Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind.

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.

To understand the totality of this extraordinary thing called life, one must obviously not be too definite about these things. One cannot be definite with something which is so immense, which is not measurable by words. We cannot understand the immeasurable so long as we approach it through time.

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.

Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.

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.

When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge.

If you have the desire, if you establish the goal - which is harmony, which is happiness through liberation- then these stages of revolt, of war, of struggle, can be avoided - should be avoided. You are not going to wallow in the gutter if you can jump over it.

A mind that practices love cannot love.

If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever.

Now, when you are aware, you see the whole process of your thinking and action, but it can happen only when there is no condemnation. That is. When I condemn something, I do not understand 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.

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."

The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain

Intelligence is not discernment and judgment or critical evaluation.

Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free that can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. To completely empty the whole content of the mind — that is real freedom.

Intuition is the whisper of the soul.

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.

There you have the two extremes: the man that is concerned mainly with the hidden life, and the man who seriously concerns himself with the expression of that life. What I want to do is to bring about harmony between the two extremes, for therein lies the Truth. The harmony of life is the understanding of Truth.

Without discontentment, without revolt, you can never attain harmony. It is a necessary stage, which must be gone through by everyone.

It is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born; and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

You cannot lay down a standard which all must follow.

Fear is not of the unknown, but of loss of the known.

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

When the wind blows across the various continents, it does not bring with it the nationalities of the countries through which it passes. So likewise with Life.

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

Living is not this tawdry, mediocre, disciplined thing which we call our existence. Living is something entirely different; it is abundantly rich, timelessly changing, and as long as we don't understand that eternal movement, our lives are bound to have very little meaning.

Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.

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.

To be absolutely nothing is to be beyond measure.

[on the secret to a happy, content life] Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction, and certainly not in isolation.

Find out for yourself what are the possesions and ideals that you do not desire. By knowing what you do not want, by elimination, you will unburden the mind, and only then will it understand the essential which is ever there.

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.

There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception.

Human beings, each one, right through the world, go through great agonies, the more sensitive, the more alert, the more observant, the greater the suffering, the anxiety, the extraordinary sense of insoluble problems.

Achieve order within yourself...an inward tranquility which knows no disturbance at any moment...in the daily life of the home and the office.

Only when your hearts are 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.

Happy is the man who is nothing.

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.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. We have lost it, or we have never had it; and, because we do not know how to judge anything, we have been led here and pushed there, beaten up, driven, politically, religiously and socially. We don't know, but it is difficult to say we don't know.

There is only that inevitable danger as long as there is lack of understanding; but the moment the individual understands, there will be no formation of religion.

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.

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.

Life is both pleasure and pain, is it not? But why should we cling to pleasure and avoid pain? Why not merely live with both? If you cling to pleasure what happens? You get attached, do you not?

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom to all.