http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/rss/rss.php http://www.jkrishnamurti.org The Krishnamurti Online Repository RSS en info@jkrishnamurti.org (Paloma Salvador) info@jkrishnamurti.org (Paloma Salvador)http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180423.phpReligious organizations become as fixed and as rigid as the thoughts of those who belong to them. Life is a constant change, a continual becoming, a ceaseless revolution, and because an organization can never be pliable, it stands in the way of change; it becomes reactionary to protect itself. The search for truth is individual, not congregational. To commune with the real there must be aloneness, not isolation, but freedom from all influence and opinion. Organizations of thought inevitably become hindrances to thought.As you yourself are aware, the greed for power is almost inexhaustible in a so-called spiritual organization; this greed is covered over by all kinds of sweet and official-sounding words, but the canker of avariciousness, pride and antagonism is nourished and shared. From this grow conflict, intolerance, sectarianism, and other ugly manifestations.Would it not be wiser to have small informed groups of twenty or twenty-five persons, without dues or membership, meeting where it is convenient to discuss gently the approach to reality? To prevent any group from becoming exclusive, each member could from time to time encourage and perhaps join another small group; thus, it would be extensive, not narrow and parochial.To climb high one must begin low. Out of this small beginning one may help to create a more sane and happy world. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180422.phpThe question is: Is there not truth in religions, in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Let us examine. What do we mean by religion? Surely, not organized religion, not Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, which are all organized beliefs with their propaganda, conversion, proselytism, compulsion, and so on. Is there any truth in organized religion? It may engulf, enmesh truth, but the organized religion itself is not true. Therefore, organized religion is false, it separates man from man. You are a Muslim, I am a Hindu, another is a Christian or a Buddhist and we are wrangling, butchering each other. Is there any truth in that? We are not discussing religion as the pursuit of truth, but we are considering if there is any truth in organized religion. We are so conditioned by organized religion to think there is truth in it that we have come to believe that by calling oneself a Hindu, one is somebody, or one will find God. How absurd, sir; to find God, to find reality, there must be virtue. Virtue is freedom, and only through freedom can truth be discovered, not when you are caught in the hands of organized religion, with its beliefs. And is there any truth in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Why do you have beliefs? Obviously, because beliefs give you security, comfort, safety, a guide. In yourself you are frightened, you want to be protected, you want to lean on somebody, and therefore, you create the ideal, which prevents you from understanding that which is. Therefore, an ideal becomes a hindrance to action. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180421.phpReligion as we generally know it or acknowledge it, is a series of beliefs, of dogmas, of rituals, of superstitions, of worship of idols, of charms and gurus that will lead you to what you want as an ultimate goal. The ultimate truth is your projection, that is what you want, which will make you happy, which will give a certainty of the deathless state. So the mind caught in all this creates a religion, a religion of dogmas, of priest-craft, of superstitions and idol-worship and in that, you are caught, and the mind stagnates. Is that religion? Is religion a matter of belief, a matter of knowledge of other people's experiences and assertions? Or is religion merely the following of morality? You know it is comparatively easy to be moral to do this and not to do that. Because it is easy, you can imitate a moral system. Behind that morality, lurks the self, growing, expanding, aggressive, dominating. But is that religion?You have to find out what truth is because that is the only thing that matters, not whether you are rich or poor, not whether you are happily married and have children, because they all come to an end, there is always death. So, without any form of belief, you must find out; you must have the vigor, the self-reliance, the initiative, so that for yourself you know what truth is, what God is. Belief will not give you anything; belief only corrupts, binds, darkens. The mind can only be free through vigor, through self-reliance. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180420.phpPrayer, which is a supplication, a petition, can never find that reality which is not the outcome of a demand. We demand, supplicate, pray, only when we are in confusion, in sorrow, and not understanding that confusion and sorrow, we turn to somebody else. The answer to prayer is our own projection; in one way or another it is always satisfactory, gratifying, otherwise we would reject it. So, when one has learned the trick of quieting the mind through repetition, one keeps on with that habit, but the answer to supplication must obviously be shaped according to the desire of the person who supplicates.Now, prayer, supplication, petition, can never uncover that which is not the projection of the mind. To find that which is not the fabrication of the mind, the mind must be quiet, not made quiet by the repetition of words, which is self-hypnosis, nor by any other means of inducing the mind to be still.Stillness that is induced, enforced, is not stillness at all. It is like putting a child in the corner superficially he may be quiet, but inwardly he is boiling. So, a mind that is made quiet by discipline is never really quiet, and stillness that is induced can never uncover that creative state in which reality comes into being. