Quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti

104 quotes found  
Truth is a pathless land.
The Observer is the Observed.
Happy is the man who is nothing.
Peace is the break between two wars.
Peace can come only when there is love.
Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded.
Ciascuno cambi se stesso per cambiare il mondo.
The only freedom is the freedom from the known.
To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.
Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, which is the ending of fear.
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.
Non è un segno di buona salute mentale essere bene adattati ad una società malata.
To compare is the very nature of a mind that is not awake to discover what is true.
La più alta forma di intelligenza umana è la capacità di osservare senza giudicare.
Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.
Teaching is not the mere imparting of knowledge but the cultivation of an inquiring mind.
To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion you don't know where it will take you.
The important thing is first to find out what you are afraid of, to understand it and not run away from it.
Through a narrow window we can see only part of the sky, and not the whole vastness, the magnificence of it.
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
Self-reliance brings a certain freedom in which you discover; and that freedom is denied to you when you are comparing.
an idealist is a hypocrite, because he is always trying to become what he is not, instead of being and understanding what he is.
To understand the whole operation of one’s own mind requires a great deal of insight, a great deal of inquiry without condemnation.
the question is not how to get rid of fear, but how to awaken the intelligence with which to face and to understand and go beyond fear.
The individual has to awaken his intelligence, not through any form of discipline, resistance, compulsion, coercion, but through freedom.
Happiness comes when you are doing something because you really love to do it, and not because it gives you riches or makes you a prominent person.
Truth is not something that can be followed; it has to be discovered. You cannot find truth through any book or through any accumulation of experience.
Die Wandlung der Gesellschaft ist nicht so wichtig; sie wird sich natürlich und zwangsläufig ergeben, wenn der Mensch die innere Wandlung vollzogen hat.
Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.
But if one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence; it requires a great deal of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body.
Most people are afraid to stand alone; they are afraid to think things out for themselves, afraid to feel deeply, to explore and discover the whole meaning of life.
To have intelligence there must be freedom, and you cannot be free if you are constantly being urged to become like some hero, for then the hero is important and not you.
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.
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.
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something, and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.
The very desire to be certain, to be secure, is the beginning of bondage. It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty, and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.
it is very important, while you are young, to be real revolutionaries—which means not accepting anything, but inquiring into all these things to find out what is true. Only then can you create a new world.
To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.
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.
The process of comparison and condemnation prevents you from observing, studying. So a real student is one who observes everything in life, outwardly as well as inwardly, without comparing, approving, or condemning.
As I said, relationship has true significance only when it is a process of self-revelation, when it is revealing oneself in the very action of relationship. But most of us do not want to be revealed in relationship.
We want to make life permanent, but in doing so we go against nature, and there lies our pain. Only the mind which is always moving, without resting places and fixed ideas, can be in tune with life and therefore joyful.
Following of authority in any form, whether self-imposed or established from outside, as well as any form of imitation, copying, is destructive of incentive, of creativeness, and that it blocks the discovery of what is true.
Your parents and society use that word duty as a means of molding you, shaping you according to their particular idiosyncrasies, their habits of thought, their likes and dislikes, hoping thereby to guarantee their own safety.
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.
To be sensitively aware of thought, of feeling, of the world about you, of your office and of nature, is to explode from moment to moment in affection. Without affection, every action becomes burdensome and mechanical and leads to decay.
Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist.
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
Il vero cambiamento, la vera rivoluzione avviene abbandonando il noto per l’ignoto... dove non esiste alcuna autorità e dove potreste andare incontro al fallimento completo; sostituire al noto qualcos’altro che conosciamo non è un cambiamento.
C'è una rivoluzione che dobbiamo fare se vogliamo sottrarci all'angoscia, ai conflitti e alle frustrazioni in cui siamo afferrati. Questa rivoluzione deve cominciare non con le teorie e le ideologie, ma con una radicale trasformazione della nostra mente.
