Jiddu Krishnamurti was a philosopher, speaker and writer. In his early life, he was groomed to be the new World Teacher, but later rejected this mantle and withdrew from the Theosophy organization behind it. His interests included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. Here are some mindful quotes on meditation, mindfulness, etc.
“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”
“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.”
“We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.”
“Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.”
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
“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.”
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
“When the mind is relaxed, no longer making an effort, when it is quiet for just a few seconds, then the problem reveals itself and it is solved. That happens when the mind is still, in the interval between two thoughts, between two responses. In that state of mind, understanding comes.”
“When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her-your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy. You do not dominate. You are not the man and she is not the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name. When there is love, the word duty disappears.”
“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…”
“It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.”
“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.”
“The mind has to be empty to see clearly.”
“The only freedom is the freedom from the known.”
“Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.”
“There can only be a relationship between human beings when we accept what is, not what should be.”
“It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.”
“So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.”
“You can only be afraid of what you think you know.”
“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.”
“Happy is the man who is nothing.”
“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”
“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”
“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.”
“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 constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.”
“Its beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. it means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society.”
“In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind.”
“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.”
“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.”
“Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.”
“If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.”
“What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.”
“All paths do not lead to truth. There is no path to truth, it must come to you.”
“You must look most intimately and discover for yourself; then it is your own, not somebody else’s, not something that you have been told, because there is no teacher and no follower.”
“Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.”
“Truth is more in the process than in the result.”
“It is necessary for all of us to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, for then it will not be a mere plan or agreement which causes us to work together, but an extraordinary feeling of togetherness, the sense of joy in being and doing together without any thought of reward or punishment.”
“Change in society is of secondary importance; that will come about naturally, inevitably, when you as a human being bring about the change in yourself.”
“Truth is a pathless land.”
“Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.”
“The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.”
“Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.”
“True understanding is possible only when we are fully conscious of our thought, not as an operative observer on this thought, but completely and without the intervention of a choice.”
“Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself.”
“Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.”
“Only the free mind knows what Love is.”
“It is much easier to condemn a child than to understand a child.”
“To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.”
“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.”
“The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.”
“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.”
“The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.”
“Where there is love, do what you will, it will be right action. It will never bring conflict to one’s life. In the flame of love, all fear is consumed.”
“When we stop fighting with ourselves, we aren’t creating anymore conflict in our mind. Then our mind can for the first time relax and be still. Then for the first time our consciousness can become whole and unfragmented. Then total attention can be given to all of our thoughts and feelings. And then there will be found a gentleness and a goodness in us that can embrace all that is been given in the world. Then a deep love for everything will be the result of this deep attention. For this total attention, this soft and pure consciousness that we are, is nothing but Love itself.”
“While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.”
“Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.”
Life Quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The significance of life is living.”
“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.”
“Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself, not as you would wish to be, but as you are.”
“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.”
“There’s a great and unutterable beauty in all this.”
“If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there’s no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for “sport,” for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.”
“Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.”
“A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.”
“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.”
“If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.”
“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”
“It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living…To live is to find out for yourself what is true…”
“Is there a thinker apart from thought?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“Analysis does not transform consciousness.”
“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.”
“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.”
“When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.”
“All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.”
“If you find out what it is you love to do and give your whole life to it, then there is no contradiction, and in that state your being is your doing.”
“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.”
“A mind that is always comparing, always measuring, will always engender illusion. If I am measuring myself against you, who are clever, more intelligent, I am struggling to be like you and I am denying myself as I am. I am creating an illusion.”
“Be a light unto oneself”
“You yourself are the Teacher, and the Pupil, you’re the Master, you’re the Guru, you are the Leader, you are Everything! And, to understand, is to transform what Is.”
“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.”
“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.”
“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.”
“In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love.”
“Free yourself from the psychological structure of society, which is to free yourself from the essence of conflict.”
“When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.”
“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”
“A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.”
“Discipline is necessary to curb the mind, otherwise there is no peace.”
“The word ‘innocence’ means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.”
“You have been overcome; and whether you are overcome by envy or by a so-called noble influence, you are still a slave, you are not free.”
“Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.”
“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.”
“Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict.”
“When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.”
“Most people are unhappy; and they are unhappy because there is no love in their hearts.”
“Freedom lies outside the pattern of society; but to be free of that pattern you have to understand the whole content of it, which is to understand your own mind.”
“You can be creative only when there is abandonment-which means, really, there is no sense of compulsion, no fear of not being, of not gaining, of not arriving. Then there is great austerity, simplicity, and with it there is love.”
“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.”
“I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.”
“The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.”
“Achieve order within yourself…an inward tranquility which knows no disturbance at any moment…in the daily life of the home and the office.”
“Freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness.”
“To be is to be related.”
“The ambitious man has never found his true vocation…”
“I am life. I have no name. I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.”
“So you have to be your own teacher and your own disciple, and there is no teacher outside, no savior, no master; you yourself have to change, and therefore you have to learn to observe, to know yourself. This learning about yourself is a fascinating and joyous business.”
“The idea, the pattern, is self-projected; it is a form of self-worship, of self-perpetuation, and hence gratifying.”
“Through self-knowledge you begin to find out what is God, what is truth, what is that state which is timeless. In self-knowledge is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity.”
“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.”
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.”
“Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is.”
“Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself-these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society.”
“Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.”
“Goodness, generosity, or love does not come into being save through the search for reality.”
“When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge.”
“In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing.”
