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To Me, Then, True Criticism Consists In Trying To Find Out The Intrinsic Worth Of The Thing Itself, And Not In Attributing A Quality To That Thing. You Attribute A Quality To An Environment, To An Experience, Only When You Want To Derive Something From It, When You Want To Gain Or To Have Power Or Happiness. Now This Destroys True Criticism. Your Desire Is Perverted Through Attributing Values, And Therefore You Cannot See Clearly. Instead Of Trying To See The Flower In Its Original And Entire Beauty, You Look At It Through Coloured Glasses, And Therefore You Can Never See It As It Is.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

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To Me, Then, True

Jiddu Krishnamurti

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To Me, Then, True Criticism Consists In Trying To Find Out The Intrinsic Worth Of The Thing Itself, And Not In Attributing A Quality To That Thing. You Attribute A Quality To An Environment, To An Experience, Only When You Want To Derive Something From It, When You Want To Gain Or To Have Power Or Happiness. Now This Destroys True Criticism. Your Desire Is Perverted Through Attributing Values, And Therefore You Cannot See Clearly. Instead Of Trying To See The Flower In Its Original And Entire Beauty, You Look At It Through Coloured Glasses, And Therefore You Can Never See It As It Is.

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The First Thing To Realize In Meditation Is That There Is No Authority, That The Mind Must Be Completely Free To Examine, To Observe, To Learn. And So There Is No Following, No Accepting, No Obedience.

As Long As The Mind Is Seeking To Fill Itself, It Will Always Be Empty. When The Mind Is No Longer Concerned With Filling Its Own Emptiness, Then Only Does That Emptiness Cease To Be.

In This Country, Unfortunately, As All Over The World, We Care So Little, We Have No Deep Feeling About Anything. Most Of Us Are Intellectual-intellectuals In The Superficial Sense Of Being Very Clever, Full Of Words And Theories About What Is Right And What Is Wrong, About How We Should Think, What We Should Do. Mentally We Are Highly Developed, But Inwardly There Is Very Little Substance Or Significance; And It Is This Inward Substance That Brings About True Action, Which Is Not Action According To An Idea.

To Understand The Present With Its Full, Rich Significance, The Mind Must Free Itself From The Habit Of Self-protecting Acquisition; When It Is Utterly Naked, Then There Is Immortality.

This Is No Magnificent Deed, Because I Do Not Want Followers, And I Mean This. The Moment You Follow Someone You Cease To Follow Truth. I Am Not Concerned Whether You Pay Attention To What I Say Or Not. I Want To Do A Certain Thing In The World And I Am Going To Do It With Unwavering Concentration. I Am Concerning Myself With Only One Essential Thing: To Set Man Free. I Desire To Free Him From All Cages, From All Fears, And Not To Found Religions, New Sects, Nor To Establish New Theories And New Philosophies.

It Is Very Easy To Conform To What Your Society Or Your Parents And Teachers Tell You. That Is A Safe And Easy Way Of Existing; But That Is Not Living...to Live Is To Find Out For Yourself What Is True.

We Are Concerned, Not With The Development Of Just One Capacity, Such As That Of A Mathematician, Or A Scientist, Or A Musician, But With The Total Development Of The Student As A Human Being.

It Is Love Alone That Leads To Right Action. What Brings Order In The World Is To Love And Let Love Do What It Will.

Compassion Being Action Without Motive, Without Self-interest, Without Any Sense Of Fear, Without Any Sense Of Pleasure.

Through Self-knowledge You Begin To Find Out What Is God, What Is Truth, What Is That State Which Is Timeless. In Self-knowledge Is The Whole Universe; It Embraces All The Struggles Of Humanity.

Buddha Called Himself 'the Enlightened One' And Jesus Called Himself 'the Son Of God'. To Me The Term 'world-teacher' Is Of As Little Importance As 'the Son Of God' Or 'the Enlightened One'.

It Is A Great Art To Have An Abundance Of Knowledge And Experience - To Know The Richness Of Life, The Beauty Of Existence, The Struggles, The Miseries, The Laughter, The Tears - And Yet Keep Your Mind Very Simple; And You Can Have A Simple Mind Only When You Know How To Love.

Where There Is Fear There Is Aggression.

If You Have A Great Many Desires, You Will Gradually Eliminate Them One By One, Until You Allow Certain Desires To Dominate And The Others To Die Away.

