The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti by Krishnamurti

Summary

A conversational and enlightening book that covers topics as time, perception, brain and transformation. The material is heavy but digestible because of its daily 1-page nature.

Key Takeaways

To be added on a reread. See notes below.

What I got out of it

To be added on a reread. See notes below.

Summary Notes

January – Listening, Learning, Authority, Self-Knowledge

Listening Without Thought

It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand

Listening to Yourself

QUESTIONER: While I am here listening to you, I seem to understand, but when I am away from here, I don’t understand, even though I try to apply what you have been saying.

KRISHNAMURTI: … You are listening to yourself, and not to the speaker. If you are listening to the speaker, he becomes your leader, your way to understanding—which is a horror, an abomination, because you have then established the hierarchy of authority.

So what you are doing here is listening to yourself. You are looking at the picture the speaker is painting, which is your own picture, not the speaker’s. If that much is clear, that you are looking at yourself, then you can say, “Well, I see myself as I am, and I don’t want to do anything about it”—and that is the end of it. But if you say, “I see myself as I am, and there must be a change,” then you begin to work out of your own understanding—which is entirely different from applying what the speaker is saying…. But if, as the speaker is speaking, you are listening to yourself, then out of that listening there is clarity, there is sensitivity; out of that listening the mind becomes healthy, strong. Neither obeying nor resisting, it becomes alive, intense—and it is only such a human being who can create a new generation, a new world.

Look with Intensity 

… It seems to me that learning is astonishingly difficult, as is listening also. We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult.

I think—or rather, it is a fact—that if one can listen to something with all of one’s being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is a liberative factor, but unfortunately you never do listen, as you have never learned about it. After all, you only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics, you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention. If you want to learn about a leaf—a leaf of the spring or a leaf of the summer—you must really look at it, see the symmetry of it, the texture of it, the quality of the living leaf. There is beauty, there is vigor, there is vitality in a single leaf. So to learn about the leaf, the flower, the cloud, the sunset, or a human being, you must look with all intensity.

To Learn, the Mind Must Be Quiet

Thus knowledge and learning are impediments for those who would seek, for those who would try to understand that which is timeless.

When Is Learning Possible? 

By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information or knowledge is not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself.

Learning Is Never Accumulative 

Learning is one thing and acquiring knowledge is another. Learning is a continuous process, not a process of addition, not a process which you gather and then from there act. Most of us gather knowledge as memory, as idea, store it up as experience, and from there act. That is, we act from knowledge, technological knowledge, knowledge as experience, knowledge as tradition, knowledge that one has derived through one’s particular idiosyncratic tendencies; with that background, with that accumulation as knowledge, as experience, as tradition, we act. In that process there is no learning.

Learning is never accumulative; it is a constant movement. I do not know if you have ever gone into this question at all: what is learning and what is the acquisition of knowledge? … Learning is never accumulative. You cannot store up learning and then from that storehouse act. You learn as you are going along. Therefore, there is never a moment of retrogression or deterioration or decline.

Learning Has No Past 

Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing. Without knowing oneself, order is not possible, and therefore there is no virtue.

It is only a mind that is not acquiring, but always learning—it is only such a mind that can understand this whole entity that we call the “me,” the self. I have to know myself, the structure, the nature, the significance of the total entity; but I can’t do that burdened with my previous knowledge, with my previous experience, or with a mind that is conditioned, for then I am not learning, I am merely interpreting, translating, looking with an eye that is already clouded by the past

Authority Prevents Learning

Authority prevents learning—learning that is not the accumulation of knowledge as memory. Memory always responds in patterns; there is no freedom

Liberation from Ignorance, from Sorrow 

What is important is not how to recognize one who is liberated but how to understand yourself. No authority here or hereafter can give you knowledge of yourself; without self-knowledge there is no liberation from ignorance, from sorrow.

Self-Knowledge Is a Process

To understand the innumerable problems that each one of us has, is it not essential that there be self-knowledge? And that is one of the most difficult things, self-awareness—which does not mean an isolation, a withdrawal. Obviously, to know oneself is essential; but to know oneself does not imply a withdrawal from relationship. And it would be a mistake, surely, to think that one can know oneself significantly, completely, fully, through isolation, through exclusion, or by going to some psychologist, or to some priest; or that one can learn self-knowledge through a book. Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.

The Untethered Mind 

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value…. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be— ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous—the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom.

Active Self-Knowledge 

Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to challenge, does not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuit, its thoughts and appetites. There can never be “your experience” and “my experience”; the very term “my experience” indicates ignorance and the acceptance of illusion.

Creativeness Through Self-Knowledge 

… There is no method for self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result—and that is what we all want. We follow authority—if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology—because we want a result that will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system that assures us of a result.

But the pursuit of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for certainty, and the result is obviously not the understanding of oneself. When we follow a method, we must have authorities—the teacher, the guru, the savior, the Master— who will guarantee us what we desire; and surely that is not the way to self-knowledge.

Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge.

Quiet Mind, Simple Mind 

The self is a very complex process that can be uncovered only in relationship, in our daily activities, in the way we talk, the way we judge, calculate, the way we condemn others and ourselves. All that reveals the conditioned state of our own thinking, and is it not important to be aware of this whole process? It is only through awareness of what is true from moment to moment that there is discovery of the timeless, the eternal.

If one begins to understand the “me” in all its various activities from day to day, then in that very understanding, without any effort, the nameless, the timeless comes into being. But the timeless is not a reward for self-knowledge. That which is eternal cannot be sought after; the mind cannot acquire it. It comes into being when the mind is quiet, and the mind can be quiet only when it is simple, when it is no longer storing up, condemning, judging, weighing. It is only the simple mind that can understand the real, not the mind that is full of words, knowledge, information. The mind that analyzes, calculates, is not a simple mind.

Self-Knowing

… It is important to understand what this self-knowing is, just to be aware, without any choice, of the “me” which has its source in a bundle of memories—just to be conscious of it without interpretation, merely to observe the movement of the mind.

But that observation is prevented when you are merely accumulating through observation—what to do, what not to do, what to achieve; if you do that, you put an end to the living process of the movement of the mind as the self. That is, 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.