“A mind that practices love cannot love.”
“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.”
“As long as you ask questions you are breaking through, but the moment you begin to accept, you are psychologically dead. So right through life don’t accept a thing, but inquire, investigate. Then you will find that your mind is something really extraordinary, it has no end, and to such a mind there is no death.”
“Most people like to live in illusions.”
“The very attention given to finding out if the mind can be completely quiet is quietness.”
“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. When there is a disruption, a breaking away of that, then there is sorrow, because you suddenly discover yourself as you are-an empty shell, without much meaning.”
“Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is no basis for right thought and action.”
“Only when the mind is tranquil-through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline-only then, in that tranquility, in that silence, can reality come into being. It is only then that there can be bliss, that there can be creative action.”
“The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is.”
“We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.”
“Are you aware of the significance of every thought, of every reaction that you happen to have?”
“If you are lucky and work very hard, you may someday get to experience freedom from the known.”
“What you believe you experience.”
“The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another.”
“Freedom is now or never.”
Meditation quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti
“If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower.”
“Meditation is the movement of love. It isn’t the love of the one or of the many. It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar.”
“The flowering of love is meditation.”
“Meditation is the most extraordinary thing if you know how to do it, and you cannot possibly learn from anybody; and that’s the beauty of it. It isn’t something you learn, a technique, and therefore there is no authority. Therefore if you will learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, the way you talk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy. If you are aware of it without any choice, all that is part of meditation, and as you go, as you journey, as that movement goes, all that movement is meditation. Then that movement is endless, timeless.”
“To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one’s own consciousness, and then there is complete attention.”
“Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind.”
“The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.”
“Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.”
“If there is no meditation, then you are like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour.”
“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.”
“Perception without the word, which is without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception, and it is part of meditation.”
“Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.”
“Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?”
“What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but rather the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable.”
“Perception without the perceiver in meditation is to commune with the height and depth of the immense. This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these objects have no importance at all. One sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing.”
“So, to meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched it is innocent. Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being. This whole process is meditation.”
“Knowledge about yourself binds, weighs, ties you down; there is no freedom to move, and you act and move within the limits of that knowledge. Learning about yourself is never the same as accumulating knowledge about yourself. Learning is active present and knowledge is the past; if you are learning to accumulate, it ceases to be learning; knowledge is static, more can be added to it or taken away from it, but learning is active, nothing can be added or taken away from it for there is no accumulation at any time.”
“In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes on mindfulness
“Truth is something which you must see immediately, and to see something clearly you must give your heart, mind and whole being.”
“Most of us waste our energy through chattering – endlessly chattering, gossiping, criticizing, backbiting.”
“You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don’t live it.”
“The thought is not the thing.”
“It is very difficult to be like the other guy, to be ordinary. Mediocrity takes a great deal of energy. But to be ourselves is very easy. You don’t have to do a thing.”
“The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.”
“My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.”
“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.”
“Our brains are so conditioned through education, through religion, to think we are separate entities with separate souls and so on. We are not individuals at all. We are the result of thousands of years of human experience, human endeavor and struggle.”
“Freedom from something is not freedom.”
“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.”
“A mind that is afraid withers away; it cannot function properly.”
“To seek fulfillment is to invite frustration.”
“Fear begins and ends with the desire to be secure; inward and outward security, with the desire to be certain, to have permanency. The continuity of permanence is sought in every direction, in virtue, in relationship, in action, in experience, in knowledge, in outward and inward things. To find security and be secure is the everlasting cry. It is this insistent demand that breeds fear.”
“Love may be the ultimate solution to all man’s difficulties, problems and travails.”
“The demand to be safe in a relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear.”
“A man who is really earnest must begin with himself, he must be passively aware of all his thoughts, feelings and actions.”
“Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.”
“As we are – the world is.”
“Nothing can disturb the calm peace of my soul.”
“Fear is nonacceptance of what is.”
“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-centered activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?”
“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.”
“The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.”
“If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbor, the beauty of the cloud – you are all that, and that is love.”
“To change the world, we must begin with ourselves.”
“…it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods-you have nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships…”
“When you do not name a group of people, you are compelled to look at each individual face and not treat them all as the mass.”
“It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself, and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.”
“Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free.”
Positive quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence.”
“Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally.”
“The craving to become causes fears; to be, to achieve, and so to depend engenders fear.”
“Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is … Matter and energy are interrelated.”
“Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone, are matter.”
“Truth does not belong to an individual.”
“To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.”
“Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.”
“The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state.”
“Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.”
“The moment you venture out, something takes place in you and about you. Life comes to your aid in various ways. You may not like the form in which it comes to you – it may be misery, struggle, starvation – but when you invite life, things begin to happen.”
“Charity is unconscious of itself, there is no accumulation first and then distribution. It is like the flower – natural, open, spontaneous.”
“How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on… man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines.”
“But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war-because, we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation.”
“And it is impossible to treat human beings as human beings if you label them, if you term them, if you give them a name as Hindus, Russians, or what you will. It is so much easier to label people, for then you can pass by and kick them, drop a bomb on India or Japan.”
“…Choice in every form is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery.”
“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.”
“Imagination builds the image of the self, and thought then functions within its shadows. From this self-concept grows the conflict between what is and what should be, the conflict in duality.”
“The earth doesn’t belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying. You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning.”
“Each breath is transforming me into thine image.”
“When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane, one lives in a world of illusion.”
“True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.”