Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes & Sayings

The crisis is not in the outward technological advancement, but rather in the way we think, and the way we live, and the way we feel. I think that is where a revolution must take place. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is the action of silence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without understanding the process of the self, there is no bais for thought, there is no basis for right thinking. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can only be afraid of what you think you know. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

So, while you are young you must begin to find out what is this strange thing called happiness. That is an essential part of education. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When the mind goes beyond the thought of 'the me,' the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, then there is a possibility of a happiness that is incorruptible. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is in everyone; it is not far, it is not near; it is eternally there. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Intelligence comes into being when the mind, the heart and the body are really harmonious. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

All paths do not lead to truth. There is no path to truth, it must come to you. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The guru cannot awaken you; all that he can do is to point out what is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We must concern ourselves not with what is beyond life, or what is life, or what is the purpose of life, but rather with the understanding of this complex existence of everyday life, because that is the foundation upon which we must build. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I am life. I have no name. I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains. — 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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The man who is seeking truth is free of all societies and cultures. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Learning implies a mind that doesn't know. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may wish that some parts of (your face) were different, but the actual fact is shown in the mirror. Now, can you look at your conditioning in a similar way? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Is it possible to live in this world without the operation of will? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Silence is the break between two thoughts/noises. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our conflict is in relationship, at all levels of our existence; and the understanding of this relationship, completely and extensively, is the only real problem that each one has. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Begin where you are. Read every word, every phrase, every paragraph of the mind, as it operates through thought. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We demand to be coaxed and comforted, to be encouraged and gratified, so we choose a teacher who will give us what we crave for. We do not search out reality, but go after gratification and sensation. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you would discover the supreme happiness of truth, you must break away from all ceremonies and ideological patterns. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Can I reject everything my brain experienced? Is intellectual understanding any understanding at all? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor ... ? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is only the dull, sleepy mind that creates and clings to habit. A mind that is attentive from moment to moment - attentive to what it is saying, attentive to the movement of its hands, of its thoughts, of its feelings - will discover that the formation of further habits has come to an end. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To find out if there is actually such freedom one must be aware of one's own conditioning, of the problems, of the monotonous shallowness, emptiness, insufficiency of one's daily life, and above all one must be aware of fear. One must be aware of oneself neither introspectively nor analytically, but actually be aware of oneself as one is and see if it is at all possible to be entirely free of all those issues that seem to clog the mind.
To explore, there must be freedom, not at the end, but right at the beginning. Unless one is free one cannot explore, investigate or examine.
Two things are essential: freedom and the act of learning. One cannot learn about oneself unless one is free, free so that one can observe, not according to any pattern, formula or concept, but actually observe oneself as one is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sirs, if you are listening and are not acting, it is like a man who is always tilling but never sowing. It is better not to listen to a truth than to listen without acting, for then it becomes a poison. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Not to know is the beginning of wisdom. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The discovery of the cause is merely intellectual, so obviously it does not free the mind from its dependency. The mere intellectual acceptance of an idea, or the emotional acquiescence in an ideology, cannot free the mind from being dependent on something which will give it stimulation. What frees the mind from dependence is seeing the whole structure and nature of stimulation and dependence and how that dependence makes the mind stupid, dull and inactive. Seeing the totality of it alone frees the mind. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom.
It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes,
deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine ... — Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

Insight is not a matter of memory, of knowledge and time, which are all thought. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Society is the product of relationship, of yours and mine together. If we change in our relationship, society changes. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

A mind that practices love cannot love. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, How beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness There is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with The music of many leaves, Which in due season fall and are blown away. And this is the way of life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Only when the brain has cleansed itself of its conditioning, greed, envy, ambition, then only it can comprehend that which is complete. Love is this completeness. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I admire and respect the tenacity, courage, and patience of the unenlightened in the face of so much overwhelming evidence — Jiddu Krishnamurti

In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectual-intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Music is the break between two notes. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

CONFORMITY AND REVOLT 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? If you have not, you are missing a — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Why is one a slave to thought ? Why has thought become so important in all our lives -thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, "it's of very little importance- what is important is emotion." But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought does not give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The world is me and I am the world. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we are. All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Take a journey into the things which you are carrying, the known- not into the unknown-into what you already know: your pleasures, your delights, your despairs, your sorrows. Take a journey into that, that is all you have. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Am I caught in a self-centred, narrow little cell which refuses to look beyond? Do I see it when you come along and tell me that my brain is the brain of all mankind? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique ... — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Identification prevents and perverts the flow of thought-feeling. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can be converted from one belief to another, from one dogma to another, but you cannot be converted to the under standing of reality. Belief is not reality. You — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Questioner: How can we become integrated without conflict? KRISHNAMURTI: Why do you object to conflict? You all seem to think conflict is a dreadful thing. At present you and I are in conflict, are we not? I am trying to tell you something, and you don't understand; so there is a sense of friction, conflict. And what is wrong with friction, conflict, — Jiddu Krishnamurti

All tradition is merely the past. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind-that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is more in the process than in the result. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To meditate is to observe yourself, for you are totally responsible for your body, mind, thought. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Inwardly we are whirlpools of misery and mischief and therefore to be regarded outwardly as a great figure is very gratifying. This craving for position, for prestige, for power, to be recognized by society as being outstanding in some way, is a wish to dominate others, and this wish to dominate is a form of aggression. The saint who seeks a position in regard to his saintliness is as aggressive as the chicken pecking in the farmyard. And what is the cause of this aggressiveness? It is fear, isn't it? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We never see anything completely. We never see a tree, we see the tree through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To be whole, nonfragmented in action, in life, in every kind of relationship, that is the very essence of sanity. Sanity means to be whole, healthy and holy. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To stand alone is to be uncorrupted, innocent, free of all tradition, of dogma, of opinion, of what another says, and so on. Such a mind does not seek because there is nothing to seek; being free, such a mind is completely still without a want, without movement.
But this state is not to be achieved; it isn't a thing that you buy through discipline; it doesn't come into being by giving up sex, or practicing a certain yoga.
It comes into being only when there is understanding of the ways of the self, the 'me', which shows itself through the conscious mind in everyday activity, and also in the unconscious. What matters is to understand for oneself, not through the direction of others, the total content of consciousness, which is conditioned, which is the result of society, of religion, of various impacts, impressions, memories - to understand all that conditioning and be free of it. But there is no "how" to be free. If you ask how to be free, you are not listening. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Let the mind be empty, and not filled with the things of the mind. Then there is only meditation, and not a meditor who is meditating ... The mind must be clear, without movement, and in the light of that clarity the timeless will be revealed. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

As we are concerned with what others think of us, so we are anxious to know all about them; and from this arise the crude and subtle forms of snobbishness and the worship of authority. Thus we become more and more externalized and inwardly empty. The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We have created society and that society has conditioned us. Our minds are tortured and heavily conditioned by a morality which is not moral; the morality of the society is immorality, beacuse society admits and encourages violence, greed, competition, ambition and so on, which are essentially immoral. There is no love, consideration, affection, tenderness, and the 'moral respectability' of the society is utterly disorderly.
A mind that has been trained for thousand of years to accept, to obey and conform, cannot possibly be highly sensitive and therefore highly virtuous. We are caught in this trap. — Jiddu Krishnamurti