To Understand Yourself Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

When All Authority Of Every Kind Is Put Aside, Denied, Then You Can Find Out For Yourself.

Without Understanding The Process Of The Self, There Is No Bais For Thought, There Is No Basis For Right Thinking.

It Is More Important To Find Out What You Are Giving To Society Than To Ask What Is The Right Means Of Livelihood.

You Can Only Hear Clearly When You Sit Quietly, When You Give Your Attention. Nor Can You Have Order If You Are Not Free To Watch, If You Are Not Free To Listen, If You Are Not Free To Be Considerate. This Problem Of Freedom And Order Is One Of The Most Difficult And Urgent Problems In Life. It Is A Very Complex Problem. It Needs To Be Thought Over Much More Than Mathematics, Geography, Or History.

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.

Nothing Can Disturb The Calm Peace Of My Soul.

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.

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.

We All Want To Be Famous People, And The Moment We Want To Be Something We Are No Longer Free.

Sorrow Is Not In Death But In Loneliness, And Conflict Comes When You Seek Consolation, Forgetfullness, Explanations, And Illusions.

When One Has An Image About Oneself One Is Surely Insane, One Lives In A World Of Illusion.

From Innumerable Complexities We Must Grow To Simplicity; We Must Become Simple In Our Inward Life And In Our Outward Needs.

When We Stop Fighting With Ourselves, We Aren't Creating Anymore Conflict In Our Mind. Then Our Mind Can For The First Time Relax And Be Still. Then For The First Time Our Consciousness Can Become Whole And Unfragmented. Then Total Attention Can Be Given To All Of Our Thoughts And Feelings. And Then There Will Be Found A Gentleness And A Goodness In Us That Can Embrace All That Is Been Given In The World. Then A Deep Love For Everything Will Be The Result Of This Deep Attention. For This Total Attention, This Soft And Pure Consciousness That We Are, Is Nothing But Love Itself.

Does A Human Being Know The Responsibility He Has To Himself And To All Of Mankind

The Moment I Am Aware That I Am Aware, I Am Not Aware. Awareness Means The Observer Is Not.

Most People Are Unhappy; And They Are Unhappy Because There Is No Love In Their Hearts.

Fear Begins And Ends With The Desire To Be Secure; Inward And Outward Security, With The Desire To Be Certain, To Have Permanency. The Continuity Of Permanence Is Sought In Every Direction, In Virtue, In Relationship, In Action, In Experience, In Knowledge, In Outward And Inward Things. To Find Security And Be Secure Is The Everlasting Cry. It Is This Insistent Demand That Breeds Fear.

Tradition Implies Authority, Conformity, Imitation, Following.

The Ending Is The Beginning, And The Beginning Is The First Step, And The First Step Is The Only Step.

The More You Know Yourself, The More Clarity There Is. Self-knowledge Has No End - You Don't Come To An Achievement, You Don't Come To A Conclusion. It Is An Endless River.

To Bring About A Fundamental, Radical Revolution, We Must Begin With Ourselves.

The Earth Doesn't Belong To Anyone. It Is The Land Upon Which All Of Us Are To Live For Many Years, Ploughing, Reaping And Destroying. You Are Always A Guest On This Earth And Have The Austerity Of A Guest. Austerity Is Far Deeper Than Owning Only A Few Things. The Very Word Austerity Has Been Spoilt By The Monks, By The Sannyasis, By The Hermits. Sitting On That High Hill Alone In The Solitude Of Many Things, Many Rocks And Little Animals And Ants, That Word Has No Meaning.

Intuition Is The Whisper Of The Soul.

The Guru Cannot Awaken You; All That He Can Do Is To Point Out What Is.

Is It Possible To Live In This World Without The Operation Of Will?

Only The Free Mind Knows What Love Is.

Perception Without The Word, Which Is Without Thought, Is One Of The Strangest Phenomena. Then The Perception Is Much More Acute, Not Only With The Brain, But Also With All The Senses. Such Perception Is Not The Fragmentary Perception Of The Intellect Nor The Affair Of The Emotions. It Can Be Called A Total Perception, And It Is Part Of Meditation.

Why Haven't We, With All Our Cunning, Experience, Resolved This Problem Of Fear Completely? Isn't Fear The Cause Of The 'me'?

You Cannot Lay Down A Standard Which All Must Follow.

Hasn't Knowledge Only Crippled Me From Seeing Truth? Is Knowledge Itself Illusory?