Die Ordnung des Denkens wird nicht durch Disziplin in Form dogmatischer Wiedergabe von Wissen herbeigeführt, sondern sie ergibt sich ganz natürlich, wenn der Erzieher versteht, daß bei der Entwicklung der Intelligenz eine Atmosphäre der Freiheit herrschen muß.
In a deep river there is richness and many fish can live; but the shallow pool is soon dried up by the strong sun, and nothing remains except mud and dirt. For most of us, love is an extraordinarily difficult thing to understand because our lives are very shallow.
The military spirit makes you obedient, it makes you physically very disciplined; but inwardly your mind is gradually destroyed because you are imitating, following, copying. You become a mere tool of the older people, of the politician, an instrument of propaganda.
When you love, you are not lonely. The sense of loneliness arises only when you are frightened of being alone and of not knowing what to do. When you are controlled by ideas, isolated by beliefs, then fear is inevitable; and when you are afraid, you are completely blind.
Poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thing when the mind is free of society. One must become poor inwardly for then there is no seeking, no asking, no desire, no - nothing! It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all.
If you had love in your heart, you would show respect to those who have nothing and also to those who have everything; you would neither be afraid of those who have, nor disregard those who have not. Respect in the hope of reward is the outcome of fear. In love there is no fear.
It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind—and begin to understand ourselves for the first time.
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Un esprit torturé, dont les ressorts sont brises, qui n'aspire plus qu'à échapper aux difficultés de la vie, qui a rejeté le monde extérieur parce que des disciplines et des conformismes l'ont abêti — un tel esprit, chercherait-il longtemps, ne trouverait jamais que l'image de sa propre déformation.
Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
As long as one is escaping from loneliness, there is no essential difference between the worship of God and addiction to alcohol. Socially, there may be a difference; but psychologically, the man who runs away from himself, from his own emptiness, whose escape is his search for God, is on the same level as the drunkard.
La meditación tiene un lugar en la vida diaria cuando se investiga toda la naturaleza y la estructura del propio ser: las reacciones de uno, el estado de la propia consciencia, por qué uno cree o no cree, por qué uno acepta las influencias de las instituciones, etc., todo esto es el verdadero movimiento de la meditación.
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?
There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply - aware.
The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path? We are not loved because we don't know how to love.
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.
Love is not a sentiment, not romanticism, not dependent on something, and that state is extremely arduous and difficult to understand, or to be in—because our minds are always interfering, limiting, encroaching upon its functioning. Therefore it is important to understand first the mind and its ways; otherwise we shall be caught in illusions, caught in words and sensations that have very little significance.
La cause fondamentale du désordre en nous-mêmes est cette recherche d'une réalité promise par autrui. Nous obéissons mécaniquement à celui qui nous promet une vie spirituelle confortable. Alors que la plupart d'entre nous sont opposés à la tyrannie politique et à la dictature, c'est extraordinaire à quel point nous acceptons l'autorité et la tyrannie de ceux qui déforment nos esprits et qui faussent notre mode de vie.
Find out what it means to die - not physically, that's inevitable - but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day.
Ese contenido es la base sobre la cual se apoya toda la humanidad, por tanto, en lo psicológico, en lo interno, uno no es un individuo. Externamente, uno puede tener un aspecto distinto al de otras personas, puede ser amarillo, moreno, negro, alto o bajo, ser una mujer o un hombre, pero internamente, en lo profundo somos similares, quizá con alguna variación, pero esa similitud es como un hilo que mantiene juntas las perlas de un collar.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So 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.
Can we think about love ? When you love, is thought functioning ? Love and thought are not in opposition; do not let us divide them as opposites. When one loves, is there a sense of seperateness, of bringing people together, or disbanding them, pushing them away ? Surely that state of love can be experienced only when the process of thought is not functioning—which does not mean that one must become crazy, unbalanced. On the contrary. It requires the highest form of thought to go beyond.
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.
¿Qué es el vivir, lo cual es nuestra consciencia? La consciencia es su propio contenido y el contenido no es diferente de la consciencia, la consciencia es lo que uno cree: las propias supersticiones, los dioses, los rituales, la envidia, la ambición, la competitividad, la profunda soledad, el apego, el sufrimiento, todo esto es la consciencia de uno, uno es todo esto. No obstante, esa consciencia no es sólo de uno, es la consciencia de la humanidad, uno es el mundo y el mundo es uno, uno es la consciencia con su contenido.
