Kinfonet Quote of the Day: A mind that is seeking, craving, searching for wider, deeper experience, such a mind is shallow because it lives always with its memories, with its recognitions, and what is remembered, recognized, is not the new.

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Saanen, Switzerland | Ninth Public Talk, 1967

Every experience demands recognition, otherwise it is not an experience. If I don't recognize it as an experience involving something, it is not an experience. It is only when I recognize it that I call it an experience, but to recognize I must have already known. Through experience there can be no new thing at all. So one has discovered a fundamental truth, that a mind that is seeking, craving, searching for wider, deeper experience, such a mind is shallow because it lives always with its memories, with its recognitions, and what is remembered, recognized, is not the new. But there is no experiencing in silence and one asks, how is it possible to act in this world if the mind is really quiet, silent? You understand? Is it possible to function, in this world, with this enormous sense of silence? One has a certain function, one has to do a certain thing, as a librarian, as a cook, as a technician, sit in an office and so on, which all demands accumulated information as knowledge, experience; and one asks, can my mind which has understood and is living in that state of silence function in these circumstances? When one puts that question, one separates silence from the action; it is therefore the wrong question. But when there is the silence one will function in the office. You know, it is like a drum that is highly tuned and you strike on it and it gives you the right note, but it is always empty, silent. It doesn't say - 'I am silent' - 'How am I to function in the office?'

Tags: action, silence

Related Quotes: Sir, what is your idea of a new world?; We are not concerned with individual salvation or individual liberation, or whatever the individual is trying to seek but rather with the whole movement of life, the understanding of the whole current of existence;; Action according to memory, is total inaction, and therefore there is no revolution at all.; I can give you paint, brushes, and canvas, but you yourself have to become the artist, the painter.; As long as there is a guiding principle in our lives to which we are trying to be true, there must be duality in action, and therefore a problem.; listening to my talks, or reading what I have said, is not going to awaken intelligence or lead you to truth, to that ecstasy of life which is in continual movement.; Individually, we feel we have but to wait, let things take their natural course, and by some extraordinary means a new world will come into being.; We must begin to create intelligent opinion, and thereby we shall have a world where individuality is not crushed out, beaten to a particular pattern, but becomes a means of expression of life;; Intelligence itself is so supreme that it is continually in movement and therefore there is never a static point which can create conflict.; If you don't understand something and merely try to modify it, your action must increase the barriers, must build up new sets of barriers;; Without understanding the significance of environment, man struggles to alter, modify that environment, and thereby but heightens the walls of his prison, though he thinks he has removed them.; Memory, is caught up in the struggle of changing values, and this battle is called progress, the evolutionary path of choice leading to truth.; As long as the mind, clouded by memory, imparts values, action must create further walls of prison;; when thought, which is emotion, which is action itself, is unimpeded in its movement, is not compelled or influenced or bound by an idea, and does not proceed from the background of tradition or habit, then that movement is creative.; Question: Cannot man be liberated through science?; If we can understand the fundamental cause of our action and free it from its limitations, then action will inevitably bring about intelligence and co-operation in the world.; Action born of a reaction, of a symptom, without understanding the cause, must lead to greater conflict and suffering.; Truth, the beauty of reality, can be discerned only when the mind is fearless; not with the fearlessness of intellectuality, but of utter insecurity.; For the mind to be silent, all its contradictory corners must come together and be fused in the flame of understanding.; Thought shattering itself against its own nothingness is the explosion of meditation.; When you realize the truth that it is only the quiet mind that sees, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet.; What is meditation? Why should one meditate? To find that out, stop meditating.; Is silence to be cultivated, carefully nurtured and strengthened? And who is the cultivator? Is he different from the totality of your being?; It is only when the mind is silent that we can understand anything; A mind that is merely occupied is a petty mind, whether it is occupied with the highest knowledge, or with the daily activities of the kitchen, or the job.; Our minds are the result of innumerable and contradictory influences, and any action born of that contradictory state must also be contradictory;