Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Jiddu Krishnamurti. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti (11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) 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. He stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasised that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.
Krishnamurti was born in south India in what is now the modern day Madanapalle of Andhra Pradesh. In early adolescence, he met occultist and theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater on the grounds of the Theosophical Society headquarters at Adyar in Madras. He was subsequently raised under the tutelage of Annie Besant and Leadbeater, leaders of the Society at the time, who believed him to be a 'vehicle' for an expected World Teacher. As a young man, he disavowed this idea and dissolved the Order of the Star in the East, an organisation that had been established to support it.
Krishnamurti said he had no allegiance to any nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy, and spent the rest of his life travelling the world, speaking to large and small groups, as well as individuals. He wrote many books, among them The First and Last Freedom, The Only Revolution, and Krishnamurti's Notebook. Many of his talks and discussions have been published. His last public talk was in Madras, India, in January 1986, a month before his death at his home in Ojai, California. His supporters — working through non-profit foundations in India, Great Britain, and the United States — oversee several independent schools based on his views on education. They continue to transcribe and distribute his thousands of talks, group and individual discussions, and writings by use of a variety of media formats and languages.
Krishnamurti was unrelated to his contemporary U. G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007), although the two men had a number of meetings.
When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.
Truth is a pathless land.
Longer Version:
Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.
Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious, of which you are not aware. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy…You want to be consciously happy; the moment you are consciously happy, happiness is gone.
Being fully conscious of one's whole process of thinking, and being able to go beyond tnat process, is awareness.
Being watchful from moment to moment of all its thoughts, its feelings, its reactions, unconscious as well as conscious, the mind is constantly discovering the significance of its own activities, which is self-knowledge.
To be conscious of our reactions, of our hidden motives and conditioned responses, this also is part of awareness.
Awareness isn't something mysterious that you must practice; it isn't something that can be learned only from the speaker, or from some bearded gentlemen or other.
Iolence 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.
Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.
To understand the present with its full, rich significance, the mind must free itself from the habit of self-protecting acquisition; when it is utterly naked, then there is immortality.
It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight.
The authority of a belief imposed by religion surely destroys the discovery of reality.One relies on authority because one is afraid to stand alone.
And for this you must have quiet and solitude. But society does not allow you to have them. You must be with people, outwardly active at all costs. If you are alone you are considered antisocial or peculiar, or you are afraid of your own loneliness.
Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love.
There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.
Can the mind become completely still without coercion, without compulsion, without discipline?
Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not
enslaved by tradition and memory.
Look at that battle you are involved in; you are caught in it: you are it.
That is, sir, there can only be communication, communion, when you and I are on the same level, and with the same intensity, at the same time.
The craving to become causes fears; to be, to achieve, and so to depend engenders fear.
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.
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself, it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.
The flower is strong in its beauty as it can be forgotten, set aside, or destroyed. The ambitious do not know beauty. The feeling of essence is beauty.
To be free comes not from changing or fixing this world, but from seeing this world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.
On the secret to a happy, content life Do you want to know what my secret is? I don't mind what happens.
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.
Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.
Can another help bring about a transformation in you? If he can, you are not transformed; you are merely dominated, influenced.
You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you.
We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human
being.
Whether we call ourselves communists or capitalists, Hindus or Buddhists, Moslems or Christians, whether we are blind, lame, well or happy, this earth is ours...not somebody else's...it is not only the rich man's earth, but our earth...yours and mine.
I think it is absurd to give such tremendous importance to the distinctions between men and women. When I meet someone I regard that person as a human being. I do not say This is a man; this is a woman.
Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In our relationships each of us builds an image about the other, and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.
In nothingness, there is everything, energy. The ending is a beginning.
Observe your own emotional states and you will see that the moments of great joy, great ecstasy, are unpremeditated; they happen, mysteriously, darkly, unknowingly.
Living is not this tawdry, mediocre, disciplined thing which we call our existence. Living is something entirely different; it is abundantly rich, timelessly changing, and as long as we don't understand that eternal movement, our lives are bound to have very little meaning.
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.
The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgment.
Observe, and in that observation there is neither the observer nor the observed -- there is only observation taking place.
What we are trying to do is to understand this confusion and not cover it up with quotations.
Control exists only when there is action of will, positively or negatively. Will is resistance. When the mind is learning, there is no resistance.
We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.
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.
Sentimentality and emotionalism have nothing whatsoever to do with love.
There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all.
Clever people, people who are cunning, do not know what love is because their minds are so sharp, because they are so clever, because they are so superficial -- which means to be on the surface, and love is not a thing that exists on the surface.
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.
If I follow a particular method of knowing myself, then I shall have the result which that system necessitates; but the result will obviously not be the understanding of myself.
I admire and respect the tenacity, courage, and patience of the unenlightened in the face of so much overwhelming evidence.
I say that when you have perceived or attained the goal, compromises, renunciations, do not exist. If you have seen the goal, compromise ceases to exist. It is then a question of a different attitude.
You cannot explain to someone who comes with no idea of what you are talking about without being misunderstood.
Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything -- to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?
There must be a certain amount of imitation, copying, in outward technique, but when there is inward, psychological imitation surely we cease to be creative.
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.
Hasn't knowledge only crippled me from seeing truth? Is knowledge itself illusory?
A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.
Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness.
Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquility of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness.
And as we are -- the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are.
Does life continue beyond the door? The fulfilment of life is not annihilation -- on the contrary -- I am much more ambitious, much more desirous, much more eager than you are. It is Life. Therefore it cannot be annihilation, for you cannot annihilate Life!
As the world has to attain the fulfilment of eternal life, to me it does not in the least matter what I am called -'Enlightened One', 'Son of God', or something else. To me, it has no purpose -- as little as when the Buddha said, 'I am the Enlightened One'.
Charity is unconscious of itself, there is no accumulation first and then distribution. It is like the flower -- natural, open, spontaneous.
You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself, soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of something; it is always moving, noisy.
We are asking a really fundamental question whether thought can ever be creative. If thought is not the ground of creation then what is creation? Is love the only factor that is creative?
There are two kinds of freedom: one is the freedom from something, which is a reaction; and the other is not a reaction, it is being free.
But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.
The guru cannot awaken you; all that he can do is to point out what is.
I have only one purpose: to make people free, to urge them towards freedom, to help them to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give them eternal happiness, will give them the unconditional realization of Self.
If you come across fear, stare it in its eyes. Face it and you will notice that fear fades away.
Quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti are featured in:
Happiness Quotes
Depression Quotes
Hope Quotes
Silence Quotes
Wisdom Quotes
Self-Discovery Quotes
Short Inner Peace Quotes