Teachings of Krishnamurti

(kam's notes from "Krishnamurti reader")

When I see you, I react; the naming of that reaction is experience. If I do not name a reaction it is not an experience. There is no experience unless there is a naming process going on at the same time. Experience is always strengthening the ‘me’. The more you are entrenched in your experience, the more does the self get strengthened.

Is it possible for the mind, for the self, not to project, not to desire, not to experience?

What brings about dissolution of the self? So long as I am conscious of the ‘me’ I know there is pain, there is struggle, there is constant fear.

All the various forms of discipline, belief and knowledge surely only strengthen the self. Can we find an element which will dissolve the self which is an isolating and destructive force? Can we go to the root of it and destroy it not partially but completely? The moment I say, ‘I want to dissolve the self’, in that there is still the experiencing of the self; so that it is strengthened. How is it possible for the self not to experience?

Creation is when the self is not there; it is beyond experiencing.

When you recognise that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you are completely aware of it in action, when you come to that point-not ideologically or verbally, not through projected experiencing, but when you are actually in that state- then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating.

Reality, truth and creation are not to be ‘recognised’ within mind.

Love is not the self. Self cannot recognise love. You say ‘I love’ but love is when self is not.

I can be afraid only of what I know. Fear has to be in relation to something.

Fear of the unknown is really fear of losing the accumulated known. Though my intension in accumulating is to ward off pain, pain is inherent in the process of accumulation. The very things I have, create fear which is pain. When I see the fallacy of demanding security I do not accumulate any more. Outwardly I accumulate things, and brings war; inwardly I accumulate beliefs and bring pain. Fear comes into being when I desire to be in a particular pattern. To live without fear means to live without a pattern.

Ideas are memories, the results of experience.

The mind itself is the frame of habitual patterns of living. Mind itself is fear. Whatever the mind does to get rid of fear causes fear.

Identification with anything is the process of self-forgetfulness. It is a form of escape from the self.

Do you know what fear is? Is it not the non-acceptance of what is? However there is no question of accepting when I perceive ‘what is’.

Thought is not different from desire-so without justifying it, without condemning it, without suppressing it; if I can understand it, then I shall know there is a possibility of going beyond the restriction of the self.

Simplicity makes one more and more sensitive. A sensitive mind, a sensitive heart is essential, for then it is capable of quick perception, quick reception.

When there is freedom from beliefs, there is simplicity.

A simple person sees much more directly, has a more direct experience, than a complex person.

Our minds are so crowded with an infinite knowledge of facts, of what others have said, that we are incapable of being simple and having direct experience ourselves.

A mind that is seeking out, searching, groping, agitated, is not a simple mind.

There is relationship only as long as we are gratified.

The very desire for power is the process of isolation or separatism.

The nationalist is a curse because through his very nationalistic, patriotic spirit, he is creating a wall of isolation. Nationalism, which is a process of isolation, which is the outcome of power, cannot bring about peace in the world. The man who is a nationalist and talks of brotherhood is telling a lie; he is living in a state of contradiction.

When you resist something, the very resistance indicates that you are in conflict with the other.

Identification with something greater – the (political) party, the country, the race, the religion, God – is the search for power……… because we feel empty, dull and weak.

The will of action is always dualistic. We are pursuing a false process, not a true one.

The mind is not the solution.

Is not thought always self-protecting, self-perpetuating, conditioned?

Can the mind, which has created the problems, resolve those things that it has itself brought forth?

If I ask you a question, you respond to it – you respond according to your memory, to your prejudices, to your upbringing, to the climate, to the whole background of your conditioning, you reply accordingly, you think accordingly. The centre of this background is the ‘me’ in the process of action.

As long as the activity of the mind exists, surely there can be no love. The mind cannot be in a state of love so long as thought is acquiring love. Similarly, so long as the mind is wishes, desires and practices in order to be in a state in which there is love, surely it denies that state, does it not?

Unfortunately for most of us thought has become so important. You say, ‘how can I exist, be, without thinking?

Being comes into being when I understand the whole process of thinking and when I can see a fact without any distraction from thinking. In that sate of tranquillity of a mind that is really still, there is love. And it is love alone that can solve all our human problems.

You cannot reject chronological time; it would be absurd. But psychological time is a product of the mind; a product of memory.

When we use time as a means of acquiring a quality, a virtue or a state of being, we are merely postponing or avoiding what ‘is’.

To understand anything, any problem, what is essential? A quiet mind intent on understanding. It is not a mind that is exclusive, that is trying to concentrate- which again is an effort of resistance.

In an alert yet passive state of mind there is understanding.

The mind is always still when it is interested, when it desires or has the intention to understand.

The difficulty with most of us is that we have not had the intention to understand because we are afraid. It is a defence mechanism that is at work when we use time or an ideal as a means of gradual transformation.

It is truth that liberates not your effort to be free.

The function of education is to help you not to imitate anyone but to be yourself all the time. To be yourself is very difficult because you have to revolt against the whole tradition of trying to be something.

If I love you because you love me, that is just a trade, a thing that is bought in the market; it is not love.

Because you are virtuous there is precision in your thought, order in your whole being and that is the function of virtue.

To love is to have an extraordinary feeling of affection without asking anything in return. To love is the greatest thing in life; and it is very important to talk about love, to feel it, to nourish it, to treasure it, otherwise it is soon dissipated for the world is brutal. 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.