Relationship Is a Mirror 

Relationship Is a Mirror Self-knowledge is not according to any formula. You may go to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst to find out about yourself, but that is not self-knowledge. Self-knowledge comes into being when we are aware of ourselves in relationship, which shows what we are from moment to moment. 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. We judge, we evaluate, we compare, we deny or accept, but we never observe

February – Becoming, Belief, Action, Good and Evil 

Can the Crude Mind Become Sensitive?

If I am stupid and I say I must become intelligent, the effort to become intelligent is only a greater form of stupidity; because what is important is to understand stupidity. However much I may try to become intelligent, my stupidity will remain. I may acquire the superficial polish of learning, I may be able to quote books, repeat passages from great authors, but basically I shall still be stupid. But if I see and understand stupidity as it expresses itself in my daily life—how I behave toward my servant, how I regard my neighbor, the poor man, the rich man, the clerk—then that very awareness brings about a breaking up of stupidity.

When There Is Love, Self Is Not 

A virtuous man is a righteous man, and a righteous man can never understand what is truth; because virtue to him is the covering of the self, the strengthening of the self;

because he is pursuing virtue. When he says, “I must be without greed,” the state in which he is nongreedy and which he experiences, strengthens the self. That is why it is so important to be poor, not only in the things of the world, but also in belief

Beyond Belief 

We are caught in explanation, in words, in theories, and gradually beliefs become deeply rooted and unshakable because behind those beliefs, behind those dogmas, there is the constant fear of the unknown. But we never look at that fear; we turn away from it. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. And when we examine these beliefs—the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist—we find that they divide people

Action Without Idea 

It is only when the mind is free from idea that there can be experiencing. Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. It is not an experience which you want—which is then merely sensation.

Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas—which is the “me,” which is the mind, which has a partial or complete continuity—only when one can go beyond that, when thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is.

Action Without the Process of Thought

Beliefs never bind people; they always separate people; when action is based on belief or an idea or an ideal, such an action must inevitably be isolated, fragmented.

Do Ideas Limit Action?

Can ideas ever produce action, or do ideas merely mold thought and therefore limit action? When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man. It is extraordinarily important for us to understand this point. If an idea shapes action, then action can never bring about the solution to our miseries because, before it can be put into action, we have first to discover how the idea comes into being.

Action Without Ideation 

The idea is the result of the thought process, the thought process is the response of memory, and memory is always conditioned. Memory is always in the past, and that memory is given life in the present by a challenge. Memory has no life in itself; it comes to life in the present when confronted by a challenge. And all memory, whether dormant or active, is conditioned, is it not? Therefore there has to be quite a different approach. You have to find out for yourself, inwardly, whether you are acting on an idea, and if there can be action without ideation.

Acting Without Idea Is the Way of Love

Knowing all this, is it possible to act without idea? Yes, it is the way of love. Love is not an idea; it is not a sensation; it is not a memory; it is not a feeling of postponement, a self-protective device. We can only be aware of the way of love when we understand the whole process of idea.

Conflict of the Opposites

Why do we divide life into the thing called good and the thing called evil? Is there not actually only one thing, which is a mind that is inattentive? Surely, when there is complete attention, that is, when the mind is totally aware, alert, watchful, there is no such thing as evil or good; there is only an awakened state. Goodness then is not a quality, not a virtue, it is a state of love. When there is love, there is neither good nor bad, there is only love.

You watch your own mind and you will see that the moment the mind ceases to think in terms of becoming something, there is a cessation of action which is not stagnation; it is a state of total attention, which is goodness.

Goodness Has No Motive 

If I have a motive to be good, does that bring about goodness? Or is goodness something entirely devoid of this urge to be good, which is ever based on a motive

Goodness has no motive because all motive is based on the self; it is the egocentric movement of the mind. So what do we mean by goodness? Surely, there is goodness only when there is total attention. Attention has no motive. When there is a motive for attention, is there attention? If I pay attention in order to acquire something, the acquisition, whether it be good or bad, is not attention—it is a distraction. A division. There can be goodness only when there is a totality of attention in which there is no effort to be or not to be.

Freedom from Occupation

Can the mind be free from the past, free from thought—not from the good or bad thought? How do I find out? I can only find out by seeing what the mind is occupied with. If my mind is occupied with the good or occupied with the bad, then it is only concerned with the past, it is occupied with the past. It is not free of the past. So, what is important is to find out how the mind is occupied. If it is occupied at all, it is always occupied with the past because all our consciousness is the past.

Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation;

and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past; and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated.

March – Dependence, Attachment, Relationship, Fear 

Become Deeply Aware

If you become deeply aware and consciously direct thought to comprehend the full meaning of need, of dependence, your conscious mind will be open and clear about it; and then the subconscious, with its hidden motives, pursuits, and intentions, will project itself into the conscious. When this happens, you must study and understand each intimation of the subconscious. If you do this many times, 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.

The “Me” Is The Possession 

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.

Seeing the truth of what is brings freedom from the fear of insecurity, the fear which breeds attachment and leads to the illusion of detachment, renunciation. The love of what is is the beginning of wisdom. Love alone shares, it alone can commune; but renunciation and self-sacrifice are the ways of isolation and illusion.

To Exploit Is to Be Exploited 

As most of us seek power in one form or another, the hierarchical principle is established, the novice and the initiate, the pupil and the Master, and even among the Masters there are degrees of spiritual growth. Most of us love to exploit and be exploited, and this system offers the means, whether hidden or open. To exploit is to be exploited. The desire to use others for your psychological necessities makes for dependence, and when you depend you must hold, possess; and what you possess possesses you. Without dependence, subtle or gross, without possessing things, people, and ideas, you are empty, a thing of no importance. You want to be something, and to avoid the gnawing fear of being nothing you belong to this or that organization, to this or that ideology, to this church or that temple; so you are exploited, and you in your turn exploit.

The Cultivation of Detachment

There is only attachment; there is no such thing as detachment. The mind invents detachment as a reaction to the pain of attachment. When you react to attachment by becoming “detached,” you are attached to something else. So that whole process is one of attachment. You are attached to your wife or your husband, to your children, to ideas, to tradition, to authority, and so on; and your reaction to that attachment is detachment. The cultivation of detachment is the outcome of sorrow, pain. You want to escape from the pain of attachment, and your escape is to find something to which you think you can be attached. So there is only attachment, and it is a stupid mind that cultivates detachment.

Attachment Is Self-Deception

The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence.

