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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.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Violence Is Not Merely

Jiddu Krishnamurti

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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.

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Inspirational Life

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As Long As You Are Held Within A Pattern You Must Create Disorder In The World.

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

You Can Only Be Afraid Of What You Think You Know.

You Think You Know

There Is Not First Understanding And Then Action. When You Understand, That Very Understanding Is Action.

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To Keep Always In The Same Place Means To Stagnate.

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.

By Our Pontifical Assertions, Our Superior Impatience, And Our Casual Brushing Aside Of Their Curiosity, We Do Not Encourage Their Inquiry, For We Are Rather Apprehensive Of What May Be Asked Of Us; We Do Not Foster Their Discontent, For We Ourselves Have Ceased To Question.

Meditation Is The Action Of Silence.

To Go Far You Must Begin Near, And The Nearest Step Is The Most Important One.

It Is Man's Pretence That Because He Has Choice He Is Free. Freedom Is Pure Observation Without Direction, Without Fear Of Punishment And Reward. Freedom Is Without Motive; Freedom Is Not At The End Of The Evolution Of Man But Lies In The First Step Of His Existence.

Put Away The Book, The Description, The Tradition, The Authority, And Take The Journey Of Self-discovery. Love, And Don't Be Caught In Opinions And Ideas About What Love Is Or Should Be. When You Love, Everything Will Come Right. Love Has Its Own Action.

The Creative Knows The Great Beginnings. The Receptive Completes The Finished Things. The Creative Is Decided And Therefore Shows To Men The Easy. The Receptive Is Yielding And Therefore Shows To Men The Simple. Learning Is Movement From Moment To Moment.

The Only Thing That Really Matters Is That There Be An Action Of Goodness, Love And Intelligence In Living. Is Goodness Individual Or Collective, Is Love Personal Or Impersonal, Is Intelligence Yours, Mine Or Somebody Else? If It Is Yours Or Mine Then It Is Not Intelligence, Or Love, Or Goodness. If Goodness Is An Affair Of The Individual Or Of The Collective, According To One's Particular Preference Or Decision, Then It Is No Longer Goodness.

Perception Without The Perceiver In Meditation Is To Commune With The Height And Depth Of The Immense. This Perception Is Entirely Different From Seeing An Object Without An Observer, Because In The Perception Of Meditation There Is No Object And Therefore No Experience. Can, However, Take Place When The Eyes Are Open And One Is Surrounded By Objects Of Every Kind. But Then These Objects Have No Importance At All. One Sees Them But There Is No Process Of Recognition, Which Means There Is No Experiencing.

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?

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.

Can You Look At A Flower Without Thinking?

Relationship Is Action, Is It Not? Action Has Meaning Only In Relationship; Without Understanding Relationship, Action On Any Level Will Only Breed Conflict. The Understanding Of Relationship Is Infinitely More Important Than The Search For Any Plan Of Action. The Ideology, The Pattern For Action, Prevents Action. Action Based On Ideology Hinders The Understanding Of Relationship Between Man And Man.

The Primary Cause Of Disorder In Ourselves Is The Seeking Of Reality Promised By Another.

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

But Inwardly We Are As Corrupt As The Person Who Sits In An Office And Plans War-because, We Want To Be Somebody In The Family, In A Group, In Society, In The Nation.

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

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

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.

I Hold That All The Teachers Of The World Have Attained That Life Which Is The Fulfilment Of Life. Hence, Whenever Anyone Enters That Life, Which Is The Culmination Of All Life, Then He Is Ipso Facto The Buddha, The Christ, The Lord Maitreya, Because There Is No Distinction There.

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'.

The Unknown Is Not Measurable By The Known. Time Cannot Measure The Timeless, The Eternal, That Immensity Which Has No Beginning And No End... When We Try To Measure Something Which Is Not Measurable, We Only Get Caught In Words.

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

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.

Truth Is More In The Process Than In The Result.

Without Discontentment, Without Revolt, You Can Never Attain Harmony. It Is A Necessary Stage, Which Must Be Gone Through By Everyone.

If People Are Foolish, They Are Bound To Mix The Personality And The Truth, And To Build A Temple Around The Personality And Form A Religion.

As Long As The Mind Clings To Belief, It Is Held In A Prison.

And The Point Is, Is It Possible For The Mind To Be Totally Free From Suffering And Yet Not Become Indifferent, Callous, Irresponsible, But To Have That Passion, The Intensity, The Energy That Freedom Brings, Freedom From Suffering.

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

Truth Is A Pathless Land.

You Only Learn When You Give Your Whole Being To Something. When You Give Your Whole Being To Mathematics,you Learn; But When You Are In A State Of Contradiction, When You Do Not Want To Learn But Are Forced To Learn, Then It Becomes Merely A Process Of Accumulation. To Learn Is Like Reading A Novel With Innumerable Characters; It Requires Your Full Attention, Not Contradictory Attention.