Meditation Is The Process Of Understanding Your Own Mind.

The Authority Of A Belief Imposed By Religion Surely Destroys The Discovery Of Reality.one Relies On Authority Because One Is Afraid To Stand Alone.

Meditation Is The Emptying Of The Mind Of All The Things That The Mind Has Put Together. If You Do That -perhaps You Won't, But It Doesn't Matter, Just Listen To This- You Will Find That There Is An Extraordinary Space In The Mind, And That Space Is Freedom. So You Must Demand Freedom At The Very Beginning, And Not Just Wait, Hoping To Have It At The End. You Must Seek Out The Significance Of Freedom In Your Work, In Your Relationships, In Everything That You Do. Then You Will Find That Meditation Is Creation.

To Keep Always In The Same Place Means To Stagnate.

When We Talk About Understanding, Surely It Takes Place Only When The Mind Listens Completely - The Mind Being Your Heart, Your Nerves, Your Ears- When You Give Your Whole Attention To It.

We Are Empty Shells If We Do Not Possess, If We Do Not Fill Our Life With Furniture, With Music, With Knowledge, With This Or That. And That Shell Makes A Lot Of Noise, And That Noise We Call Living, And With That We Are Satisfied.

Do It Or Don't Do It But Get On With It.

If You Come Across Fear, Stare It In Its Eyes. Face It And You Will Notice That Fear Fades Away.

Be A Light Unto Oneself

Where There Is Love, There Is Revolution, Because Love Is Transformation From Moment To Moment.

And The Idea Of Ourselves Is Our Escape From The Fact What We Really Are.

The Ambitious Man Has Never Found His True Vocation.

Am I Caught In A Self-centred, Narrow Little Cell Which Refuses To Look Beyond? Do I See It When You Come Along And Tell Me That My Brain Is The Brain Of All Mankind?

So Let Us Decide Whether You Want A Shelter, A Safety Zone, Which Will No Longer Yield Conflict, Whether You Want To Escape From The Present Conflict To Enter A Condition In Which There Shall Be No Conflict; Or Whether You Are Unaware, Unconscious Of This Conflict In Which You Exist. If You Are Unconscious Of The Conflict, That Is, The Battle That Is Taking Place Between That Self And The Environment, If You Are Unconscious Of That Battle, Then Why Do You Seek Further Remedies? Remain Unconscious.

When One Loses The Deep Intimate Relationship With Nature, Then Temples, Mosques And Churches Become Important.

As We Are Concerned With What Others Think Of Us, So We Are Anxious To Know All About Them; And From This Arise The Crude And Subtle Forms Of Snobbishness And The Worship Of Authority. Thus We Become More And More Externalized And Inwardly Empty. The More Externalized We Are, The More Sensations And Distractions There Must Be, And This Gives Rise To A Mind That Is Never Quiet, That Is Not Capable Of Deep Search And Discovery.

Identification Prevents And Perverts The Flow Of Thought-feeling.

Imagination Builds The Image Of The Self, And Thought Then Functions Within Its Shadows. From This Self-concept Grows The Conflict Between What Is And What Should Be, The Conflict In Duality.

Surely, It Is Only When The Mind Is Creatively Empty That It Is Capable Of Finding Out Whether There Is An Ultimate Reality Or Not. But, The Mind Is Never Creatively Empty; It Is Always Acquiring, Always Gathering, Living On The Past Or In The Future, Or Trying To Be Focused In The Immediate Present: It Is Never In That State Of Creativeness In Which A New Thing Can Take Place. As The Mind Is A Result Of Time, It Cannot Possibly Understand That Which Is Timeless, Eternal.

Only When The Mind Is Tranquil-through Self-knowledge And Not Through Imposed Self-discipline-only Then, In That Tranquillity, In That Silence, Can Reality Come Into Being. It Is Only Then That There Can Be Bliss, That There Can Be Creative Action.

Goodness Has No Opposite. Most Of Us Consider Goodness As The Opposite Of The Bad Or Evil And So Throughout History In Any Culture Goodness Has Been Considered The Other Face Of That Which Is Brutal. So Man Has Always Struggled Against Evil In Order To Be Good; But Goodness Can Never Come Into Being If There Is Any Form Of Violence Or Struggle.

If There Is No Meditation, Then You Are Like A Blind Man In A World Of Great Beauty, Light And Colour.

