful face, or your sexual experience, or whatever it be, see it and finish it, not carry it over  -  whether that thing was great beauty or great sorrow or great physical or psychological pain?  Can you see the beauty of it and be finished, completely finished, not take it over and store it up for the next day, next month, the future?  If you store it up, then thought plays with it.  Thought is the storing up of that incident of that pain or that suffering or that thing that gave delight.

I want to see the sunset, I want to look at the trees, full of the beauty of the earth. I don't want to reduce it, and thought will reduce it.  Is not the mind an instrument of comparison?  You say this is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, who is more clever.  There is comparison when you say, 'I remember that particular river that I saw a year ago, and it was still more beautiful'.  You compare yourself with somebody, with an example, with the ultimate ideal.  You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset.  You see a mountain and you see how beautiful it is.  Then you say, 'I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago'.  When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else.  So comparison prevents you from looking fully.

What is actually taking place in our relationships?  Are not our relationships a self-isolation?  Is not every activity of the mind a process of safeguarding, of seeking security, isolation?  We have so many securities; we have built walls around ourselves with which we are satisfied, and occasionally there is a whisper beyond the wall;  occasionally there is an earthquake, a revolution, a disturbance which we soon smother.  So most of us really do not want to go beyond the self-enclosing process;  all we are seeking is a substitution, the same thing in a different form.  We are actually seeking, not to go beyond isolation, but to strengthen isolation so that it will be permanent and undisturbed.

Most of us are aware of this inner poverty, this inner insufficiency. You say it is empty, you give it a name, and you think you have understood it. Is not the very naming of the thing a hindrance to the understanding of it?   It is not an abortive reaction, it is a fact, and by calling it some name, we cannot dissolve it - it is there.  Do you know something by giving it a name?  Do you know me by calling me a name?  You can know me only when you observe me, when you have communion with me, but calling me by a name saying I am this or that, obviously puts an end to communion with me.     

It is only when the mind is quiet that it shall know love, and that state of quietness is not a thing to be cultivated.  Cultivation is still the action of the mind; discipline is still a product of the mind, and a mind that is disciplined, controlled, subjugated, a mind that is resisting, explaining, cannot know love. You may read, you may listen to what is being said about love, but that is not love.  Only when you put away the things of the mind, only when your heart is empty of the things of the mind, is there love.  Then you will know what it is to love without separation, without distance, without time, without fear - and that is not reserved to the few.





~ J. Krishnamurti
excerpts from a collection of talks
On Love and Loneliness

photo from streetcar named desire by Tennessee Williams

listen with ease

.

Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, 

not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? 

Then you hear everything, don’t you? 

You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, 

the immediate sounds—which means really that you are listening to everything. 

Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. 

If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, 

you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, 

a change which comes without your volition, 

without your asking; 

and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.

~ J. Krishnamurti

the song of life

I have no name,

I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.

I have no shelter;

I am as the wandering waters.

I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;

Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.

I have no sacred books;

Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.

I am not in the incense

Mounting on the high altars,

Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.

I am neither in the graven image,

Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.

I am not bound by theories,

Nor corrupted by beliefs.

I am not held in the bondage of religions,

Nor in the pious agony of their priests.

I am not entrapped by philosophies,

Nor held in the power of their sects.

I am neither low nor high,

I am the worshipper and the worshipped.

I am free.

My song is the song of the river

Calling for the open seas,

Wandering, wandering,

I am Life.

I have no name,

I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.

~ J. Krishnamurti

photo of a pulsar

belief - an escape

You believe in God, and another does not believe in God, 

so your beliefs separate you from each other. 

Belief throughout the world is organized as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, 

and so it divides man from man. We are confused, and we think that 

through belief we shall clear the confusion; that is, belief is superimposed on the confusion, 

and we hope that confusion will thereby be cleared away. 

But belief is merely an escape from the fact of confusion; 

it does not help us to face and to understand the fact 

but to run away from the confusion in which we are. 

To understand the confusion, belief is not necessary, 

and belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. 

So, religion, which is organized belief, becomes a means of escape 

from what is, from the fact of confusion. 

The man who believes in God, the man who believes in the hereafter, 

or who has any other form of belief, is escaping from the fact of what he is. 

Do you not know those who believe in God, 

who do puja, who repeat certain chants and words, 

and who in their daily life are dominating, cruel, ambitious, cheating, dishonest? 

Shall they find God? Are they really seeking God? 

Is God to be found through repetition of words, through belief? 

But such people believe in God, they worship God, 

they go to the temple every day, 

they do everything to avoid the fact of what they are - 

and such people you consider respectable because they are yourself.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

with thanks to j krishnamurti online

art by Michelangelo