Look with love at people, at animals, at flowers, at all nature, art, music, the earth and this whole universe.

If discipline brings about a greater output of human energy (more vital, rich and abundant), then it is worthwhile; but if it suppresses (destroys) human energy, it is very harmful, destructive.

Can our energy be used in a different way so that all our activities have significance in relation to something which transcends them all. To seek reality requires immense energy. The moment you really want to do something, you have the energy to do it.

Man exists for one purpose; to find reality or god.

When young there is a spontaneous, easy acceptance of life, a looking at things lightly and happily.

Is it possible for the mind to be not just casually aware that for the moment it is not struggling, but completely free of struggle all the time so that it discovers a state of joy.

The reason the mind struggles is because it feels inferior. (ambitious, envious, greedy and competitive)

When we struggle, the conflict is between what we are and what we should be or want to be. The very effort to achieve such a state is itself a process of struggle, therefore that state is never achieved.

If you can observe from moment to moment how the mind gets caught in everlasting struggle- if you just observe the fact without trying to alter it- then you will find that the mind spontaneously ceases to struggle; and in that state it can learn enormously. Once the mind is aware of its own struggle, you will soon find that there comes a state in which there is no struggle at all, but an astonishing watchfulness. And the mind that is fully watchful is joyous.

Why do we make life into a problem? Why do we make god into a problem? Why do we make sex into a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems? Is it not because we essentially think from a particular point of view? The view of being ‘me’ and its sensations.

So long as we live in the field of the mind there must be complications; there must be problems; that is all we know.

Mind is sensation, mind is the result of accumulated sensations and reactions and anything it touches is bound to create misery, confusion, an endless problem. The mind is the real cause of our problems, the mind is working mechanically night and day, consciously and unconsciously. The mind is a superficial thing and we have spent generations, we spend our whole lives, cultivating the mind, making it more and more clever, more and more subtle, more and more cunning, more and more dishonest and crooked, all of which is apparent in every activity of our life. The very nature of our mind is to be dishonest, crooked, incapable of facing facts, and that is the thing which creates problems; that is the thing which is the problem itself.

Why do you think about sex at all? Because it is a way of escape of complete self-forgetfulness. It is the only moment in your life you are happy. But you want to be free from it, you don’t want to be a slave to it, so you invent celibacy.

The act of sex itself can never be a problem but the thought about the act is the problem.

Your life is a contradiction; emphasis on the ‘me’ and forgetting the ‘me’.

You will only know chastity when there is love, and love is not of the mind.

We cannot put an end to thinking, but thought comes to an end when the thinker ceases, and the thinker ceases only when there is understanding of the whole process. The thinker is a fictitious entity, an illusion of the mind.

To be sentimental, to be emotional, is not love. You are indulging in sensation.

Thought is the result of sensation.

When you know how to love one, you know how to love the whole. When you love, there is neither one nor many; there is only love. It is only when there is love that all our problems are solved and then we shall know bliss & its happiness.

The moment you want to be consciously happy, happiness is gone. Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious.

First of all you must have the urge to be free.

The moment you are frightened, there is the end to freedom.

Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence.

We feel unhappy when we don’t get what we want. All the things we want from life is what makes us miserable. This craving indicates that we are discontented and unhappy.

Most prayer is merely a petitioning, an asking, begging, asking god for something, you are not satisfied with your life, you are perpetuating your own demands. Understand who is demanding, who is unsatisfied? Then you can be free through understanding.

The ‘I’ comes into being through the sense of achievement in various forms. You have to understand the ‘I’.

The idealist is an individual escaping from what IS.

Is not religion something much greater, much purer, vaster, more expansive than anything conceived by the mind?

Is truth something which you discover from moment to moment, from day to day? Truth is discovered and understood in every action, in every thought, in every feeling, however trivial or transient; it is to be listened to in what the husband and the wife say, in what the gardener says, in what your friends say, and in the process of your own thinking. Your thinking may be false, it may be conditioned, limited; and to discover that your thinking is conditioned, limited, is truth. That very discovery sets your mind free from limitation.

It is only when you are unhappy that you want happiness. Instead of asking about permanent happiness, find out how to be free of the diseases which are gnawing at you and creating pain, both physical and psychological.

If we can understand the limitation of thought that it is limited, small, petty, if we can see the truth of it, in that discovery of the truth there is liberation.

To seek definitions and conclusions is one of the tricks of the mind.

If a person is frightened, anxious, envious, greedy; if their mind is copying, imitating, filled with other people’s experiences and knowledge; if their thinking is limited, shaped by society, by the environment- is such a person intelligent?

The possibility of bringing about a real feeling of equality can happen only if we keep all functions (all jobs) stripped of status. For this there must be love. Love destroys the sense of the inferior and the superior.

Death is merely the extinction of continuity. Are we afraid of sleeping too?

Happiness comes uninvited; when you are suddenly joyous about nothing in particular.

What is happening in the world is a projection of what is happening inside each one of us.

Happiness is something which is not within the field of self-consciousness.

If you have to take a long journey, you must carry little; if you want to climb to a great height, you must travel light.

Most people cannot live alone, therefore they need companions. It requires enormous intelligence to be alone; and you must be alone to find god, truth.

We get lost in the dull, monotonous routine of a decaying existence.

If you love something, you never get tired of it.

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