I Think It Is Absurd To Give Such Tremendous Importance To The Distinctions Between Men And Women. When I Meet Someone I Regard That Person As A Human Being. I Do Not Say "this Is A Man; This Is A Woman."

Meditation Is Not A Means To An End. It Is Both The Means And The End.

If We Can Really Understand The Problem, The Answer Will Come Out Of It, Because The Answer Is Not Separate From The Problem.

We Want The Children To Conform; We Want To Control Their Minds, To Shape Their Conduct, Their Way Of Living, So That They Will Fit Into The Pattern Of Society, That Is What Every Parent Wants, Is It Not? And That Is Exactly What Is Happening, Whether It Be In America Or In Europe, In Russia Or In India. The Pattern May Vary Slightly, But They All Want The Child To Conform.

As We Are - The World Is.

If You Seem Something That Is True And Do Not Act Then You Are Wasting Your Life. And Life Is Too Precious. It Is All That We Have.

There Is No Tranquility In Ideas.

From These Prejudices There Arises Conflict, Transient Joys And Suffering. But We Are Unconscious Of This, Unconscious That We Are Slaves To Certain Forms Of Tradition, To Social And Political Environment, To False Values.

That Is The First Thing To Learn - Not To Seek. When You Seek You Are Really Only Window-shopping. The Question Of Whether Or Not There Is A God Or Truth Or Reality, Or Whatever You Like To Call It, Can Never Be Answered By Books, By Priests, Philosophers Or Saviours. Nobody And Nothing Can Answer The Question But You Yourself And That Is Why You Must Know Yourself. Immaturity Lies Only In Total Ignorance Of Self. To Understand Yourself Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

I Admire And Respect The Tenacity, Courage, And Patience Of The Unenlightened In The Face Of So Much Overwhelming Evidence

Freedom Is Now Or Never.

We Never See A Tree Except Through The Image That We Have Of It, The Concept Of That Tree; But The Concept, The Knowledge, The Experience, Is Entirely Different From The Actual Tree. Look At A Tree And You Will Find How Extraordinarily Difficult It Is To See It Completely, So That No Image, No Screen, Comes Between The Seeing And The Actual Fact. By Completely I Mean With The Totality Of Your Mind And Heart, Not A Fragment Of It.

The Hindu, The Oriental, Says That The Physical Is But The Shadow Of The Eternal, Of The Truth; And He Says 'in Order To Understand The Truth, I Must Let The Shadow Go, And Not Concern Myself With It, But With The Understanding Of The Eternal.' So He Does Not Concern Himself With The Physical. He Is More Concerned With The Quality Of Mind And Heart. Hence There Is Disease, There Is Disorder, And There Is Chaos And Neglect And The Gradual Running Down Of The Physical.

Merely To Stuff The Child With A Lot Of Information, Making Him Pass Examinations, Is The Most Unintelligent Form Of Education.

Governments Want Efficient Technicians, Not Human Beings, Because Human Beings Become Dangerous To Governments – And To Organized Religions As Well. That Is Why Governments And Religious Organizations Seek To Control Education.

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.

To Know Oneself Is To Study Oneself In Action, Which Is Relationship.

Without Love There Is No Art. When The Artist Is Playing Beautifully There Is No 'me; There Is Love And Beauty, And This Is Art. This Is Skill In Action.

Activity That Perishes, That Is Not Productive Of The Eternal, Of The Lasting, Is Of Very Little Use.

It Is Only The Religious Mind That Is A Truly Revolutionary Mind.

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?

Extraordinary Beauty

Follow The Wandering, The Distraction, Find Out Why The Mind Has Wandered; Pursue It, Go Into It Fully. When The Distraction Is Completely Understood, Then That Particular Distraction Is Gone. When Another Comes, Pursue It Also.

Can The Mind Resolve A Psychological Problem Immediately?

Now, Is It Possible Not To Be Hurt At All? Because The Consequences Of Being Hurt Are The Building Of A Wall Around Oneself, Withdrawing In One's Relationship With Others In Order Not To Be Hurt More. In That There Is Fear And A Gradual Isolation. Now, We Are Asking: Is It Possible Not Only To Be Free Of Past Hurts But Also Never To Be Hurt Again?

What Is Of Great Importance Is That Everyone Should Concern Himself With What I Am Saying, Rather Than With The Personality Of The Teacher, The Body Of The Teacher, Where He Dwells, And So On. That Will Lead To Confusion.

If You Lose Touch With Nature You Lose Touch With Humanity.