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180419.phpLike all deep human problems, prayer is a complex affair and not to be rushed at; it needs patience, careful and tolerant probing, and one cannot demand definite conclusions and decisions. Without understanding himself, he who prays may through his very prayer be led to self-delusion. We sometimes hear people say, and several have told me, that when they pray to what they call God for worldly things, their prayers are often granted. If they have faith, and depending upon the intensity of their prayer, what they seek -health, comfort, worldly possessions-they eventually get. If one indulges in petitionary prayer it brings its own reward, the thing asked for is often granted, and this further strengthens supplications. Then there is the prayer, not for things or for people, but to experience reality, God, which is also frequently answered; and there are still other forms of petitionary prayer, more subtle and devious, but nevertheless supplicating, begging and offering. All such prayers have their own reward, they bring their own experiences; but do they lead to the realization of the ultimate reality?Are we not the result of the past, and are we not therefore related to the enormous reservoir of greed and hate, with their opposites? Surely, when we make an appeal, or offer a petitionary prayer, we are calling upon this reservoir of accumulated greed, and so on, which does bring its own reward, and has its price. Does supplication to another, to something outside, bring about the understanding of truth? - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180418.phpCan we discover for ourselves what is the religious mind? The scientist in his laboratory is really a scientist; he is not persuaded by his nationalism, by his fears, by his vanities, ambitions, and local demands; there, he is merely investigating. But outside the laboratory, he is like anybody else with his prejudices, with his ambitions, with his nationality, with his vanities, with his jealousies, and all the rest of it. Such a mind cannot approach the religious mind. The religious mind does not function from a center of authority, whether it is accumulated knowledge as tradition, or it is experience which is really the continuation of tradition, the continuation of conditioning. The religious spirit does not think in terms of time, the immediate results, the immediate reformation within the pattern of society. We said the religious mind is not a ritualistic mind; it does not belong to any church, to any group, to any pattern of thinking. The religious mind is the mind that has entered into the unknown, and you cannot come to the unknown except by jumping; you cannot carefully calculate and enter the unknown. The religious mind is the real revolutionary mind, and the revolutionary mind is not a reaction to what has been. The religious mind is really explosive, creative, not in the accepted sense of the word creative, as in a poem, decoration, or building, as in architecture, music, poetry, and all the rest of it, it is in a state of creation. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180417.phpA religious man does not seek God. The religious man is concerned with the transformation of society, which is himself. The religious man is not the man that does innumerable rituals, follows traditions, lives in a dead, past culture, explaining endlessly the Gita or the Bible, endlessly chanting, or taking sannyasa, that is not a religious man; such a man is escaping from facts. The religious man is concerned totally and completely with the understanding of society, which is himself. He is not separate from society. Bringing about in himself a complete, total mutation means complete cessation of greed, envy, ambition; and therefore he is not dependent on circumstances, though he is the result of circumstance, the food he eats, the books he reads, the cinemas he goes to, the religious dogmas, beliefs, rituals, and all that business. He is responsible, and therefore the religious man must understand himself, who is the product of society that he himself has created. Therefore, to find reality he must begin here, not in a temple, not in an image, whether the image is graven by the hand or by the mind. Otherwise, how can he find something totally new, a new state? - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180416.phpIt is only when the mind is capable of shedding all influences, all interferences, of being completely alone, there is creativeness.In the world, more and more technique is being developed -the technique of how to influence people through propaganda, through compulsion, through imitation. There are innumerable books written on how to do a thing, how to think efficiently, how to build a house, how to put machinery together; so gradually we are losing initiative, the initiative to think out something original for ourselves. In our education, in our relationship with government, through various means, we are being influenced to conform, to imitate. And when we allow one influence to persuade us to a particular attitude or action, naturally we create resistance to