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

Where There Is Love, Do What You Will, It Will Be Right Action. It Will Never Bring Conflict To One's Life. In The Flame Of Love, All Fear Is Consumed.

The Very Urge To Get Rid Of Desire Is Still Desire, Is It Not?

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.

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.

The Moment You Have In Your Heart This Extraordinary Thing Called Love And Feel The Depth, The Delight, The Ecstasy Of It, You Will Discover That For You The World Is Transformed.

Though We Are All Human Beings, We Have Built Walls Between Ourselves And Our Neighbors Through Nationalism, Through Race, Caste, And Class - Which Again Breeds Isolation, Loneliness.

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

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.

What You Believe You Experience.

Education In The True Sense Is Helping The Individual To Be Mature And Free, To Flower Greatly In Love And Goodness. That Is What We Should Be Interested In, And Not In Shaping The Child According To Some Idealistic Pattern.

Religion Becomes A Matter Of Belief, And Belief Acts As A Limitation On The Mind; And The Mind Then Is Never Free. But It Is Only In Freedom That You Can Find Out What Is True, What Is God, Not Through Any Belief; Because Your Belief Projects What You Think God Ought To Be, What You Think Ought To Be True. If You Believe God Is Love, God Is Good, God Is This Or That, Your Very Belief Prevents You From Understanding What Is God, What Is True.

I Do Not Know If You Have Ever Noticed That The More You Struggle To Understand, The Less You Understand Any Problem. But, The Moment You Cease To Struggle And Let The Problem Tell You The Whole Story, Give All Its Significance - Then There Is Understanding, Which Means, Obviously, That To Understand, The Mind Must Be Quiet.

A Mind That Is Disciplined, Controlled, Is Free Within Its Own Pattern; But That Is Not Freedom. The End Of Discipline Is Conformity; Its Path Leads To The Known, And The Known Is Never The Free.

To Revolt Within Society In Order To Make It A Little Better, To Bring About Certain Reforms, Is Like The Revolt Of Prisoners To Improve Their Life Within The Prison Walls; And Such Revolt Is No Revolt At All, It Is Just Mutiny. Do You See The Difference? Revolt Within Society Is Like The Mutiny Of Prisoners Who Want Better Food, Better Treatment Within The Prison; But Revolt Born Of Understanding Is An Individual Breaking Away From Society, And That Is Creative Revolution.

To Learn About Oneself, A Living Thing, You Have To Watch, Learn Anew Each Minute.

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

Transformation Can Only Take Place Immediately; The Revolution Is Now, Not Tomorrow.

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

Have You Ever Sat Very Quietly With Closed Eyes And Watched The Movement Of Your Own Thinking? Have You Watched Your Mind Working?or Rather, Has Your Mind Watched Itself In Operation, Just To See What Your Thoughts Are, What Your Feelings Are, How You Look At The Trees, At The Flowers, At The Birds, At People, How You Respond To A Suggestion Or React To A New Idea? Have You Ever Done This?

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.

You Cannot Say That All Experience Is Of Equal Value For All People.

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.

It's No Measure Of Health To Be Well Adjusted To A Profoundly Sick Society.

Thought Is So Cunning, So Clever, That It Distorts Everything For Its Own Convenience.

Is Not Virtue A Negation Of Becoming?

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

To Be Is To Be Related.

In The Denial Of That Disorder There Is Order.

Begin Where You Are. Read Every Word, Every Phrase, Every Paragraph Of The Mind, As It Operates Through Thought.

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.

When You Once See Something As False Which You Have Accepted As True, As Natural, As Human, Then You Can Never Go Back To It.

Disillusionment

The Individual Problem Is The World Problem. Therefore Let Us Return To The Problem Of Individual Perfection And The Establishing Of Peace In The Heart And In The Mind Of The Individual.

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.

I Am Life. I Have No Name. I Am As The Fresh Breeze Of The Mountains.

You Can Look Only When The Mind Is Completely Quiet.

But If You Have No Relationship With The Living Things On This Earth, You May Lose Whatever Relationship You Have With Humanity.

All Outward Forms Of Change Brought About By Wars, Revolutions, Reformations, Laws And Ideologies Have Failed Completely To Change The Basic Nature Of Man And Therefore Of Society.

Why Do You Want To Read Others' Books When There Is The Book Of Yourself?

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

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.

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

The More You Know Yourself, The More Clarity There Is.

Why Are We Such Tortured Human Beings, With Tears In Our Eyes And False Laughter On Our Lips? If You Could Walk Alone Among Those Hills Or In The Woods Or Along The Long, White, Bleached Sands, In That Solitude You Would Know What Meditation Is. The Ecstasy Of Solitude Comes When You Are Not Frightened To Be Alone No Longer Belonging To The World Or Attached To Anything. Then, Like That Dawn That Came Up This Morning, It Comes Silently, And Makes A Golden Path In The Very Stillness, Which Was At The Beginning, Which Is Now, And Which Will Be Always There.