You Cannot Ask Which System Is The Better Because You Cannot Standardize One System For The Whole Of The World. You Cannot Have One Stereotyped Code Of Morality For Every Country. One System May Work Very Well In One Country And Very Badly In Another. You Cannot Grow A Tropical Flower In A Cold Climate.

You Cannot Explain To Someone Who Comes With No Idea Of What You Are Talking About Without Being Misunderstood.

The Very Word "sorrow" Colours The Fact Of Sorrow, The Pain Of It.

Adhere To The Truth Rather Than To The Personality, And Take To Heart The Truth Rather Than The Authority Of Another.

When The Mind Goes Beyond The Thought Of 'the Me,' The Experiencer, The Observer, The Thinker, Then There Is A Possibility Of A Happiness That Is Incorruptible.

Inspirational Life

A Cup Is Useful Only When It Is Empty; And A Mind That Is Filled With Beliefs, With Dogmas, With Assertions, With Quotations Is Really An Uncreative Mind.

We Are To Learn About Fear, Not How To Escape From It.

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.

There Is An Efficiency Inspired By Love Which Goes Far Beyond And Is Much Greater Than The Efficiency Of Ambition; And Without Love, Which Brings An Integrated Understanding Of Life, Efficiency Breeds Ruthlessness.

After All You Grow By Experience. But While Your Son Is Young, You Should Try To Set Before Him His Ultimate Goal.

Fear Is Not Of The Unknown, But Of Loss Of The Known.

A Man Who Is Not Afraid Is Not Aggressive, A Man Who Has No Sense Of Fear Of Any Kind Is Really A Free, A Peaceful Man.

How Is The Mind Which Functions On Knowledge How Is The Brain Which Is Recording All The Time To End, To See The Importance Of Recording And Not Let It Move In Any Other Direction? Very Simply: You Insult Me, You Hurt Me, By Word, Gesture, By An Actual Act; That Leaves A Mark On The Brain Which Is Memory. That Memory Is Knowledge, That Knowledge Is Going To Interfere In My Meeting You Next Time Obviously.

In Awareness There Is No Becoming, There Is No End To Be Gained. There Is Silent Observation Without Choice And Condemnation, From Which There Comes Understanding.

You Are The World And The World Is You.

Intelligence Comes Into Being When The Mind, The Heart And The Body Are Really Harmonious.

The Description Is Not The Described.

Any Acceptance Of Authority Is The Very Denial Of Truth.

There Can Only Be A Relationship Between Human Beings When We Accept What Is, Not What Should Be.

Take A Journey Into The Things Which You Are Carrying, The Known- Not Into The Unknown-into What You Already Know: Your Pleasures, Your Delights, Your Despairs, Your Sorrows. Take A Journey Into That, That Is All You Have.

I Don't Mind What Happens. That Is The Essence Of Inner Freedom. It Is A Timeless Spiritual Truth: Release Attachment To Outcomes, Deep Inside Yourself, You'll Feel Good No Matter What.

The Mind Has To Be Empty To See Clearly.

There Is No End To Relationship. There May Be The End Of A Particular Relationship, But Relationship Can Never End; To Be Is To Be Related.

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.

Relationship Is A Mirror In Which You Can See Yourself, Not As You Would Wish To Be, But As You Are.

Instead Of Old Spiritual Distinctions You Have New Spiritual Distinctions, Instead Of Old Worships You Have New Worships. You Are All Depending For Your Spirituality On Someone Else, For Your Happiness On Someone Else, For Your Enlightenment On Someone Else.

Belief Conditions Experience, And Experience Then Strengthens Belief.

Doesn't Becoming Imply Time?

One Is Never Afraid Of The Unknown; One Is Afraid Of The Known Coming To An End.

Can The Mind Become Completely Still Without Coercion, Without Compulsion, Without Discipline?

Freedom Lies Beyond The Field Of Consciousness.

Are You Aware Of The Significance Of Every Thought, Of Every Reaction That You Happen To Have?

Only In Relationship Can You Know Yourself, Not In Abstraction, And Certainly Not In Isolation.

We Carry About Us The Burden Of What Thousands Of People Have Said And The Memories Of All Our Misfortunes. To Abandon All That Is To Be Alone, And The Mind That Is Alone Is Not Only Innocent But Young -- Not In Time Or Age, But Young, Innocent, Alive At Whatever Age -- And Only Such A Mind Can See That Which Is Truth And That Which Is Not Measurable By Words.

