The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

Observing the depth and scope of our behavior, as it occurs in the moment, becomes the necessary action in transforming ourselves and our society.

Truth can never wither because it can only be found from moment to moment in every thought, in every relationship, in every word, in every gesture, in a smile, in tears. And if you and I can find that and live it—the very living is the finding of it—then we shall not become propagandists; we shall be creative human beings—not perfect human beings, but creative human beings, which is vastly different. And that, I think, is why I am talking, and perhaps that is why you are here listening.

“There is only the problem; there is no answer; for in the understanding of the problem lies its dissolution.”

we are constantly trying to be this or that, to achieve a particular state, to capture one kind of experience and avoid another, so the mind is everlastingly occupied with something; it is never still to listen to the noise of its own struggles and pains. Be simple … and don’t try to become something or to capture some experience.

A mind that follows a formula through disciplining itself to achieve virtue creates for itself the problems of immorality.

We crave to be certain, to be right, to be successful, to know; and this desire for certainty, for permanence, builds up within ourselves the authority of personal experience, while outwardly it creates the authority of society, of the family, of religion, and so on.

Thought is the result of your conditioning, thought is the response of your memory—ancestral or immediate.

You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent, the ideal; but the ideal is a projection of what is, only under a different name.

Thinking is a process of verbalization, which is the result of memory;

We are attached to the world of ideas and not to peace. We search for new social and political patterns and not for peace;

Thought-feeling can go beyond and above good and its opposite only when it understands its cause—craving.

There can be goodness only when there is a totality of attention in which there is no effort to be or not to be.

We are the things we possess, we are that to which we are attached.

We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor, which is love.

So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves.

Desire arises, which is a reaction, which is a healthy, normal reaction; otherwise, I would be dead.

Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the “I” having significance.

Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace and happiness to man.

Love is a state in which there is no “me”;

A passionate man who feels strongly is not satisfied merely with some little job—whether it be the job of a prime minister, or of a cook, or what you will. A mind that is passionate is inquiring, searching, looking, asking, demanding, not merely trying to find for its discontent some object in which it can fulfill itself and go to sleep. A passionate mind is groping, seeking, breaking through, not accepting any tradition; it is not a decided mind, not a mind that has arrived, but it is a young mind that is ever arriving.

Life is a process of challenge and response. Challenge is always new but the response is ever old.

All thinking obviously is conditioned; there is no such thing as free thinking.