The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

merely to try to meditate without first establishing deeply, irrevocably, that virtue which comes about through self-knowing is utterly deceptive and absolutely useless.

I have to observe and see the fact, the actual, the what is. If I approach it with an idea, with an opinion—such as “I must not,” or “I must,” which are the responses of memory—then the movement of what is is hindered, is blocked; and therefore, there is no learning.

Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not true.

We have an intellectual knowledge of this unity but we keep knowledge and feeling in different compartments and hence we never experience the extraordinary unity of man.

Relationship is a mirror in which to see ourselves as we actually are. But most of us are incapable of looking at ourselves as we are in relationship, because we immediately begin to condemn or justify what we see.

Can the crude mind become sensitive? If I say my mind is crude and I try to become sensitive, the very effort to become sensitive is crudity. Please see this. Don’t be intrigued, but watch it.

Love admits no division.

When you know you do not love, when you are choicelessly aware of that fact, then there is a possibility of transformation; but to sedulously cultivate this distinction between the Master and the pupil, between those who have attained and those who have not, between the savior and the sinner, is to deny love. The exploiter, who is in turn exploited, finds a happy hunting-ground in this darkness and illusion.

The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself.

Creation is when the self is not there, because creation is not intellectual, is not of the mind, is not self-projected, is something beyond all experiencing, as we know it.

Love is not the self. Self cannot recognize love. You say, “I love,” but then, in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not. But, when you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not.

I must understand what is false in my relationships, in my ideas, in the things about me, because to perceive the truth requires the understanding of the false.

we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.

As long as you do not understand your relationship with your neighbor, with society, with your wife and children, there must be confusion; and whatever it does, the mind that is confused will only create more confusion, more problems and conflict.

the mind that understands its relationship with property, with people, with ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love—such a mind alone can understand reality.

each belief has a series of rituals, a series of compulsions which bind man and separate man.

belief acts and has a corresponding influence on the mind; the mind then can never be free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true,

your very belief projects what you think ought to be God,

if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it.

belief is separating people, creating intolerance; is it possible to live without belief? One can find that out only if one can study oneself in relationship to a belief.

You remove the conflict of the opposite in one stroke if you live with the fact and therefore liberate the energy to face the fact.

truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment.

knowledge and belief are essentially separating qualities. Beliefs never bind people; they always separate people;

Is it possible to act without the process of thought, thought being a process of time, a process of calculation, a process of self-protection, a process of belief, denial, condemnation, justification.

When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man.

we have first to discover how the idea comes into being.

Peace can only be when the confusion which you and another make ceases.

Thought must always be limited by the thinker who is conditioned;

When there is love, there is neither good nor bad, there is only love.

when there is the cessation of complete attention, of love, that there comes the conflict between what I am and what I should be.

We are continually creating this duality in which thought-feeling is caught up. Thought-feeling can go beyond and above good and its opposite only when it understands its cause—craving.

Opposites cannot be fused and they are to be transcended through the dissolution of craving. Each opposite must be thought out, felt out, as extensively and deeply as possible, through all the layers of consciousness. Through this thinking out, feeling out, a new comprehension is awakened, which is not the product of craving or of time.

Greed implies desiring, acquiring, expanding; and when the mind sees that it does not pay to be greedy, it wants to be nongreedy, so the motive is still the same, which is to be or to acquire something.

goodness has no motive because all motive is based on the self; it is the egocentric movement of the mind.

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

If we can think about it, it is obviously within the field of our reasoning.

If you really listen—not just merely verbally, but really profoundly—then you will see that there is stability that is not of the mind, that is the freedom from the past.

There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past.

a mind that is free has the essence of humility.

to learn is a movement from the known to the unknown

In the process of avoiding that state, we are bound to create some kind of dependence, which becomes our authority.

does the mind know that state which it avoids?

become aware of the process of attachment and dependence, become aware of it without condemnation, without judgment, and then you will perceive the significance of this conflict of opposites.

becoming aware of the projections of the subconscious after the conscious has thought out the problem as clearly as possible, then, even though you give your attention to other matters, the conscious and the subconscious will work out the problem of dependence, or any other problem.

Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict.

So long as you are unwilling to be nothing, which in fact you are, you must inevitably breed sorrow and antagonism. The willingness to be nothing is not a matter of renunciation, of enforcement, inner or outer, but of seeing the truth of what is.

I do not see; I want to find out why I do not see.

What is the thing that will make me see something totally so that I have understood the whole thing immediately?

The man who sees something totally, who sees life totally, must obviously be out of time.

Has it ever happened to you—I am sure it has—that you suddenly perceive something, and in that moment of perception you have no problems at all? The very moment you have perceived the problem, the problem has completely ceased.

Yes. These tend to coincide with a reframe (reappraisal) of the original problem, the arising of a new problem; or both in quick succession. The first, however, I have recently learnt to sit with for longer periods of time; and ,in so doing, to reduce the creation of secondary, illusory problems.