To Know Yourself You Need Not Go To Any Book, To Any Priest, To Any Psychologist. The Whole Treasure Is Within Yourself.

Intelligence Is The Seeing Of What Is.

Truth Is Something Which You Must See Immediately — And To See Something Clearly You Must Give Your Heart And Your Mind And Your Whole Being To It Immediately.

One Does Not Concern Oneself With The Expressions, But Rather With Life. You Are Looking At Life Through The Wrong End Of The Telescope When You Look At The Expressions Of Life.

In Our Relationship With Children And Young People, We Are Not Dealing With Mechanical Devices That Can Be Quickly Repaired, But With Living Beings Who Are Impressionable, Volatile, Sensitive, Afraid, Affectionate; And To Deal With Them We Have To Have Great Understanding, The Strength Of Patience And Love.

A Man Who Is Seeking To Understand Violence Does Not Belong To Any Country, To Any Religion, To Any Political Party Or Partial System; He Is Concerned With The Total Understanding Of Mankind.

We Should Awaken Feelings Of Respect For Each Other. In Other Words, Awaken The Desire To Kill Selfishness.

What Is Correct Action In A Deteriorating World?

Happiness Is A State Of Which You Are Unconscious. The Moment You Are Aware That You Are Happy, You Cease To Be Happy.

[on The Secret To A Happy, Content Life] Do You Want To Know What My Secret Is? I Don’t Mind What Happens.

If We Try To Listen We Find It Extraordinarily Difficult, Because We Are Always Projecting Our Opinions And Ideas, Our Prejudices, Our Background, Our Inclinations, Our Impulses; When They Dominate, We Hardly Listen At All To What Is Being Said...one Listens And Therefore Learns, Only In A State Of Silence, In Which This Whole Background Is In Abeyance, Is Quite; Then, It Seems To Me, It Is Possible To Communicate

The Man Who Is Seeking Truth Is Free Of All Societies And Cultures.

Happiness Is Strange; It Comes When You Are Not Seeking It. When You Are Not Making An Effort To Be Happy, Then Unexpectedly, Mysteriously, Happiness Is There, Born Of Purity, Of A Loveliness Of Being.

When I Analyse Myself And My Reactions Or Behaviour, There Is The Act And The Actor. There Is A Division Between The Two And That Creates Conflict Between "what Is" And "what Should Be".

You Are This, Which Does Not Satisfy, So You Want To Be That. If There Were An Understanding Of This, Would That Come Into Being? Because You Do Not Understand This, You Create That, Hoping Through That To Understand Or To Escape From This.

We Are Very Defensive, And Therefore Aggressive, When We Hold On To A Particular Belief, A Dogmas, Or When We Worship Our Particular Nationality, With The Rag That Is Called The Flag.

If You Wish To Produce A Perfect Rose, You Must Cut Off The Other Buds Which Are Spoiling The Growth Of The Perfect Flower.

Happiness Comes Uninvited: And The Moment That You Are Conscious That You Are Happy, You Are No Longer Happy.

The Reality Is That I Am The Teacher.

Can Another Help Bring About A Transformation In You? If He Can, You Are Not Transformed; You Are Merely Dominated, Influenced.

Until A Radical Change Takes Place And We Wipe Out All Nationalities, All Ideologies, All Religious Divisions, And Establish A Global Relationship - Psychologically First, Inwardly Before Organizing The Outer - We Shall Go On With Wars.

Understanding Of The Self Only Arises In Relationship, In Watching Yourself In Relationship To People, Ideas, And Things; To Trees, The Earth, And The World Around You And Within You. Relationship Is The Mirror In Which The Self Is Revealed. Without Self-knowledge There Is No Basis For Right Thought And Action.

Achieve Order Within Yourself...an Inward Tranquility Which Knows No Disturbance At Any Moment...in The Daily Life Of The Home And The Office.

It Is Necessary That One Be A Light To Oneself In A World That Is Becoming Utterly Dark.

Identification With The Rag Called The National Flag Is An Emotional And Sentimental Factor And For That Factor You Are Willing To Kill Another - And That Is Called, The Love Of Your Country, Love Of The Neighbor . . .? One Can See That Where Sentiment And Emotion Come In, Love Is Not.

Surely, Life Is Not Merely A Job, An Occupation; Life Is Something Extraordinarily Wide And Profound, It Is A Great Mystery, A Vast Realm In Which We Function As Human Beings.

