Raising up his dust-whisk, the Master asked, "To what kind of dharma world does this belong?"

The monk contemplated what he might answer, and the Master remarked, "It is just feverish activity to try to realize or understand the matter by thinking or contemplating. In the light of the sun, a single lamp will certainly lose its brilliance."

-Ch'i An



The vast flood rolls onward,
But yield yourself
And it floats you upon it.

-Ikkyu



Just an old leaf, yet
try to follow its structure -
or count its colors!

-Hackett



Now, what does it mean to be free? Is freedom a matter of doing what happens to suit you, going where you like, thinking what you will? This you do anyhow.

-Krishnamurti



Merely to have independence, does that mean freedom? Many people in the world are independent, but very few are free.

-Krishnamurti



Freedom is a state of mind in which there is no fear or compulsion, no urge to be secure.

-Krishnamurti



Don't we want to be told what marvelous people we are, how lovely we look, or what extraordinary intelligence we have? Otherwise we would not put letters after our names. All that kind of thing gives us self-assurance, a sense of importance. We all want to be famous people - and the moment we want to be something, we are no longer free.

Please see this, for it is the real clue to the understanding of the problem of freedom.

-Krishnamurti



You see, you are not educated for this; your education encourages you to become something or other - but that is not the understanding of yourself. Your "self" is a very complex thing; it is not merely the entity that goes to school, that quarrels, that plays games, that is afraid, but it is also something hidden, not obvious. It is made up, not only of all the thoughts that you think, but also of all the things that have been put into your mind by other people, by books, by the newspapers, by your leaders; and it is possible to understand all that only when you don't want to be somebody, when you don't imitate, when you don't follow . . . That is the only true revolution, leading to extraordinary freedom.


 -Krishnamurti



The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it
refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep.

-Chung-Tzu



A wrong means can never be used towards a right end.
If the means is evil, the end will also be evil.

-Krishnamurti



Good is not the opposite of evil; it comes into being only when that which is evil has utterly ceased.

-Krishnamurti


When the mind is no longer comparing, judging, evaluating, and is therefore capable of seeing what is from moment to moment without wanting to change it - in that very perception is the eternal.

-Krishnamurti



Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

-Martin Luther King



Truth is not something to be archieved.

-Krishnamurti



You know, a lovely rose is a lovely rose; but we human beings have been given the capacity to think . . . To know how to think requires a great deal of penetration, understanding, but to know what to think is comparatively easy. Our present education consists in telling us what to think, it does not teach us how to think, how to penetrate, how to explore...

-Krishnamurti



Questioner: Why do men fight?

Why do young boys fight? You sometimes fight with your brother, or with the other boys here, don't you? Why? You fight over a toy. Perhaps another boy has taken your ball, or your book, and therefore you fight. Grown-up people fight for exactly the same reason, only their toys are position, wealth and power. . . . It is as simple as that.



Thought is a very strange thing, is it not? Do you know what thought is?

-Krishnamurti



Thought or thinking for most people is something put together by the mind, and they battle over their thoughts. But if you can really listen to everything - to the lapping of the water on the bank or a river, to the song of the birds, to the crying of a child, to your mother scolding you, to a friend bullying you, to your wife or husband nagging you - then you will find that you go beyond the words, beyond the mere verbal expressions which so tear one's being.

-Krishnamurti



Self inquiry begins in asking not what am I but what am I not?

-Allan Anderson



The moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.

-Krishnamurti



Now if you come to think of it, what is the "I"? When you talk about "I," "mine," my house, my enjoyment, my wife, my child, my live, my temperament, what is that?

-Krishnamurti

What is the "I"? It is nothing but the result of environment, and there is a conflict between that result, the "I," and the environment itself.

-Krishnamurti



You know we have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly.

-Krishnamurti



As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out.

-Krishnamurti



Is repetitive action virtuous action? If behavior and conduct are merely repetitive processes then all human relationships actually cease. If I behave mechanically every day - repeating a certain code of conduct which I have learnt, which I find profitable, or which is pleasant, repeating that over and over again, my relationship with you ceases, completely - I have become a machine.

-Krishnamurti



The true value of a human being can be found in degrees to which he has attained liberation from the self.

-Einstein



A person starts to live when he can live outside of himself.

-Einstein



There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

-Einstein



Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

-Einstein



Regard life not as several isolated problems, but comprehensively, as a whole, with a mind that is not suffocated by the search for solutions.

-Krishnamurti



When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

-Einstein



There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.

-Einstein



The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

Einstein



Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

-Einstein



You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

-Einstein



Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

-Einstein



Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

-Einstein



As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

-Einstein



Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

-Einstein



What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?

-Einstein

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

-Einstein



A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging
their prejudices.

-William James



Memory is the lack of comprehension; that lack of comprehension is your background, and from that proceeds your action.

-Krishnamurti



The mere search for the solution of your problems is not going to free the mind from creating further problems. ... It is only when the mind, which has taken shelter behind the walls of self-protection, frees itself from its own creations that there can ever be that exquisite reality.

-Krishnamurti



Truth cannot be given to you by somebody. You have to discover it; and to discover, there has to be a state of mind in which there is direct perception.

-Krishnamurti



Understanding comes through being aware of what is.