Attachment Is Escape

Just try to be aware of your conditioning. You can only know it indirectly, in relation to something else. You cannot be aware of your conditioning as an abstraction, for then it is merely verbal, without much significance. We are only aware of conflict. Conflict exists when there is no integration between challenge and response. This conflict is the result of our conditioning. Conditioning is attachment: attachment to work, to tradition, to property, to people, to ideas, and so on. If there were no attachment, would there be conditioning? Of course not. So why are we attached? I am attached to my country because through identification with it I become somebody. I identify myself with my work, and the work becomes important. I am my family, my property; I am attached to them. The object of attachment offers me the means of escape from my own emptiness. Attachment is escape, and it is escape that strengthens conditioning.

To Be Alone

it is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone.

And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love—not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge.

Craving Is Always Craving

Detachment is the same as attachment as long as it yields gratification. So what we are really seeking is gratification; we crave to be satisfied by whatever means.

We are dependent or attached because it gives us pleasure, security, power, a sense of well-being, though in it there is sorrow and fear. We seek detachment also for pleasure, in order not to be hurt, not to be inwardly wounded. Our search is for pleasure, gratification. Without condemning or justifying we must try to understand this process, for unless we understand it there is no way out of our confusion and contradiction. Can craving ever be satisfied, or is it a bottomless pit? Whether we crave for the low or for the high, craving is always craving, a burning fire, and what can be consumed by it soon becomes ashes; but craving for gratification still remains, ever burning, ever consuming, and there is no end to it. Attachment and detachment are equally binding, and both must be transcended

Being Related 

Without relationship, there is no existence: to be is to be related…. Most of us do not seem to realize this—that the world is my relationship with others, whether one or many. My problem is that of relationship. What I am, that I project, and obviously, if I do not understand myself, the whole of relationship is one of confusion in ever-widening circles. So, relationship becomes of extraordinary importance, not with the so-called mass, the crowd, but in the world of my family and friends, however small that may be—my relationship with my wife, my children, my neighbor. In a world of vast organizations, vast mobilizations of people, mass movements, we are afraid to act on a small scale; we are afraid to be little people clearing up our own patch. We say to ourselves, “What can I personally do? I must join a mass movement in order to reform.” On the contrary, real revolution takes place not through mass movements but through the inward revaluation of relationship—that alone is real reformation, a radical, continuous revolution. We are afraid to begin on a small scale. Because the problem is so vast, we think we must meet it with large numbers of people, with a great organization, with mass movements. Surely, we must begin to tackle the problem on a small scale, and the small scale is the “me” and the “you.” When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor, which is love.

You and I Are the Problem, Not the World 

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. 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. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world’s problems.

There Is No Such Thing As Living Alone

Inward riches alone bring peace and joy.

Freedom from Fear

Is it possible for the mind to empty itself totally of fear? Fear of any kind breeds illusion; it makes the mind dull, shallow. Where there is fear there is obviously no freedom, and without freedom there is no love at all.

When we seek fulfillment in any form, whether through painting, through music, through relationship, or what you will, there is always fear. So, what is important is to be aware of this whole process of oneself, to observe, to learn about it, and not ask how to get rid of fear. When you merely want to get rid of fear, you will find ways and means of escaping from it, and so there can never be freedom from fear.

Dealing with Fear

One is afraid of public opinion, afraid of not achieving, not fulfilling, afraid of not having the opportunity; and through it all there is this extraordinary sense of guilt— one has done a thing that one should not have done; the sense of guilt in the very act of doing; one is healthy and others are poor and unhealthy; one has food and others have no food. The more the mind is inquiring, penetrating, asking, the greater the sense of guilt, anxiety…. Fear is the urge that seeks a Master, a guru; fear is this coating of respectability, which everyone loves so dearly—to be respectable. Do you determine to be courageous to face events in life, or merely rationalize fear away, or find explanations that will give satisfaction to the mind that is caught in fear? How do you deal with it? Turn on the radio, read a book, go to a temple, cling to some form of dogma, belief?

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs. If you see that fear is destructive, then how do you proceed to wipe the mind clean? You say that by probing into the cause of fear you would be free of fear.

Is that so? Trying to uncover the cause and knowing the cause of fear does not eliminate fear.

Contacting Fear

So what is important is not “how to be free of fear?” If you seek a way, a method, a system to be rid of fear, you will be everlastingly caught in fear. But if you understand fear—which can only take place when you come directly in contact with it, as you are in contact with hunger, as you are directly in contact when you are threatened with losing your job—then you do something; only then will you find that all fear ceases

Fear Is Nonacceptance of What Is 

Do we now know what fear is? Is it not the non-acceptance of what is? We must understand the word acceptance. I am not using that word as meaning the effort made to accept. There is no question of accepting when I perceive what is. When I do not see clearly what is, then I bring in the process of acceptance. Therefore, fear is the nonacceptance of what is.

The Disorder That Time Creates

Time means moving from what is to “what should be.”

Time implies effort in that interval between what is and “what should be.”

If I allow fear to continue, I will create disorder all the time; therefore, one sees that time is an element of disorder, not a means to be ultimately free of fear. So there is no gradual process of getting rid of fear, just as there is no gradual process of getting rid of the poison of nationalism. If you have nationalism and you say that eventually there will be the brotherhood of man, in the interval there are wars, there are hatreds, there is misery, there is all this appalling division between man and man; therefore, time is creating disorder.

The Root of All Fear

Dependence on things, on people, or on ideas breeds fear; dependence arises from ignorance, from the lack of self-knowledge, from inward poverty; fear causes uncertainty of mind-heart, preventing communication and understanding. Through self-awareness we begin to discover and so comprehend the cause of fear, not only the superficial but the deep causal and accumulative fears. Fear is both inborn and acquired; it is related to the past, and to free thought-feeling from it, the past must be comprehended through the present.

April – Desire, Sex, Marriage, Passion 

Sex

Why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence, there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially, religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness, which is conflict.

After all, you are self-conscious only when there is conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of conflict….

So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife.

So, there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state.

The Ultimate Escape

When there is only one thing in your life that is an avenue to ultimate escape, to complete forgetfulness of yourself if only for a few seconds, you cling to it because that is the only moment you are happy….

So, sex becomes an extraordinarily difficult and complex problem as long as you do not understand the mind that thinks about the problem.

As Long As We Possess, We Shall Never Love

Love is not a thing of the mind; and because the things of the mind have filled our hearts, we have no love. The things of the mind are jealousy, envy, ambition, the desire to be somebody, to achieve success.

