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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day
Ojai, California | 6th Talk in the Oak Grove 10th May, 1936
Question: Please explain more clearly what you mean by pliability of mind.
Krishnamurti: Is it not necessary to have a supple, alert mind? Must not one have a mind that is supremely pliable? Must not the mind be like a tree, that has its roots deep in the earth, yet yields to passing winds? It is itself, and so it can be pliable. Now, with what are we occupied? We are trying to become something, and we glory in that becoming. That becoming is not fulfilment but imitation, the copying of a pattern of what is called perfection; it is a following, obeying, in order to achieve, to succeed. That is not fulfilment. A rose or a violet that is lovely is a perfect flower, and that in itself is fulfilment; it would be vain to wish that a violet could be as the rose. We are making constant effort to be something, and so the mind-heart becomes more and more rigid, limited, narrow, and incapable of deep pliability. So it creates further resistances for self-protection against the movement of life. Those self-created resistances prevent the mind-heart from comprehending its own activities which engender and increase ignorance. Pliability of mind is not in becoming something, in worshipping success, but it is known when the mind denudes itself of those resistances which it has brought into being through craving. This is true fulfilment. In that fulfilment there is the eternal, the permanent, the ever pliable.
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