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

If You Set Out To Meditate, It Will Not Be Meditation. If You Set Out To Be Good, Goodness Will Never Flower.

If I Do Not Understand Myself, The Whole Complexity Of Myself, I Have No Basis For Thinking.

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.

To Seek Fulfillment Is To Invite Frustration.

Did You Ever Sit Quietly With Your Back Straight, Not Moving, Just Only Cherishing The Beauty Of Silence?

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.

It Does Not In The Least Concern Me Whether I Shall Have At The End Of My Life Thirty People Who Understand Or Three Hundred. I Am Like An Artist Who Paints A Picture Because He Must, Otherwise He Is Unhappy - Not Unhappy, But He Must Obey That Creative Impulse.

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.

The Only Freedom Is The Freedom From The Known.

Conflict Is Not In The Feeling Of Being In Love. The Feeling Of Being In Love Is Utterly Without Conflict. There Is No Loss Of Energy In Being In Love.

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.

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

A Conditioned Mind May Be Inventive; It May Think Up New Ideas, New Phrases, New Gadgets; It May Build A Dam, Plan A New Society, And All The Rest Of It; But That Is Not Creativity. Creativity Is Something Much More Than The Mere Capacity To Acquire A Technique. It Is Because This Extraordinary Thing Called Creativity Is Not In Most Of Us That We Are So Shallow, Empty, Insufficient. And Only The Mind That Is Free Can Be Creative.

The Man Who Is Not Frightened Of Life Is Not Frightened Of Being Completely Insecure For He Understands That Inwardly, Psychologically, There Is No Security.....when There Is No Security There Is An Endless Movement And Then Life And Death Are The Same....the Man Who Lives Without Conflict, Who Lives With Beauty And Love, Is Not Frightened Of Death Because To Love Is To Die.

No Book Can Teach You About Yourself, No Psychologist, None Of The Professors Or Philosophers. What They Can Teach You Is What They Think You Are Or What They Think You Should Be.

Constantly To Seek The Purpose Of Life Is One Of The Odd Escapes Of Man. If He Finds What He Seeks It Will Not Be Worth That Pebble On The Path.

If I Want To Understand Something, I Must Observe, I Must Not Criticize, I Must Not Condemn, I Must Not Pursue It As Pleasure Or Avoid It As Non-pleasure. There Must Merely Be The Silent Observation Of A Fact.

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.

If You Realize That The Ultimate Happiness For All Depends Not On Disorder Of The Emotions For Either Sex, But In Harmonizing The Emotions, All The Problems Will Vanish.

Truth Is A Pathless Land, And You Cannot Approach It By Any Path Whatsoever, By Any Religion, By Any Sect. Truth, Being Limitless, Unconditioned, Unapproachable By Any Path Whatsoever, Cannot Be Organized; Nor Should Any Organisation Be Formed To Lead Or To Coerce People Along Any Particular Path.

After All, Conflict Arises, Does It Not, Through The Desire To Be Something, To Be Other Than What Is.

The Constant Assertion Of Belief Is An Indication Of Fear.

Joy Is Something Entirely Different From Pleasure.

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

Life Is A Joyous Thing Essentially, But When You Bind Life By All These Rigid Moralities And Traditions, And Dogmas And Creeds, Then There Is Misery.

To Be Religious Is To Be Sensitive To Reality.

You May Be Ignorant Of All The Books In The World, And I Hope You Are, Of All The Latest Theories, But That Is Not Ignorance.

Tradition Becomes Our Security, And When The Mind Is Secure It Is In Decay.

Being Discontented, We Either Seek A Different Job Or Merely Succumb To Environment...instead Of Causing Us To Question Life, The Whole Process Of Existence.

To Understand What Is Right Meditation There Must Be An Awareness Of The Operation Of One's Own Consciousness, And Then There Is Complete Attention.

My Chief Concern Is To Make Clear The Truth Which I Have Attained, To Give An Understanding Of The Truth, Which Is The Truth For All. And Hence, If There Is Understanding Rather Than Blind Following, People Will Not Create A Religion.

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

Mere Isolation In An Enclosing Idea Is Not A Release From Conflict.

Love Is Not Of The Mind, It Is Not In The Net Of Thought, It Cannot Be Sought Out, Cultivated, Cherished; It Is There When The Mind Is Silent And The Heart Is Empty Of The Things Of The Mind.

Again, I Maintain That No Organization Can Lead Man To Spirituality.

If You Have This Extraordinary Thing Going In Your Life, Then It Is Everything; Then You Become The Teacher, The Disciple, The Neighbour, The Beauty Of The Cloud - You Are All That, And That Is Love.

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Joseph Pulitzer

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