-Krishnamurti



Now is it possible to come that state when you yourself perceive the truth instantaneously and, therefore, put and end to confusion? I say that it is, and that it is the only possible way.

-Krishnamurti



There is no interval in the confusion of existence.

-Krishnamurti



The real is near, you do not have to seek it; and a man who seeks truth will never find it.

-Krishnamurti



Do not beliefs set man against man?

-Krishnamurti



To be free from the wrong approach is the only problem. This means, really, the understanding of conditioning, which is the mind.

-Krishnamurti



The problem is the mind itself, not the problems it breeds.

-Krishnamurti



When observed with passive watchfulness, the limited reveals the limitless.

-Krishnamurti



Is there really any time at all apart from chronological time? Obviously there is time as yesterday, but is there time as the mind thinks of it?

-Krishnamurti



Surely time, psychological time, is the product of the mind.

-Krishnamurti



To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential?

-Krishnamurti



To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential? A quiet mind, is it not? A mind that is intent on understanding.

-Krishnamurti



When you are listening to music, your mind does not wander all over the place; you are listening. Similarly, when you want to understand conflict, you are no longer depending on time at all; you are simply confronted with what is, which is conflict.

-Krishnamurti

Do we really suffer, or only think we suffer?

-Krishnamurti



Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity.

-Krishnamurti



Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.

-Krishnamurti



A disciplined mind is never a free mind, nor can a mind that has suppressed desire ever be free. It is only through understanding the whole process of desire that the mind can be free.

-Krishnamurti



For the total development of the human being, solitude as means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity.

-Krishnamurti



Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.

-Abraham Lincoln



Isn't a pity that people wander so much in delusion once they have been trapped by their perception.

-Keizan



In the cultivation of our mind, the emphasis should not be on concentration, but on attention. Concentration is a process of forcing the mind to narrow down to a point, whereas attention is without frontiers.

-Krishanmurti



To be truly educated it is to understand our relationship with all things - to money, to property, to people, to nature - in the vast field of our experience.

-Krishnamurti



You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

-Krishnamurti



Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory. Anything that is the result of memory is old, and therefore, never free. There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It is sheer nonsense.

-Krishnamurti

[From "Freedom From the Known" - on solving man's psychological problems by analyzing them.]



If you can look at things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the beauty of a sheet of water simmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight - if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and therefore, tremendous joy.

-Krishnamurti



It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself.

-Krishnamurti



Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

-Krishnamurti



When you see clearly the problem is solved. [!]

-Krishnamurti



We do not see things as they are,
we see them as we are.

-Unknown



The future is what you are now.

-Krishnamurti



A conclusion is merely the response of a particular conditioning, is it not?

-Krishnamurti



Hating can never overcome hatred.
Only love can bring the end of hating.
This is the eternal law.

You too will die someday, as everyone must.
When you know this, your hatred is stilled.

-Dhammapada



Life is a movement, an endless movement. To inquire into this extraordinary thing called life one must ask fundamental questions and never be satisfied with answers, no matter how satisfactory they may be. Because the moment you have an answer, the mind has concluded, and conclusion is not life - it is merely a static state.

-Krishnamurti

The difficulty is that we do not see, we do not listen, we do not perceive things directly and simply as they are.

-Krishnamurti



Sorrow is the shadow of desire.

-Krishnamurti



Man is educated to conform to a pattern, not to doubt, not to inquire...

-Krishnamurti



The Great Way is not difficult
for those who are not attached to their preferences.

-Sengtsan



The torch of chaos and doubt - this is what the sage steers by.

-Chuang Tzu



Time is the psychological enemy of man.

-Krishnamurti



Your perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in your mind.

-Krishnamurti



In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom.

-Krishnamurti



What would happen if you were not attached?

-Krishnamurti



Understanding attachment is more important than detachment. Why is there attachment?

-Krishnamurti



Can the mind live, be vital, engergetic, full of depth, without attachment? Of course it can.

-Krishnamurti



What does it mean to attend? If you know how to attend, it may solve every problem. Have you ever given total attention to anything?

-Krishnamurti



Desire creates illusions.

-Krishnamurti



There are two kinds of time: physical, chronological time by the watch - yesterday, today, and tomorrow - and the psychological time of "I will be," a psychological tomorrow, where I shall be "better." But is there psychological time at all, or is it the invention of thought?

-Krishnamurti



Our consciousness is filled with the things of thought and, therefore, our consciousness is fragmentary.

-Krishnamurti



Thought, being fragmentary, is not capable of understanding what is actually happening in the present.

-Krishnamurti



An ideal is the opposite of what is.

-Krishnamurti



Can you look at what is without a prejudice, without a prejudgment? Can you look at what is without the observer, who is the past?

-Krishnamurti



What prevents a radical change of what is is the interference of the observer, who is the past. To understand this removes all conflict.

-Krishnamurti



Truth is not reality. Thought can never touch truth. Then what is the relationship between truth and reality?

-Krishnamurti



The very observation is the energy that transforms "that which is." Get this, and then you will see that you are entirely free from psychological fears.

-Krishnamurti



Total observation is only possible when there is no observer - the observer being the past. When there is that total attention given to observation, that which is observed undergoes a fundamental transformation. Got it? Do it!

-Krishnamurti