Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

So I would say to a daughter or son, “Look, listen to all this, listen to all the noise that is going on in the world. Don’t take sides, don’t jump to any conclusions, but just listen. Don’t say one noise is better than another noise; they are all noises, so just listen first. And listen also to your own noise, your chattering, your wishes—‘I want to be this and I don’t want to be that’—and find out what it means to listen. Find out, don’t be told. Discuss it with me and find out what it means first. Find out what it means to think, why you think, what is the background of your thinking. Watch yourself, but don’t become self-centered in that watching. Be tremendously concerned, in watching, about further enlargement of yourself.” If you watch yourself, there is a tremendous danger of self-centeredness.