Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.”

“The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.”

“Seeing everything that goes on in your daily life, your daily activities - when you pick up a pen, when you talk, when you go out for a drive or when you are walking alone in the woods - can you with one breath, with one look, know yourself very simply as you are? When you know yourself as you are, then you understand the whole structure of man's endeavour, his deceptions, his hypocrisies, his search. To do this you must be tremendously honest with yourself throughout your being.”

“Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of it, we have nothing but an empty, dull, stupid life, a wasted life.Now, please has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because at the end of your ambition, you are either so called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.”

“Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.”

“If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite; we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies.”

“The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.”

“Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody "I love you", when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again - you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.”

“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.”

“Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens.”

“You say you love your wife. 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.”

“With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.”

“Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.”

“But what is the point of education at all? Is it merely to cultivate the capacity of memory, passing examinations and getting a job and all the rest, or is education something entirely different? Something more!”

“Poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thing when the mindis free of society. One must become poor inwardly for then there isno seeking, no asking, no desire, no - nothing! It is only this inwardpoverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all”

“So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don't just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure - not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding - but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.”

“ההכרה הינה הידוע – כשהידוע הוא זה אשר התנסו בו. עם זה אנחנו מנסים לדעת את הבלתי־ידוע. אבל מובן שהידוע אינו יכול לדעת את הבלתי־ידוע; הוא יכול לדעת רק את שהתנסה בו, שלימדו אותו, שאסף. האם ההכרה יכולה לראות את האמת של אי־היכולת שלה לדעת את הבלתי־ידוע?”

“אם אתם יושבים על גדת נהר אחרי סערה, אתם רואים את מי הנהר החולפים נושאים כמות גדולה של הריסות. בדומה, עליכם לצפות בתנועת עצמכם, עוקבים אחרי כל מחשבה, כל כוונה, כל מניע. רק תצפו בזה; צפייה זו היא גם הקשבה. זה להיות מודעים עם עיניכם, אוזניכם, עם התובנה שלכם, לכל הערכים שבני האדם יצרו, שעל ידיהם אתם מותנים. רק מצב זה של מודעות מוחלטת יסיים כל חיפוש.”

“האמת שרויה בתנועה מתמדת ולכן לא יכולה להימדד בזמן או במילים: אי אפשר להחזיק אותה באגרופכם.”

“דרישה נולדת מתוך קוטביות: 'אני אומלל ואני חייב להיות מאושר.' בעצם הדרישה הזאת 'להיות מאושר' קיימת אומללות.”