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If I see the beauty of that light, and it is really extraordinarily beautiful, I just see it. Now with that same quality of attention I want to see myself. There is a moment of perception which is as beautiful as that. Then what happens?
What I am saying is: I want to find out what is holy, not man-made holiness. I can only find out when the mind has immense space. And it cannot have that immense space if there is a centre. When the centre is not in operation, then there is vast space. In that space, which is part of meditation, there is something really sacred, not invented by my foolish little centre. There is something immeasurably sacred, which you can never find out if there is a centre. And to imagine that sacredness is folly—you follow what I mean?
So my real concern is this: whether the centre can be completely empty? That centre is consciousness. That centre is the content of consciousness, the content is consciousness; there is no consciousness if there is no content.
Now what is thought? You are asked that question, “What is thought?” Please don’t repeat somebody else—find out for yourself. Surely thought is the response of memory, isn’t it?—memory
The crisis is not in the outer world, but in consciousness itself.
To be related means not to be dependent on each other, not to escape from your loneliness through another, not to try to find comfort, companionship, through another. When you seek comfort through another, are dependent and all the rest of it, can there be any kind of relationship? Or are you then using each other?
To understand this is to understand what it means to be lonely. Have you ever been lonely? Do you know what it means?—that you have no relationship with another, are completely isolated. You may be with your family, in a crowd, or in the office, wherever you are, when this complete sense of utter loneliness with its despair suddenly comes upon you. Till you solve that completely, your relationship becomes a means of escape and therefore it leads to corruption, to misery. How is one to understand this loneliness, this sense of complete isolation? To understand it, one has to look at one’s own
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Love is something totally new every day, but pleasure is not, pleasure has continuity. Love is always new and therefore it is its own eternity.
A mind that is enquiring—not seeking—must be totally free of these two, that is, of the demand for experience and the search for truth.
The root-meaning of that word is to learn; a mind that is willing to learn—not to conform—must be curious, must have great interest, and a mind that already knows, cannot possibly learn.
So we shall say for the moment that goodness is absolute order.
The seeing is the understanding; you cannot understand through the mind, through the intellect, or understand through a fragment. There is understanding only when the mind is completely quiet, which means when there is no image.
Seeing destroys all barriers.
observe for yourself a tree, a flower, the face of a person; to look at any one of them, and so look that the space between you and them is non-existent. And you can only look that way when there is love—that word which has been so misused.
We will not go into the question of love for the time being, but when you have this sense of real observation, real seeing, then that seeing brings with it this extraordinary elimination of time and space which comes about when there is love. And you cannot have love without recognising beauty. You may talk about beauty, write, design, but if you have no love nothing is beautiful. Being without love means that you are not totally sensitive. And because you are not totally sensitive you are degenerating.
the most fundamental problem for the human being, whether he is in America, India, Russia, or anywhere else, is this question of freedom from “the little corner”. And that little corner is ourselves, that little corner is your shoddy little mind. We have made that little corner, because our own little minds are fragmented and therefore incapable of being sensitive to the whole; we want that little part to be made safe, peaceful, quiet, satisfying, pleasurable, thereby avoiding all pain, because, fundamentally, we are seeking pleasure. And if you have examined pleasure, your own pleasure, have
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So what is important is not to learn but to see and to listen.
that is the beauty of seeing. If you can see, you have nothing else to do, because in that seeing there is all discipline, all virtue, which is attention. And in that seeing there is all beauty, and with beauty there is love. Then when there is love you have nothing more to do. Then where you are, you have heaven; then all seeking comes to an end.
you can’t find any truth without passion. That word “passion” is derived from the Latin word for suffering which again derives from Greek and so on; from this “suffering” the whole of Christendom worships sorrow, not passion. And they have given “passion” a special significance.
Please, Sirs, don’t merely listen to words and don’t be carried away by them; explanations, definitions, descriptions, are not the fact. The fact is your life, the fact is whether you are aware of it, and you cannot be aware of it through the speaker’s words, which merely describe your condition and if you are caught up in the description, in the words, then you are certainly lost forever. And that is what we are—we are lost, we are forlorn because we have accepted words, words, words. So don’t please, I beg of you, be caught in words, but watch yourself, watch your life, your daily life which
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beauty cannot be divorced from love.
We said that this attention is necessary—don’t say, “Define what you mean by attention”, you might just as well look it up in a dictionary. We are not going to define it, what we are trying to do is, by denying what is not, to come upon it by yourself. We are saying, this attention is necessary for sensitivity, which is intelligence at the deeper level. Again, these words are difficult because there is no measurement—when you say, “deeper”, “more”, you are comparing, and comparison is a waste of energy. So, if that is understood, we can use words to convey a meaning which is not comparative
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When you give your attention completely, that is, with your mind, with your eyes, with your heart, with your nerves—when you give complete attention, you will find there is no centre at all, there is no observer and therefore there is no division between the observed and the observer, and you eradicate conflict totally, this conflict brought about by separation, by division. It only seems difficult because you are not used to this way of looking at life. It is really quite simple. It is really very simple if you know how to look at a tree, if you know how to see anew the tree, your wife, your
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That is why it is important to know the art of looking, which is very simple—to look with complete attention, with your heart and with your mind. And attention means love, because you cannot look at that sky and be extraordinarily sensitive if there is a division between yourself and the beauty of that sunset.
And when you have that love you can put away all your sacred books, all your gods. And you have to put away your sacred books, your gods, your everyday ambitions, to come upon that love. That is the only sacred thing there is. And to come upon it, goodness must flower. Goodness—you understand, Sirs?—goodness can only flower in freedom, not in tradition.
do not know why you have any belief about this, one way or the other. The actual fact is that to survive at all in the world you have to battle, either very cunningly, cleverly, brutally or very subtly exploiting people in a nice gentle way. That is the fact. And why do we have a concept about it or about anything else?
So concepts are a barrier; they act as a barrier which prevents you from looking.
Now can I live with that, understand it, not have concepts about it? So that after looking at it, so that by understanding it, studying its structure and nature I have really understood it and so can go beyond it, so that envy never touches the mind again?
It is a fundamental issue—to live without conflict, but not go to sleep.
It seems to me much more important to question one’s own motives, one’s attitudes, beliefs, ways of life, habits, traditions, the way one thinks and why one thinks in that way. Because I do not see how we can have sanity if we are not aware of our own reasoning or non-reasoning, if we are not aware of our own emotional attitudes and our narrow or wide beliefs.
Watching is the discipline.
first of all there is envy; one becomes conscious of that envy; then thought says, “I have had that feeling before.” Otherwise you would not be able to recognise that feeling which you have called “envy”.
Fallacy, unless he argues envy transcends existence. There must be a first occurence. How is THAT recognized?