other influences. In that very process of creating a resistance to another influence, are we not succumbing to it negatively?Should not the mind always be in revolt so as to understand the influences that are always impinging, interfering, controlling, shaping? Is it not one of the factors of the mediocre mind that it is always fearful and, being in a state of confusion, it wants order, it wants consistency, it wants a form, a shape by which it can be guided and controlled. And yet these forms, these various influences create contradictions in the individual, create confusion in the individual. Any choice between influences is surely still a state of mediocrity.Must not the mind have the capacity to fathom -not to imitate, not to be shaped and to be without fear? Should not such a mind be alone and therefore creative? That creativeness is not yours or mine, it is anonymous. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180415.phpIf you have to create a new world, a new civilization, a new art, everything new, not contaminated by tradition, by fear, by ambitions, if you have to create something anonymous which is yours and mine, a new society, together, in which there is not you and me but an "ourness," must there not be a mind that is completely anonymous, therefore alone? This implies, does it not, that there must be a revolt against conformity, a revolt against respectability, because the respectable man is the mediocre man because he wants something, he is dependent on influence for his happiness, on what his neighbor thinks, on what his guru thinks, on what the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads or the Bible or the Christ says. His mind is never alone. He never walks alone, but he always walks with a companion, the companion of his ideas.Is it not important to find out, to see, the whole significance of interference, of influence, the establishment of the "me," which is the contradiction of the anonymous? Seeing the whole of that, does not the question inevitably arise: Is it possible immediately to bring about that state of mind that is not influenced, which cannot be influenced by its own experience or by the experience of others, a mind that is incorruptible, that is alone? Then only is there a possibility of bringing about a different world, a different culture, a different society in which happiness is possible. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180414.phpOne of the factors of sorrow is the extraordinary loneliness of man. You may have companions, you may have gods, you may have a great deal of knowledge, you may be extraordinarily active socially, talking endless gossip about politics -and most politicians gossip anyhow- and still this loneliness remains. Therefore, man seeks to find significance in life and invents a significance, a meaning. But the loneliness still remains. So can you look at it without any comparison, just see it as it is, without trying to run away from it, without trying to cover it up, or to escape from it? Then you will see that loneliness becomes something entirely different.We are not alone. We are the result of a thousand influences, a thousand conditionings, psychological inheritances, propaganda, culture. We are not alone, and therefore we are secondhand human beings. When one is alone, totally alone, neither belonging to any family, though one may have a family, nor belonging to any nation, to any culture, to any particular commitment, there is the sense of being an outsider, outsider to every form of thought, action, family, nation. And it is only the one who is completely alone who is innocent. It is this innocency that frees the mind from sorrow. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180413.phpMost of us are never alone. You may withdraw into the mountains and live as a recluse, but when you are physically by yourself, you will have with you all your ideas, your experiences, your traditions, your knowledge of what has been. The Christian monk in a monastery cell is not alone; he is with his conceptual Jesus, with his theology, with the beliefs and dogmas of his particular conditioning. Similarly, the sannyasi in India who withdraws from the world and lives in isolation is not alone, for he too lives with his memories.I am talking of an aloneness in which the mind is totally free from the past, and only such a mind is virtuous, for only in this aloneness is there innocence.Perhaps you will say, "That is too much to ask. One cannot live like that in this chaotic world, where one has to go to the office every day, earn a livelihood, bear children, endure the nagging of one's wife or husband, and all the rest of it." But I think what is being said is directly related to everyday life and action; otherwise, it has no value at all. You see, out of this aloneness comes a virtue which is virile and which brings an extraordinary sense of purity and gentleness. It doesn't matter if one makes mistakes; that is of very little importance. What matters is to have this feeling of being completely alone, uncontaminated, for it is only such a mind that can know or be aware of that which is beyond the word, beyond the name, beyond all the projections of imagination. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180412.phpLoneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.But aloneness is not separative. It is something that is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions, we want friends, we want to live in a state of separation, in a state that brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that, it can only know loneliness. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180411.phpThough we are all human beings, we have built walls between ourselves and our neighbors through nationalism, through race, caste, and class -which again breeds isolation, loneliness.Now a mind that is caught in loneliness, in this state of isolation, can never possibly understand what religion is. It can believe, it can have certain theories, concepts, formulas, it can try to identify itself with that which it calls God; but 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. Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.Aloneness is obviously not isolation, and it is not uniqueness. To be unique is merely to be exceptional in some way, whereas to be completely alone demands extraordinary sensitivity, intelligence, understanding. To be completely alone implies that the mind is free of every kind of influence and is therefore uncontaminated by society; and it must be alone to understand what is religion- which is to find out for oneself whether there is something immortal, beyond time. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180410.phpI do not know if you have ever been lonely; when you suddenly realize that you have no relationship with anybody -not an intellectual realization but a factual realization- and you are completely isolated. Every form of thought and emotion is blocked; you cannot turn anywhere; there is nobody to turn to; the gods, the angels, have all gone beyond the clouds and, as the clouds vanish they have also vanished; you are completely lonely -I will not use the word alone.Alone has quiet a different meaning; alone has beauty. To be alone means something entirely different. And you must be alone. When man frees himself from the social structure of greed, envy, ambition, arrogance, achievement, status, when he frees himself from those, then he is completely alone. That is quite a different thing. Then there is great beauty, the feeling of great energy. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180409.phpCompassion is not hard to come by when the heart is not filled with the cunning things of the mind. It is the mind with its demands and fears, its attachments and denials, its determinations and urges, that destroys love. And how difficult it is to be simple about all this! You don't need philosophies and doctrines to be gentle and kind. The efficient and the powerful of the land will organize to feed and clothe the people, to provide them with shelter and medical care. This is inevitable with the rapid increase of production; it is the function of well-organized government and a balanced society. But organization does not give the generosity of the heart and hand. Generosity comes from quite a different source, a source beyond all measure. Ambition and envy destroy it as surely as fire burns. This source must be touched, but one must come to it empty-handed, without prayer, without sacrifice. Books cannot teach, nor can any guru lead to, this source. It cannot be reached through the cultivation of virtue, though virtue is necessary, nor through capacity and obedience. When the mind is serene, without any movement, it is there. Serenity is without motive, without the urge for the more. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180408.phpIf I am concerned with compassion, with love, with the real feeling of something sacred, then how is that feeling to be transmitted? Please follow this. If I transmit it through the microphone, through the machinery of propaganda, and thereby convince another, his heart will still be empty. The flame of ideology will operate, and he will merely repeat, as you are all repeating, that we must be kind, good, free -all the nonsense that the politicians, the socialists, and the rest of them talk. So, seeing that any form of compulsion, however subtle, does not bring this beauty, this flowering of goodness, of compassion, what is the individual to do? What is the relationship between the man who has this sense of compassion, and the man whose mind is entrenched in the collective, in the traditional? How are we to find the relationship between these two, not theoretically, but actually?That which conforms can never flower in goodness. There must be freedom, and freedom comes only when you understand the whole problem of envy, greed, ambition, and the desire for power. It is freedom from those things that allows the extraordinary thing called character to flower. Such a man has compassion, he knows what it is to love -not the man who merely repeats a lot of words about morality.So the flowering of goodness does not lie within society, because society in itself is always corrupt. Only the man who understands the whole structure and process of society, and is freeing himself from it, has character, and he alone can flower in goodness. