Kinfonet Quote of the Day: Instead of discerning the cause, you think that you can comprehend yourself through another. This looking to the example of another only leads to illusion and suffering.

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

New York City, USA | 2nd Public Talk 4th June, 1936

Question: Example is said to be better than precept. Cannot the value of personal example to another be considerable, like your own?

Krishnamurti: What is the motive that lies behind this question? Is it not that the questioner desires to follow an example, thinking that it may lead him to fulfilment? The following of another never leads to fulfilment. A violet can never become a rose, but the violet in itself can be a perfect flower. Being uncertain, one seeks certainty in the imitation of another. This produces fear, from which arise the delusion of shelter and comfort in another, and the many false ideas of discipline, meditation and the subjugation of oneself to an ideal. All this merely indicates the lack of comprehension of oneself, the perpetuating of ignorance. It is the root of sorrow, and instead of discerning the cause, you think that you can comprehend yourself through another. This looking to the example of another only leads to illusion and suffering.

Tags: illusion, imitation, suffering

Related Quotes: We have to find out what is the accurate, correct, right action, or right livelihood in the world of reality, and reality includes illusion; Can there be honesty - that is, clear insight, seeing things as they are - if there is a principle, an ideal, an ennobled formula?; The craving for experience is the beginning of illusion.; Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.; Meditation is seeing the constant touching the ever-changing movement of life.; A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want?; For me, revolution is synonymous with religion. I do not mean by the word 'revolution' immediate economic or social change; I mean a revolution in consciousness itself.; One takes comfort, security, in any form of illusion. And man apparently needs many illusions.; We have divided life into dying and living. And this division has brought about great fear. And out of that fear we invent all kinds of theories, very comforting, may be illusory, but it is very comforting, illusions are comfortably neurotic.; The religious mind does not depend on time for its development.; Most of us do not want to die to anything, particularly to that which gives us pleasure, to the memory of things that we have known and cherished.; The power to create illusion is vastly more significant to understand than to understand reality.; That which is real will be known when the various forms of illusions have ceased.; Most minds have identified themselves with a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal;; What happens to a house whose walls you are merely decorating though its foundations are rotten?; 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;; Not having that creative intelligence which is the comprehension of environment, man begins to play within the walls of his prison, he begins to embellish and decorate the prison and he makes himself comfortable within its walls;; Intelligence is the only solution that will bring about harmony in this world of conflict, harmony between mind and heart in action.; There is no security, no comfort, but only clarity of thought which brings about the understanding of the fundamental cause of suffering, which alone will liberate man.; Our present search for reality is nothing but the search for a greater and more magnificent illusion.; The very search for reality is an illusion, because it is but an escape.; When there is true discernment there is the ecstasy of the immeasurable, which cannot be imagined or preconceived, but only experienced.; Illusion divides itself infinitely.; The continual process of awakening the mind from its own limitations is true experience.; We have many stupidities and limitations which are slowly destroying intelligence, such as ideals, beliefs, dogmas, nationalism and the possessive idea of family;; A man who would understand truth must be free from the desire for security and comfort.; Imitation is a form of stealing: you are nothing but he is somebody, so you are going to get some of his glory by copying him.; Your mind is like a gramophone record repeating a song you have heard. 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