These things of the mind fill your hearts, and then you say you love; but how can you love when you have all these confusing elements in you? When there is smoke, how can there be a pure flame?

Love Is Not a Duty

When there is love, there is no duty.

In Considering Marriage

Obviously if there is no love, marriage becomes a disgrace, does it not? Then it becomes mere gratification. To love is one of the most difficult things, is it not? Love can come into being, can exist only when the self is absent. Without love, relationship is a pain; however gratifying, or however superficial, it leads to boredom, to routine, to habit with all its implications.

Love Is Incapable of Adjustment 

if you love another, there is no “adjustment.” There is only complete fusion. Only when there is no love do we begin to adjust.

The Idealist Cannot Know Love 

Those who are trying to be celibate in order to achieve God are unchaste for they are seeking a result or gain and so substituting the end, the result, for sex—which is fear. Their hearts are without love, and there can be no purity, and a pure heart alone can find reality. A disciplined heart, a suppressed heart, cannot know what love is.

Only when the mind and heart are unburdened of fear, of the routine of sensational habits, when there is generosity and compassion, there is love.

Means and End Are One 

For the attainment of liberation, nothing is necessary. You cannot attain it through bargaining, through sacrifice, through elimination; it is not a thing that you can buy. If you do these things, you will get a thing of the marketplace, therefore not real. Truth cannot be bought, there is no means to truth; if there is a means, the end would not be truth, because means and end are one, they are not separate.

This Pure Flame of Passion 

In most of us there is very little passion. We may be lustful, we may be longing for something, we may be wanting to escape from something, and all this does give one a certain intensity. But unless we awaken and feel our way into this flame of passion without a cause, we shall not be able to understand that which we call sorrow. To understand something you must have passion, the intensity of complete attention.

Where there is the passion for something that produces contradiction, conflict, this pure flame of passion cannot be; and this pure flame of passion must exist in order to end sorrow, dissipate it completely.

May – Intelligence, Feelings, Words, Conditioning 

A Mind RIch with Innocence

Intelligence comes with sensitivity and observation.

Freeing Intelligence 

The very first thing to do, if I may suggest it, is to find out why you are thinking in a certain way, and why you are feeling in a certain manner. Don’t try to alter it, don’t try to analyze your thoughts and your emotions; but become conscious of why you are thinking in a particular groove and from what motive you act. Although you can discover the motive through analysis, although you may find out something through analysis, it will not be real; it will be real only when you are intensely aware at the moment of the functioning of your thought and emotion; then you will see their extraordinary subtlety, their fine delicacy.

Freedom from Conditioning 

Freedom from conditioning is a byproduct; it is not important. The important thing is to understand what it is that creates conditioning.

June – Energy, Attention, Choiceless Awareness, Violence 

Energy Creates Its Own Discipline

The moment you really want to do something, you have the energy to do it…. That very energy becomes the means of controlling itself, so you don’t need outside discipline. In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline.

The Pattern of an Idea 

If you say, “How am I to save energy?” then you have created a pattern of an idea— how to save it—and then conduct your life according to that pattern; therefore, there begins again a contradiction. Whereas if you perceive for yourself where your energies are being wasted, you will see that the principal force causing the waste is conflict— which is having a problem and never resolving it, living with a deadly memory of something gone, living in tradition. One has to understand the nature of the dissipation of energy, and the understanding of the dissipation of energy is not according to Shankara, Buddha, or some saint, but the actual observation of one’s daily conflict in life. So the principal waste of energy is conflict—which doesn’t mean that you sit back and be lazy. Conflict will always exist as long as the idea is more important than the fact.

Creative Energy 

All thought in time is invention.

Invention is not creation; capacity is not creation; thought can never be creative because thought is always conditioned and can never be free. It is only that energy which is not the product of thought that is creative.

Attention Free of Effort

If you can give full attention without being absorbed in something, and without any sense of exclusion, then you will find out what it is to meditate; because in that attention there is no effort, no division, no struggle, no search for a result. So meditation is a process of freeing the mind from systems, and of giving attention without either being absorbed or making an effort to concentrate.

An Attention That Is Not Exclusive

There is a discontent which has no motive, which is not the outcome of some frustration, which cannot be canalized, which cannot accept any fulfillment. Perhaps I may not be using the right word for it, but I think that that extraordinary discontent is the essential. Without that, every other form of discontent merely becomes a way to satisfaction.

Attention Is Limitless, Without Frontiers 

In the cultivation of the mind, our emphasis should not be on concentration, but on attention. Concentration is a process of forcing the mind to narrow down to a point, whereas attention is without frontiers. In that process the mind is always limited by a frontier or boundary, but when our concern is to understand the totality of the mind, mere concentration becomes a hindrance. Attention is limitless, without the frontiers of knowledge. Knowledge comes through concentration, and any extension of knowledge is still within its own frontiers. In the state of attention the mind can and does use knowledge, which of necessity is the result of concentration; but the part is never the whole, and adding together the many parts does not make for the perception of the whole. Knowledge, which is the additive process of concentration does not bring about the understanding of the immeasurable. The total is never within the brackets of a concentrated mind.

So attention is of primary importance, but it does not come through the effort of concentration. Attention is a state in which the mind is ever learning without a center around which knowledge gathers as accumulated experience. A mind that is concentrated upon itself uses knowledge as a means of its own expansion; and such activity becomes self-contradictory and antisocial

Elimination of Fear Is the Beginning of Attention 

Attention arises spontaneously when around the student there is an atmosphere of well-being, when he has the feeling of being secure, of being at ease, and is aware of the disinterested action that comes with love. Love does not compare, and so the envy and torture of “becoming” cease.

What Is Thoroughly Understood Will Not Repeat Itself 

In self-awareness there is no need for confession, for self-awareness creates the mirror in which all things are reflected without distortion. Every thought-feeling is thrown, as it were, on the screen of awareness to be observed, studied and understood;

but this flow of understanding is blocked when there is condemnation or acceptance, judgment or identification. The more the screen is watched and understood—not as a duty or enforced practice, but because pain and sorrow have created the insatiable interest that brings its own discipline—the greater the intensity of awareness, and this in turn brings heightened understanding.