We Demand To Be Coaxed And Comforted, To Be Encouraged And Gratified, So We Choose A Teacher Who Will Give Us What We Crave For. We Do Not Search Out Reality, But Go After Gratification And Sensation.

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.

Religion Becomes A Matter Of Belief, And Belief Acts As A Limitation On The Mind; And The Mind Then Is Never Free.

To Be Absolutely Nothing Is To Be Beyond Measure.

Absolutely Nothing

I Am All For Changing, Even If Mistakes Are Made In The Process. Mistakes Do Not Matter.

True Education Is To Learn How To Think, Not What To Think. If You Know How To Think, If You Really Have That Capacity, Then You Are A Free Human Being-free Of Dogmas, Superstitions, Ceremonies-and Therefore You Can Find Out What Religion Is.

The World Is Not Something Separate From You And Me; The World, Society, Is The Relationship That We Establish Or Seek To Establish Between Each Other. So You And I Are The Problem, And Not The World, Because The World Is The Projection Of Ourselves, And To Understand The World We Must Understand Ourselves. That World Is Not Separate From Us; We Are The World, And Our Problems Are The World's Problems.

The Craving To Become Causes Fears; To Be, To Achieve, And So To Depend Engenders Fear.

If You Do Not Give Your Children Freedom, When They Grow Up, They Will Break Away From The Family, And Then Your Hearts Will Be Broken.

You Haven't Changed. You May Say: 'i'm Full Of Love, I'm Full Of Truth, I'm Full Of Knowledge, I'm Full Of Wisdom.' I Say: 'that's All Nonsense. Do You Behave? Are You Free Of Fear? Are You Free Of Ambition, Greed, Envy And The Desire To Achieve Success In Every Field? If Not, You Are Just Playing A Game. You Are Not Serious.'

It Does Not Matter What You Call The Gaoler So Long As He Has The Key That Will Open The Door Of Your Prison! Similarly, As I Have The Key To Release Life From Its Prison, It Does Not Matter In The Least What You Call Either The Key Or Myself. I Am Not Concerned About The Title.

Violence Is Not Merely Killing Another. It Is Violence When We Use A Sharp Word, When We Make A Gesture To Brush Away A Person, When We Obey Because There Is Fear. So Violence Isn't Merely Organized Butchery In The Name Of God, In The Name Of Society Or Country. Violence Is Much More Subtle, Much Deeper, And We Are Inquiring Into The Very Depths Of Violence.

I Would Teach My Child To Respect What Is Right - The Word Right Is A Difficult Word To Use - I Would Teach Him To Respect The Intrinsic Value Of Things. Do You See What I Mean? The True Proportion Of Things.

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. .. 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.

It Is Utterly And Irrevocably Possible To Empty All Hurts And Therefore To Love, To Have Compassion. To Have Compassion Means To Have Passion For All Things, Not Just Between Two People, But For All Human Beings, For All Things Of The Earth, The Animals, The Trees - Everything The Earth Contains. When We Have Such Compassion We Will Not Despoil The Earth As We Are Doing Now And We Will Have No Wars.

To Concentrate Implies Bringing All Your Energy To Focus On A Certain Point; But Thought Wanders Away... Whereas Attention Has No Control, No Concentration. It Is Complete Attention, Which Means Giving All Your Energy, The Energy Of The Brain, Your Heart, Everything, To Attending.

You Can Look Only When The Mind Is Completely Quiet.

Most Of Us Waste Our Energy Through Chattering - Endlessly Chattering, Gossiping, Criticising, Backbiting.

Fear Is What Prevents The Flowering Of The Mind.

It Seems To Me That The Real Problem Is The Mind Itself And Not The Problem Which The Mind Has Created And Tries To Solve.

When The Mind Is Relaxed, No Longer Making An Effort, When It Is Quiet For Just A Few Seconds, Then The Problem Reveals Itself And It Is Solved. That Happens When The Mind Is Still, In The Interval Between Two Thoughts, Between Two Responses. In That State Of Mind, Understanding Comes.

Our Brains Are So Conditioned Through Education, Through Religion, To Think We Are Separate Entities With Separate Souls And So On. We Are Not Individuals At All. We Are The Result Of Thousands Of Years Of Human Experience, Human Endeavor And Struggle.

Religion, Politics, Society Are Exploiting You, And You Are Being Conditioned By Them; You Are Being Forced In A Particular Direction. You Are Not Human Beings; You Are Mere Cogs In A Machine.