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180407.phpCan compassion, that sense of goodness, that feeling of the sacredness of life about which we were talking last time we met; can that feeling be brought into being through compulsion? Surely, when there is compulsion in any form, when there is propaganda or moralizing, there is no compassion, nor is there compassion when change is brought about merely through seeing the necessity of meeting the technological challenge in such a way that human beings will remain human beings and not become machines. So there must be a change without any causation. A change that is brought about through causation is not compassion; it is merely a thing of the market place. So that is one problem.Another problem is: if I change, how will it affect society? Or am I not concerned with that at all? Because the vast majority of people are not interested in what we are talking about, nor are you if you listen out of curiosity or some kind of impulse, and pass by. The machines are progressing so rapidly that most human beings are merely pushed along and are not capable of meeting life with the enrichment of love, with compassion, with deep thought. And if I change, how will it affect society, which is my relationship with you? Society is not some extraordinary mythical entity; it is our relationship with each other, and if two or three of us change, how will it affect the rest of the world? Or is there a way of affecting the total mind of man?That is, is there a process by which the individual who is changed can touch the unconscious of man? - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180406.phpThought cannot, by any means whatsoever, cultivate compassion. I am not using that word compassion to mean the opposite, the antithesis of hate or violence. But unless each one of us has a deep sense of compassion, we shall become more and more brutal, inhuman to each other. We shall have mechanical, computer-like minds that have merely been trained to perform certain functions; we shall go on seeking security, both physical and psychological, and we shall miss the extraordinary depth and beauty, the whole significance of life.By compassion I do not mean a thing to be acquired. Compassion is not the word, which is merely of the past, but something that is of the active present; it is the verb and not the word, the name, or the noun. There is a difference between the verb and the word. The verb is of the active present, whereas the word is always of the past and therefore static. You may give vitality or movement to the name, to the word, but it is not the same as the verb, which is actively present.Compassion is not sentiment; it is not this woolly sympathy or empathy. Compassion is not something that you can cultivate through thought, through discipline, control, suppression, nor by being kind, polite, gentle, and all the rest of it. Compassion comes into being only when thought has come to an end at its very root. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180405.phpWhen you observe those poor women carrying a heavy load to the market, or watch the peasant children playing in the mud with very little else to play with, [children] who will not have the education that you are getting, who have no proper home, no cleanliness, insufficient clothing, inadequate food; when you observe all that, what is your reaction? It is very important to find out for yourself what your reaction is. I will tell you what mine was.Those children have no proper place to sleep; the father and the mother are occupied all day long, with never a holiday; the children never know what it is to be loved, to be cared for; the parents never sit down with them and tell them stories about the beauty of the earth and the heavens. And what kind of society is it that has produced these circumstances where there are immensely rich people who have everything on earth they want, and at the same time there are boys and girls who have nothing? What kind of society is it, and how has it come into being? You may revolutionize, break the pattern of this society, but in the very breaking of it a new one is born, which is again the same thing in another form -the commissars with their special houses in the country, the privileges, the uniforms, and so on down the line. This has happened after every revolution, the French, the Russian and the Chinese. And is it possible to create a society in which all this corruption and misery does not exist? It can be created only when you and I as individuals break away from the collective, when we are free of ambition and know what it means to love. That was my whole reaction, in a flash. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Lifehttp://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/20180404.phpHow can man live without love? We can only exist, and existence without love is control, confusion, and pain -and that is what most of us are creating. We organize for existence and we accept conflict as inevitable because our existence is a ceaseless demand for power. Surely, when we love, organization has its own place, its right place; but without love, organization becomes a nightmare, merely mechanical and efficient, like the army; but as modern society is based on mere efficiency, we have to have armies and the purpose of an army is to create war. Even in so-called peace, the more intellectually efficient we are, the more ruthless, the more brutal, the more callous we become. That is why there is confusion in the world, why bureaucracy is more and more powerful, why more and more governments are becoming totalitarian. We submit to all this as being inevitable because we live in our brains and not in our hearts, and therefore love does not exist. Love is the most dangerous and uncertain element in life; and because we do not want to be uncertain, because we do not want to be in danger, we live in the mind. A man who loves is dangerous, and we do not want to live dangerously; we want to live efficiently, we want to live merely in the framework of organization because we think organizations are going to bring order and peace in the world. Organizations have never brought order and peace. Only love, only goodwill, only mercy can bring order and peace, ultimately and therefore now. - Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti, The Book of LifeJ. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life