… You can follow a thing if it moves slowly; a rapid machine must be made to slow down if one is to study its movements. Similarly, thoughts-feelings can be studied and understood only if the mind is capable of proceeding slowly; but once it has awakened this capacity, it can move at a high velocity, which makes it extremely calm. When revolving at high speed the several blades of a fan appear to be a solid sheet of metal.

Our difficulty is to make the mind revolve slowly so that each thought-feeling can be followed and understood. What is deeply and thoroughly understood will not repeat itself

That Thing Which You Fight You Become

Surely that thing which you fight you become…. If I am angry and you meet me with anger what is the result? More anger. You have become that which I am.

We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, for what we are the society, the state, is. The enemy and the friend are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

July – Happiness, Grief, Hurt, Sorrow 

Understand Suffering

Suffering, when not understood, dulls the mind and heart; and we do not understand suffering because we want to escape from it, through the guru, through a savior, through mantras, through reincarnation, through ideas, through drink and every other kind of addiction—anything to escape what is….

The understanding of suffering does not lie in finding out what the cause is.

Any man can know the cause of suffering; his own thoughtlessness, his stupidity, his narrowness, his brutality, and so on. But if I look at the suffering itself without wanting an answer, then what happens? Then, as I am not escaping, I begin to understand suffering; my mind is watchfully alert, keen, which means I become sensitive, and being sensitive, I am aware of other people’s suffering.

Conscious Sorrow and Unconscious Sorrow  

To end sorrow one must have a very clear, very simple mind. Simplicity is not a mere idea. To be simple demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity

Self-Image Leads to Pain

Why divide problems as major and minor? Is not everything a problem? Why make them little or big problems, essential or unessential problems? If we could understand one problem, go into it very deeply however small or big it is, then we would uncover all problems. This is not a rhetorical answer. Take any problem: anger, jealousy, envy, hatred—we know them all very well. If you go into anger very deeply, not just brush it aside, then what is involved? Why is one angry? Because one is hurt, someone has said an unkind thing; and when someone says a flattering thing you are pleased. Why are you hurt? Self-importance, is it not? And why is there self-importance?

Because one has an idea, a symbol of oneself, an image of oneself, what one should be, what one is or what one should not be. Why does one create an image about oneself? Because one has never studied what one is, actually. We think we should be this or that, the ideal, the hero, the example. What awakens anger is that our ideal, the idea we have of ourselves, is attacked. And our idea about ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we are. But when you are observing the actual fact of what you are, no one can hurt you. Then, if one is a liar and is told that one is a liar it does not mean that one is hurt; it is a fact. But when you are pretending you are not a liar and are told that you are, then you get angry, violent. So we are always living in an ideational world, a world of myth, and never in the world of actuality. To observe what is, to see it, actually be familiar with it, there must be no judgment, no evaluation, no opinion, no fear.

Real Education

The mind creates through experience, tradition, memory. Can the mind be free from storing up, though it is experiencing? You understand the difference? What is required is not the cultivation of memory but the freedom from the accumulative process of the mind.
You hurt me, which is an experience; and I store up that hurt; and that becomes my tradition; and from that tradition, I look at you, I react from that tradition. That is the everyday process of my mind and your mind. Now, is it possible that, though you hurt me, the accumulative process does not take place? The two processes are entirely different.

If you say harsh words to me, it hurts me; but if that hurt is not given importance, it does not become the background from which I act; so it is possible that I meet you afresh. That is real education, in the deep sense of the word. Because, then, though I see the conditioning effects of experience, the mind is not conditioned

The Nature of the Trap

Sorrow is the result of a shock, it is the temporary shaking up of a mind that has settled down, that has accepted the routine of life. Something happens—a death, the loss of a job, the questioning of a cherished belief—and the mind is disturbed. But what does a disturbed mind do? It finds a way to be undisturbed again; it takes refuge in another belief, in a more secure job, in a new relationship. Again the wave of life comes along and shatters its safeguards, but the mind soon finds still further defenses;

and so it goes on.

Spontaneous Comprehension 

We never say, “Let me see what that thing is that suffers.” You cannot see by enforcement, by discipline. You must look with interest, with spontaneous comprehension. Then you will see that the thing we call suffering, pain, the thing that we avoid, and the discipline, have all gone. As long as I have no relationship to the thing as outside me, the problem is not; the moment I establish a relationship with it outside me, the problem is. As long as I treat suffering as something outside—I suffer because I lost my brother, because I have no money, because of this or that—I establish a relationship to it and that relationship is fictitious. But if I am that thing, if I see the fact, then the whole thing is transformed, it all has a different meaning. Then there is full attention, integrated attention and that which is completely regarded is understood and dissolved, and so there is no fear and therefore the word sorrow is non-existent.

August – Truth, Reality, Observed and the Observed, What is 

Truth Is a State of Being

Truth is a state of being which arises when the mind—which seeks to divide, to be exclusive, which can think only in terms of results, of achievement—has come to an end.

Understand the Actual 

Which is the actuality: the vision, or the mind that has been shaped in a certain mold? The vision is the projection of the particular tradition which happens to form the background of the mind. This conditioning, not the vision which it projects, is the actuality, the fact. To understand the fact is simple;

but it is made difficult by our likes and dislikes, by our condemnation of the fact, by the opinions or judgments we have about the fact. To be free of these various forms of evaluation is to understand the actual, the what is.

Translation of the Facts Prevents Seeing 

A mind that gives an opinion about a fact is a narrow, limited, destructive mind….

You can translate the fact in one way, and I can translate it in another way. The translation of the fact is a curse that prevents us from seeing the actual fact and doing something about the fact. When you and I discuss our opinions about the fact, nothing is done about the fact; you can add perhaps more to the fact, see more nuances, implications, significance about the fact, and I may see less significance in the facts.

But the fact cannot be interpreted; I cannot offer an opinion about the fact. It is so, and it is very difficult for a mind to accept the fact. We are always translating, we are always giving different meanings to it, according to our prejudices, conditionings, hopes, fears and all the rest of it. If you and I could see the fact without offering an opinion, interpreting, giving a significance, then the fact becomes much more alive— not more alive—the fact is there alone, nothing else matters; then the fact has its own energy that drives you in the right direction.

Is Suffering Merely a Word or an Actuality?