Mais lire, jouer, rire, être cruel, être bon, contempler le fleuve, les nuages, tout cela fait partie de la vie, et si vous ne savez pas lire, si vous ne savez pas marcher, si vous êtes incapable d'apprécier la beauté d'une feuille, vous n'êtes pas vivant. Vous devez comprendre la globalité de la vie, pas simplement une parcelle. Voilà pourquoi vous devez lire, voilà pourquoi vous devez regarder le ciel, voilà pourquoi vous devez chanter, et danser, et écrire des poèmes, et souffrir, et comprendre : car c'est tout cela, la vie.
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. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?
What is the point of being educated, of learning to read and write, if you are just going to carry on like a machine? But that is what your parents want, and it is what the world wants. The world does not want you to think, it does not want you to be free to find out, because then you would be a dangerous citizen, you would not fit into the established pattern. A free human being can never feel that he belongs to any particular country, class, or type of thinking. Freedom means freedom at every level, right through, and to think only along a particular line is not freedom.
A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach.
We are asking if thought can be aware of itself. That is rather a complex question, and requires very careful observation. Thought has created wars through nationalism, through sectarian religions. Thought has created all this; God has not created the hierarchy of the church--the pope, all the robes, all the rituals, the swinging of the incense, the candles. All that paraphernalia that goes on in a cathedral or in a church is put together by thought, copied, some of it, from the ancient Egyptians, from the ancient Hindus, and Hebrews. It is all thought. So "God" is created by thought.
To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things. Our look is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them, penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter; they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and to feel beyond love. Then there is a benediction which no god can give.
All that we have invented, the symbols in the church, the rituals, they are all put there by thought. Thought has invented these things. Invented the savior. Invented the temples of India and the contents of the temples. Thought has invented all these things called sacred. You cannot deny that. So thought in itself is not sacred. And when thought invents God, God is not sacred. So what is sacred? That can only be understood or happen when there is complete freedom, from fear, from sorrow, and when there is this sense of love and compassion with it's own intelligence. Then when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place.
I am asking myself what is fear: not what I am afraid of. I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear.
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 that comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.
To find out actually what takes place when you die you must die. This isn't a joke. You must die - not physically but psychologically, inwardly, die to the things you have cherished and to the things you are bitter about. If you have died to one of your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die. To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longing, pleasure; and agonies. Death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought is old. When there is death there is something totally new. Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.
Debemos comprender lo que es el vivir y, entonces, podremos preguntar qué es el morir; lo que sucede antes de morir es más importante que lo que sucede después de la muerte, es decir, antes del final, mucho antes del último minuto, ¿qué es el vivir? ¿Es el vivir un esfuerzo y un conflicto en el cual no hay ninguna relación de unos con otros, es el vivir esa profunda sensación de soledad interna? Para escapar de eso que llamamos “vivir” vamos a las iglesias, a los templos, rezamos y adoramos, pero eso no tiene ningún valor; si uno tiene dinero se satisface con extravagancias, ya conocen todos los trucos que utilizamos para evadirnos de nuestra propia consciencia, del estado real de nuestra mente, y a eso lo llamamos “vivir”.
Ritengo che la Verità sia una terra senza sentieri e che non si possa raggiungere attraverso nessuna via, nessuna religione, nessuna scuola. Questo è il mio punto di vista, e vi aderisco totalmente e incondizionatamente. Poiché la Verità è illimitata, incondizionata, irraggiungibile attraverso qualunque via, non può venire organizzata, e nessuna organizzazione può essere creata per condurre o costringere gli altri lungo un particolare sentiero. Se lo comprendete, vedrete che è impossibile organizzare una "fede". La fede è qualcosa di assolutamente individuale, e non possiamo e non dobbiamo istituzionalizzarla. Se lo facciamo diventa una cosa morta, cristallizzata; diventa un credo, una setta, una religione che viene imposta ad altri.
