Tag:  Understanding

• the explanation is never that thing which is explained, that is the word is never the thing. October 09, 2009

  The eagle in its flight does not leave a mark, only the scientist does. And in enquiring into this question of freedom there must be not only the scientific observation, but also the flight of the ...

• We don't love children, because we have no love in our own hearts. We just breed children. October 11, 2009

  Question: What is the place of discipline in education? Krishnamurti: I should say, none. Just a minute, I will explain it further. What is the purpose of discipline? What do you mean by discipl...

• The essence of control is suppression. November 06, 2009

  The essence of control is suppression. The pure seeing puts an end to every form of suppression; seeing is infinitely more subtle than mere control. Control is comparatively easy, it doesn't need m...

• A mind that is indifferent, is aware of the shoddiness of our civilization, the shoddiness of our thought, the ugly relationships; November 09, 2009

  A mind that is indifferent, is aware of the shoddiness of our civilization, the shoddiness of our thought, the ugly relationships; it is aware of the street, of the beauty of a tree, or of a lovely...

• Mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. December 03, 2009

  Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transf...

• Until I, in my relationship to you, understand myself, I am the cause of chaos, misery, destruction, fear, brutality. December 06, 2009

  Is it not, therefore, an obvious fact that what I am in my relationship to another creates society and that, without radically transforming myself, there can be no transformation of the essential f...

• Life itself has no system, for it is always in movement; December 09, 2009

  Life itself has no system, for it is always in movement; always growing and striving. To systemize it, therefore, is to bind it and so negate its vital quality. For this reason pure reason can neve...

• In the confusion and turmoil of life, in its continual bustle and conflict, every individual is caught. December 11, 2009

  In the confusion and turmoil of life, in its continual bustle and conflict, every individual is caught. To understand the meaning of it, one must first grapple with it intellectually and afterwards...

• Criticism is only of value in so far as it trains your observation so that it can eventually be turned on yourself. December 12, 2009

  Wherever I have been, the criticism with which people busy themselves about me deals nearly always with superficialities and is hardly worth answering. For example, I was asked the other day why it...

• Desire, which has been the driving force in man, has created a great many pleasant and useful things; desire also, in man's relationships, has created a great many problems and turmoil and misery - the desire for pleasure. February 08, 2010

  Desire, which has been the driving force in man, has created a great many pleasant and useful things; desire also, in man's relationships, has created a great many problems and turmoil and misery -...

• As fear cannot free itself through any means, for all its efforts spring from its own source, there must be the cessation of all intellectual safeguards. February 14, 2010

  The conflict in which we exist is not a struggle between good and evil, between the self and the not-self. The struggle is in our own self-created duality, between our various self-protective desir...

• Conflict at any level, at any depth, indicates immaturity. March 08, 2010

  Crossing the bridge, up in the sun-speckled wood, meditation was quite a different thing. Without any wish and search, without any complaint of the brain, there was unenforced silence; the little b...

• There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for both are slaves to their own desires and gratifications. March 11, 2010

  There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for both are slaves to their own desires and gratifications. Maturity is not a matter of age, it comes with understanding. The arden...

• Is it possible for the mind to be so attentive all the time, so sensitive that every challenge is answered completely and immediately, and to come to a state when there is no challenge and no response, when it is no longer in a state of experiencing? April 17, 2010

  If I may go further into it, the question really is: "Is it possible for the mind to be so attentive all the time, so sensitive that every challenge is answered completely and immediately, and to c...

• There is a vast difference, then, between the mental examination of a fact and the understanding of that fact. May 20, 2010

  Understanding obviously does not come through fragmentation; and most of us think in terms of fragmentation, all our relationships in life are fragmentary. With one part of ourselves we are politic...

• 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; May 30, 2010

  We can only understand something when we see the totality of it, when we see its whole structure and the meaning of it. You cannot see the whole pattern of life, the whole movement of life, if you ...

• to observe means to observe without the interference of one's background; but one is the background - you follow?-one's whole being which looks is one's background - as a Christian, as a Frenchman, or as an intellectual. June 20, 2010

  Questioner: Am I to understand we have to meditate, but our minds are prevented from meditating because they tick over automatically and so we are unable to observe what happens around us? Does thi...

• Stillness cannot be cultivated, because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind. August 06, 2010

  I do not know if you have noticed that there is understanding when the mind is very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization of thought is not. Just expe...

• When one merely understands intellectually, verbally or romantically or emotionally, it is just nothing at all. November 19, 2010

  What is understanding ? When one says 'I understand', 'I understand the problem', 'I understand my relationship with another', 'I understand the meaning of love', what does one mean by that word un...

• In action born of choice there is no discernment, choice being calculation, a remembrance of incomplete action. April 11, 2011

  You look to time to change you. You say to yourself, 'Through the multiplication of experiences, as in changing from the desire for the hat to the desire for God, I shall learn wisdom, I shall lear...

• When you are awakened there is conflict, struggle. which you call suffering; but immediately you want to put away that struggle, that awakening; April 18, 2011

  Question: You say that suffering cannot give us understanding, but can only awaken us. If that is so, why does not suffering cease when we have been fully awakened? Krishnamurti: That is just it...

• In order to fight, you must know what you are fighting, so there must be understanding of the fundamental, not of the divisions between the false things. July 25, 2011

  Question: Surely you cannot mean what your words seem to convey. When I see vice rampant in the world, I feel an intense desire to fight against that vice and against all the suffering it creates i...

• Why do you want to eliminate self-consciousness? August 28, 2011

  Question: How can one determine what shall fill the vacuum created in the process of eliminating self-consciousness? Krishnamurti: Sir, why do you want to eliminate self-consciousness? Why do yo...

• Because what you can now discern as God must be limited, since your mind is circumscribed, held in bondage; therefore I will not describe that. September 02, 2011

  The man who is functioning intelligently and who is therefore free of circumstances we call creative, divine. To a man who is in prison, the liberated man, the intelligent man is as a god. So we ne...

• When you understand you don't seek to modify, to alter, to reform. September 05, 2011

  Every man then is thwarted, and conscious of his own separateness he functions and acts in and through environment, battling against it and making colossal efforts to adjust, modify and alter circu...

• There is the reaction to environment when the mind does not understand the environment, and acts without understanding, thereby further increasing the limitation of environment September 20, 2011

  Question: You refer to two forms of action: reaction to environment, which creates conflict, and penetration of environment, which brings freedom from conflict. I understand the first, but not the ...