Is suffering merely a word, or an actuality? If it is an actuality and not just a word, then the word has no meaning now, so there is merely the feeling of intense pain. With regard to what? With regard to an image, to an experience, to something that you have or have not. If you have it, you call it pleasure; if you haven’t, it is pain. Therefore pain, sorrow, is in relationship to something. Is that something merely verbalization, or an actuality?—as fear cannot exist by itself but only in relationship to something: to an individual, to an incident, to a feeling. Now, you are fully aware of the suffering. Is that suffering apart from you and therefore you are merely the observer who perceives the suffering, or is that suffering you?

How Do We End Fear?

Can I as a human being end fear, totally; not little bits of it? Probably you’ve never put this question to yourself, and probably you’ve not put the question because you don’t know how to get out of it. But if you did put that question most seriously, with the intention of finding out not how to end it, but with the intention of finding out the nature and the structure of fear, the moment you have found out, fear itself comes to an end; you don’t have to do anything about it.

Reality Is in What Is 

Instead of asking who has realized or what God is, why not give your whole attention and awareness to what is? Then you will find the unknown, or rather it will come to you. If you understand what is the known, you will experience that extraordinary silence that is not induced, not enforced, that creative emptiness in which alone reality can enter. It cannot come to that which is becoming, which is striving; it can only come to that which is being, which understands what is. Then you will see that reality is not in the distance; the unknown is not far off; it is in what is. As the answer to a problem is in the problem, so reality is in what is; if we can understand it, then we shall know truth.

Effort Is Distraction from What Is

Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what it is not, or what it should be, or what it should become? We are constantly escaping from what is, to transform or modify it. He who is truly content is he who understands what is, who gives the right significance to what is. True contentment lies not in few or many possessions, but in understanding the whole significance of what is. Only in passive awareness is the meaning of what is understood.

Effort is distraction from what is. In the acceptance of what is, striving ceases.

There is no acceptance when there is the desire to transform or modify what is.

Striving, an indication of destruction, must exist so long as there is a desire to change what

A Contentment Not of the Mind

Is not discontent essential, not to be smothered away, but to be encouraged, inquired into, probed, so that with the understanding of what is there comes contentment? That contentment is not the contentment that is produced by a system of thought; but it is that contentment which comes with the understanding of what is. That contentment is not the product of the mind—the mind that is disturbed, agitated, incomplete, when it is seeking peace, when it is seeking a way away from what is. And so the mind, through justification, comparison, judgment, tries to alter what is, and thereby hopes to arrive at a state when it will not be disturbed, when it will be peaceful, when there will be quietness. And when the mind is disturbed by social conditions, by poverty, starvation, degradation, by the appalling misery, seeing all that, it wants to alter it; it gets entangled in the way of altering, in the system of altering. But if the mind is capable of looking at what is without comparison, without judgment, without the desire to alter it into something else, then you will see that there comes a kind of contentment which is not of the mind.

Keep Discontent Alive 

Is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to probing, to finding out what is the real, what is truth, what is essential in life? I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good job and this discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my family, I have to earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed, destroyed, and I become a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life, and I am not discontent. But the flame has to be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true inquiry, true probing into the problem of what discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it content with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it establishes a routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive, vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside discontent and wallow in some form of contentment…. Is it not essential to be discontented in order to find what is true?

September – Intellect, Thought, Knowledge, Mind 

All Thought Is Distraction

A mind that is competitive, held in the conflict of becoming, thinking in terms of comparison, is not capable of discovering the real. Thought-feeling which is intensely aware is in the process of constant self-discovery—which discovery, being true, is liberating and creative. Such self-discovery brings about freedom from acquisitiveness and from the complex life of the intellect. It is this complex life of the intellect that finds gratification in addictions: destructive curiosity, speculation, mere knowledge, capacity, gossip, and so on; and these hindrances prevent simplicity of life. An addiction, a specialization gives sharpness to the mind, a means of focusing thought, but it is not the flowering of thought-feeling into reality

Unity of Mind and Heart 

Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally present, intensely and harmoniously.

Intellect Corrupts Feeling

You know, there is the intellect, and there is pure feeling—the pure feeling of loving something, of having great, generous emotions. The intellect reasons, calculates, weighs, balances. It asks, “Is it worthwhile? Will it give me benefit?” On the other hand, there is pure feeling—the extraordinary feeling for the sky, for your neighbor, for your wife or husband, for your child, for the world, for the beauty of a tree, and so on. When these two come together, there is death. Do you understand?

When pure feeling is corrupted by the intellect, there is mediocrity. That is what most of us are doing. Our lives are mediocre because we are always calculating, asking ourselves whether it is worthwhile, what profit we will get, not only in the world of money, but also in the so-called spiritual world—”If I do this, will I get that?”

The Flash of Understanding 

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

The more you are interested in something, the more your intention to understand, the more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then verbalization ceases. After all, thought is word, and it is the word that interferes

The Unguarded Intellect 

So spontaneity can come only when the intellect is unguarded, when it is not protecting itself, when it is no longer afraid for itself; and this can happen only from within. That is, the spontaneous must be the new, the unknown, the incalculable, the creative, that which must be expressed, loved, in which the will as the process of intellect, controlling, directing, has no part. Observe your own emotional states and you will see that the moments of great joy, great ecstasy, are unpremeditated; they happen, mysteriously, darkly, unknowingly

Consciousness Is of the Past

The moment you have the past, you inevitably have the future, because the future is merely the continuity of the modified past, but it is still the past, so our problem is how to bring about a transformation in this process of the past without creating another conditioning, another past.

Why Is One Thoughtless? 

The thinker thinks his thoughts through habit, through repetition, through copying, which brings ignorance and sorrow. Is not habit thoughtlessness? Awareness creates order, but it never creates habit. Settled tendencies only bring about thoughtlessness.

Why is one thoughtless? Because to think is painful, it creates disturbances, it brings opposition, it may cause one’s actions to go contrary to the established pattern. To think-feel extensionally, to become choicelessly aware may lead to unknown depths, and the mind rebels against the unknown; so it moves from the known to the known, from habit to habit, from pattern to pattern. Such a mind never abandons the known to discover the unknown. Realizing the pain of thought, the thinker becomes thoughtless through copying, through habit; being afraid to think, he creates patterns of thoughtlessness. As the thinker is afraid, his actions are born of fear, and then he regards his actions and tries to change them. The thinker is afraid of his own creations; but the deed is the doer, so the thinker is afraid of himself. The thinker is fear itself; the thinker is the cause of ignorance, of sorrow. The thinker may divide himself into many categories of thought, but the thought is still the thinker. The thinker and his efforts to be, to become, are the very cause of conflict and confusion.