Contentment Is Never The Outcome Of Fulfillment, Of Achievement, Or Of The Possession Of Things; It Is Not Born Of Action Or Inaction. It Comes With The Fullness Of What Is, Not In The Alteration Of It.

War Is The Spectacular And Bloody Projection Of Our Everyday Living. We Precipitate War Out Of Our Daily Lives; And Without A Transformation In Ourselves, There Are Bound To Be National And Racial Antagonisms, The Childish Quarreling Over Ideologies, The Multiplication Of Soldiers, The Saluting Of Flags, And All The Many Brutalities That Go To Create Organized Murder.

When You Practice Meditation, The Meditator Becomes All-important And Not The Movement Of Meditation.

And For This You Must Have Quiet And Solitude. But Society Does Not Allow You To Have Them. You Must Be With People, Outwardly Active At All Costs. If You Are Alone You Are Considered Antisocial Or Peculiar, Or You Are Afraid Of Your Own Loneliness.

How Can One Be Compassionate If You Belong To Any Religion, Follow Any Guru, Believe In Something, Believe In Your Scriptures, And So On, Attached To A Conclusion? When You Accept Your Guru, You Have Come To A Conclusion, Or When You Strongly Believe In God Or In A Saviour, This Or That, Can There Be Compassion? You May Do Social Work, Help The Poor Out Of Pity, Out Of Sympathy, Out Of Charity, But Is All That Love And Compassion?

Freedom Is Not A Reaction; Freedom Is Not A Choice. . Freedom Is Found In The Choiceless Awareness Of Our Daily Existence And Activity.

Conflict Exists Only When There Are Two Opposing Things: Fear And Non-fear, Violence And Non-violence.

Only When The Mind Is Still, Tranquil, Not Expecting Or Grasping Or Resisting A Single Thing, Is It Possible To See What Is True. It Is The Truth That Liberates, Not Your Effort To Be Free.

Change In Society Is Of Secondary Importance; That Will Come About Naturally, Inevitably, When You As A Human Being Bring About The Change In Yourself.

Changes In Society

I Have Only One Purpose: To Make People Free, To Urge Them Towards Freedom, To Help Them To Break Away From All Limitations, For That Alone Will Give Them Eternal Happiness, Will Give Them The Unconditional Realization Of Self.

One Of The Functions Of Thought Is To Be Occupied All The Time With Something. Most Of Us Want To Have Our Minds Continually Occupied So That We Are Prevented From Seeing Ourselves As We Actually Are. We Are Afraid To Be Empty. We Are Afraid To Look At Our Fears.

If You Begin To Understand What You Are Without Trying To Change It, Then What You Are Undergoes A Transformation.

Aloneness Is Obviously Not Isolation, And It Is Not Uniqueness. To Be Unique Is Merely To Be Exceptional In Some Way, Whereas To Be Completely Alone Demands Extraordinary Sensitivity, Intelligence, Understanding.

There Is No Partial Sensitivity; Either It Is The State Of One's Whole Being, Total Consciousness Or It Is Not There At All

Without An Integrated Understanding Of Life, Our Individual And Collective Problems Will Only Deepen And Extend. The Purpose Of Education Isn't To Produce Mere Scholars, Technicians And Job Hunters, But Integrated Men And Women Who Are Free Of Fear; For Only Between Such Human Beings Can There Be Enduring Peace.

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.

I Should Say That All Compromise Is A "stepping Down" Of The Truth, Is Trying To Reduce Something Which Cannot Be Reduced, And That For Anyone Who Has Understood Life These Compromises Are Impossible.

In The Space Which Thought Creates Around Itself There Is No Love. This Space Divides Man From Man.

Your Belief In God Is Merely An Escape From Your Monotonous, Stupid And Cruel Life.

You Must Look Most Intimately And Discover For Yourself; Then It Is Your Own, Not Somebody Else’s, Not Something That You Have Been Told, Because There Is No Teacher And No Follower.

Happy Is The Man Who Is Nothing.

It Is Only When The Mind Is Free From The Old That It Meets Everything Anew, And In That There Is Joy.

Meditation Is Not A Withdrawal From Life. Meditation Is A Process Of Understanding Oneself.

To Be Free Comes Not From Changing Or Fixing This World, But From Seeing This World As It Is And Opening The Heart In The Midst Of It.

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