There are those who don’t believe in God and yet do good. There are those who believe in God and kill for that belief; those who prepare for war because they claim they want peace, and so on. So one has to ask oneself what need there is to believe at all in anything, though this doesn’t deny the extraordinary mystery of life. But belief is a word, a thought, and this is not the thing, anymore than your name is actually you. Through experience you hope to touch the truth of your belief, to prove it to yourself, but this belief conditions your experience. It isn’t that the experience comes to prove the belief, but rather that the belief begets the experience. Your belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God. You will always experience what you believe and nothing else.
Je pense qu'il y a une différence entre l'être humain et l'individu. L'individu est une entité locale, qui vit dans tel pays, qui appartient à telle culture, à telle société, à telle religion. L'être humain n'est pas une entité locale. Il est partout. Si l'individu n'agit que dans un coin du vaste champ de la vie, son action n'aura aucun lien avec la totalité. Veuillez donc tenir présent à l'esprit que ce dont nous parlons est la totalité, non la partie, car dans le plus grand est le plus petit, mais dans le plus petit, le plus grand n'est pas.
L'individu est cette petite entité, conditionnée, misérable et frustrée, que satisfont ses petits dieux et ses petites traditions, tandis que l'être humain se sent responsable du bien-être total, de la totale misère et de la totale confusion du monde.
La Vérité n'a pas de sentier, et c'est cela sa beauté : elle est vivante. Une chose morte peut avoir un sentier menant à elle, car elle est statique. Mais lorsque vous voyez que la vérité est vivante, mouvante, qu'elle n'a pas de lieu où se reposer, qu'aucun temple, aucune mosquée ou église, qu'aucune religion, qu'aucun maître ou philosophe, bref que rien ne peut vous y conduire . alors vous verrez aussi que cette chose vivante est ce que vous êtes en toute réalité : elle est votre colère, votre brutalité, votre violence, votre désespoir. Elle est l'agonie et la douleur que vous vivez. La vérité est en la compréhension de tout cela, vous ne pouvez le comprendre qu'en sachant le voir dans votre vie. Il est impossible de le voir à travers uneidéologie, à travers un écran de mots, à travers l'espoir et la peur.
L'histoire des théologies nous montre que les chefs religieux ont toujours affirmé qu'au moyen de rituels, que par des répétitions de prières ou de mantras, que par l'imitation de certains comportements, par le refoulement des désirs, par des disciplines mentales et la sublimation des passions, que par un frein, imposé aux appétits, sexuels et autres, on parvient après s'être suffisamment torturé l'esprit et le corps, à trouver un quelque-chose qui transcende cette petite vie. Voilà ce que des millions de personnes soi-disant religieuses ont fait au cours des âges ; soit en s'isolant, en s'en allant dans un désert, sur une montagne ou dans une caverne ; soit en errant de village en village avec un bol de mendiant ; ou bien en se réunissant en groupes, dans des monastères, en vue de contraindre leur esprit à se conformer à des modèles établis.
Nous, les êtres humains, somme ce que nous avons été pendant des millions d'années, colossalement avides, envieux, agressifs, jaloux, angoissés et désespérés, avec d'occasionnels éclairs de joie et d'amour. Nous sommes une étrange mixture de haine, de peur et de gentillesse ; nous sommes à la fois violents et en paix. Il y a eu un progrès extérieur depuis le char à boeufs jusqu'à l'avion à réaction, mais psychologiquement l'individu n'a pas du tout changé et c'est l'individu qui, dans le monde entier, a créé les structures des sociétés. Les structures sociales extérieures sont les résultantes des structures intérieures, psychologiques, qui constituent nos relations humaines, car l'individu est le résultat de l'expérience totale de l'homme, de sa connaissance et de son comportement. Chacun de nous est l'entrepôt de tout le passé. L'individu est l'humain qui est toute l'humanité. L'histoire entière de l'homme est écrite en nous-mêmes.
104 quotes found