There Is No Freedom Of Thought 

Thought is the response of memory, and memory is always partial because memory is the result of experience, so thought is the reaction of a mind that is conditioned by experience. All thinking, all experience, all knowledge is inevitably partial; therefore, thought cannot solve the many problems that we have. You may try to reason logically, sanely, about these many problems, but if you observe your own mind you will see that your thinking is conditioned by your circumstances, by the culture in which you were born, by the food you eat, by the climate you live in, by the newspapers you read, by the pressures and influences of your daily life….

Thinking Without The Thinker

if you really examine the process, very carefully, closely and intelligently, you will see that there is always action first, and that action with an end in view creates the actor. Do you follow? If action has an end in view, the gaining of that end brings about the actor. If you think very clearly and without prejudice, without conformity, without trying to convince somebody, without an end in view, in that very thinking there is no thinker—there is only the thinking. It is only when you seek an end in your thinking that you become important, and not thought

A Mind That Is Learning 

A mind that is learning never says, “I know,” because knowledge is always partial, whereas learning is complete all the time. Learning does not mean starting with a certain amount of knowledge, and adding to it further knowledge. That is not learning at all; it is a purely mechanistic process. To me, learning is something entirely different. I am learning about myself from moment to moment, and the myself is extraordinarily vital; it is living, moving; it has no beginning and no end. When I say, “I know myself,” learning has come to an end in accumulated knowledge. Learning is never cumulative; it is a movement of knowing which has no beginning and no end.

Knowledge Assumes Authority 

The mind that is learning is an innocent mind, whereas the mind that is merely acquiring knowledge is old, stagnant, corrupted by the past. An innocent mind perceives instantly; it is learning all the time without accumulating, and such a mind alone is mature.

The Anchored Mind

Fear is not of the unknown, but of the loss of the known. The unknown does not incite fear, but dependence on the known does. Fear is always with desire, the desire for the more or for the less. The mind, with its incessant weaving of patterns, is the maker of time; and with time there is fear, hope, and death.

Inward Revolution 

To understand the mind you cannot interpret it according to somebody else’s idea, but you must observe how your own total mind works. When you know the whole process of it—how it reasons, its desires, motives, ambitions, pursuits, its envy, greed, and fear—then the mind can go beyond itself, and when it does there is the discovery of something totally new. That quality of newness gives an extraordinary passion, a tremendous enthusiasm that brings about a deep inward revolution: and it is this inward revolution which alone can transform the world, not any political or economic system.

A Mind with Problems Is Not a Serious Mind 

One of the principal questions that one has to put to oneself is this: How far or to what depth can the mind penetrate into itself?

October – Time, Perception, Brain, Transformation 

Time Is a Poison

In your bathroom you have a bottle marked “poison,” and you know it is poison;

you are very careful of that bottle, even in the dark. You are always watching out for it. You don’t say, “How am I to keep away, how am I to be watchful of that bottle?”

You know it is poison, so you are tremendously attentive to it. Time is a poison; it creates disorder. If this is a fact to you, then you can proceed into the understanding of how to be free of fear immediately.

Out of Perception Comes Energy

The politicians, the leaders, the priests, the newspapers and books you read, the knowledge you acquire, the beliefs you cling to—all this is making the margin of freedom more and more narrow. If you are aware of this process going on, if you actually perceive the narrowness of the spirit, the increasing slavery of the mind, then you will find that out of perception comes energy; and it is this energy born of perception that is going to shatter the petty mind, the respectable mind, the mind that goes to the temple, the mind that is afraid. So perception is the way of truth.

Knowledge Diverts the Mind 

You have only one instrument, which is the mind; and the mind is the brain also.

Therefore, to find out the truth of this matter, you must understand the ways of the mind, must you not? If the mind is crooked you will never see straight; if the mind is very limited you cannot perceive the illimitable. The mind is the instrument of perception and, to perceive truly, the mind must be made straight, it must be cleansed of all conditioning, of all fear. The mind must also be free of knowledge, because knowledge diverts the mind and makes things twisted. The enormous capacity of the mind to invent, to imagine, to speculate, to think—must not this capacity be put aside so that the mind is very clear and very simple? Because it is only the innocent mind, the mind that has experienced vastly and yet is free of knowledge and experience—it is only such a mind that can discover that which is more than brain and mind.

Otherwise, what you discover will be colored by what you have already experienced, and your experience is the result of your conditioning.

The Old Brain, Our Animalistic Brain 

I think it is important to understand the operation, the functioning, the activity of the old brain. When the new brain operates, the old brain cannot possibly understand the new brain. It is only when the old brain, which is our conditioned brain, our animalistic brain, the brain that has been cultivated through centuries of time, which is everlastingly seeking its own security, its own comfort—it is only when that old brain is quiet that you will see that there is a different kind of movement altogether, and it is this movement that is going to bring clarity. It is this movement that is clarity itself. To understand, you must understand the old brain, be aware of it, know all its movements, its activities, its demands, its pursuits, and that is why meditation is very important. I do not mean the absurd, systematized cultivation of a certain habit of thought, and the rest of it; that’s all too immature and childish. By meditation I mean to understand the operations of the old brain, to watch it, to know how it reacts, what its responses are, its tendencies, its demands, its aggressive pursuits—to know the whole of that, the unconscious as well as the conscious part of it. When you know it, when there is an awareness of it, without controlling it, without directing it, without saying, “This is good; this is bad; I’ll keep this; I won’t keep that”—when you see the total movement of the old mind, when you see it totally, then it becomes quiet.

There Is a Quietness 

I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding. Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all. You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension, which is not intellectual understanding. If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period, or for a few seconds—in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense. When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.

Our Responsibility 

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine; because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with others.

If the Mind Is Occupied 

Whether change is brought about consciously or unconsciously it is still the same.

Conscious change implies effort; and unconscious endeavor to bring about a change also implies an effort, a struggle. So long as there is a struggle, conflict, the change is merely enforced, and there is no understanding; and therefore it is no longer a change at all. So, is the mind capable of meeting the problem of change—of acquisitiveness, for example—without making an effort, just seeing the whole implication of acquisitiveness? Because you cannot see the whole content of acquisitiveness totally so long as there is any endeavor to change it. Real change can only take place when the mind comes to the problem afresh, not with all the jaded memories of a thousand yesterdays. Obviously you cannot have a fresh, eager mind if the mind is occupied.

And the mind ceases to be occupied only when it sees the truth about its own occupation.

Complete Emptiness

For the complete mutation in consciousness to take place you must deny analysis and search, and no longer be under any influence—which is immensely difficult. The mind, seeing what is false, has put the false aside completely, not knowing what is true. If you already know what is true, then you are merely exchanging what you consider is false for what you imagine is true. There is no renunciation if you know what you are going to get in return. There is only renunciation when you drop something not knowing what is going to happen. That state of negation is completely necessary. Please follow this carefully, because if you have gone so far you will see that in that state of negation you discover what is true; because negation is the emptying of consciousness of the known. After all, consciousness is based on knowledge, on experience, on racial inheritance, on memory, on the things one has experienced. Experiences are always of the past, operating on the present, being modified by the present and continuing into the future. All that is consciousness, the vast storehouse of centuries. It has its usefulness in mechanical living only. It would be absurd to deny all the scientific knowledge acquired through the long past. But to bring about a mutation in consciousness, a revolution in this whole structure, there must be complete emptiness. And that emptiness is possible only when there is the discovery, the actual seeing of what is false. Then you will see, if you have gone so far, that emptiness itself brings about a complete revolution in consciousness: it has taken place.

Outside the Field of Thought

All consciousness, surely, whether it is of the past, the present, or the future, is within the field of thought; and any change within that field, which sets the boundaries of the mind, is no real change. A radical change can take place only outside the field of thought, not within it, and the mind can leave the field only when it sees the confines, the boundaries of the field, and realizes that any change within the field is no change at all. This is real meditation.

Real Change

A change is possible only from the known to the unknown, not from the known to the known. Do please think this over with me. In the change from the known to the known, there is authority, there is a hierarchical outlook of life—You know, I do not know.

November – Living, Dying, Rebirth, Love 

Anonymous Creativity 

Have you ever thought about it? We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Because we really don’t love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems—if you really loved it—you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. To want to be famous is tawdry, trivial, stupid, it has no meaning; but, because we don’t love what we are doing, we want to enrich ourselves with fame. Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action.

You know, it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name.

That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty.

Empty Techniques 

Having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing;

you will invent your own technique, you won’t have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art.

Why Is There Crime?

You see, there is either a revolt within the pattern of society, or a complete revolution outside of society. The complete revolution outside of society is what I call religious revolution. Any revolution that is not religious is within society and is therefore no revolution at all, but only a modified continuation of the old pattern. What is happening throughout the world, I believe, is revolt within society, and this revolt often takes the form of what is called crime. There is bound to be this kind of revolt so long as our education is concerned only with training youth to fit into society—that is, to get a job, to earn money, to be acquisitive, to have more, to conform.

That is what our so-called education everywhere is doing—teaching the young to conform, religiously, morally, economically; so naturally their revolt has no meaning, except that it must be suppressed, reformed, or controlled. Such revolt is still within the framework of society, and therefore it is not creative at all. But through right education we could perhaps bring about a different understanding by helping to free the mind from all conditioning—that is, by encouraging the young to be aware of the many influences which condition the mind and make it conform.

Life’s Purpose

How can I find a true answer when I am confused? Do you understand? If I am confused, I can only receive an answer that is also confused. If my mind is confused, if my mind is disturbed, if my mind is not beautiful, quiet, whatever answer I receive will be through this screen of confusion, anxiety, and fear; therefore, the answer will be perverted. So, what is important is not to ask, “What is the purpose of life, of existence?” but to clear the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man who asks, “What is light?” If I tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness; but suppose he is able to see, then he will never ask the question, “What is light?” It is there.

Similarly, if you can clarify the confusion within yourself, then you will find what the purpose of life is; you will not have to ask, you will not have to look for it; all that you have to do is to be free from those causes that bring about confusion.

Feel the State of Death

To find out what living is as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into contact with death; that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one’s family, about one’s relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one’s relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death occurs.

Fear of Death?

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don’t be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this—fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether you are living or dead.

In Death Is Immortality 

Surely, in ending there is renewal, is there not? It’s only in death that a new thing comes into being. I am not giving you comfort. This is not something to be believed or thought about or intellectually examined and accepted, for then you will make it into another comfort, as you now believe in reincarnation or continuity in the hereafter, and so on. But the actual fact is that that which continues has no rebirth, no renewal.

Therefore, in dying every day there is renewal, there is a rebirth. That is immortality.

In death there is immortality—not the death of which you are afraid, but the death of previous conclusions, memories, experiences, with which you are identified as the “me.” In the dying of the “me” every minute there is eternity, there is immortality, there is a thing to be experienced—not to be speculated upon or lectured about, as you do about reincarnation and all that kind of stuff….

When you are no longer afraid, because every minute there is an ending and therefore a renewal, then you are open to the unknown. Reality is the unknown. Death is also the unknown. But to call death beautiful, to say how marvelous it is because we shall continue in the hereafter and all that nonsense, has no reality. What has reality is seeing death as it is—an ending; an ending in which there is renewal, a rebirth, not a continuity. For that which continues decays; and that which has the power to renew itself is eternal.

Is There Such a Thing as a Soul? 

The idea of a continuity of a soul that will be reborn over and over and over again has no meaning because it is the invention of a mind that is frightened, of a mind that wants, that seeks a duration through permanency, that wants certainty, because in that there is hope.

What Do You Mean by Karma?

Karma implies, does it not, cause and effect?—action based on cause, producing a certain effect; action born out of conditioning, producing further results. So karma implies cause and effect. And are cause and effect static, are cause and effect ever fixed? Does not effect become cause also? So there is no fixed cause or fixed effect.

Today is a result of yesterday, is it not? Today is the outcome of yesterday, chronologically as well as psychologically; and today is the cause of tomorrow. So cause is effect, and effect becomes cause—it is one continuous movement … there is no fixed cause or fixed effect. If there were a fixed cause and a fixed effect, there would be specialization; and is not specialization death? Any species that specializes obviously comes to an end. The greatness of man is that he cannot specialize. He may specialize technically, but in structure he cannot specialize. An acorn seed is specialized—it cannot be anything but what it is. But the human being does not end completely. There is the possibility of constant renewal; he is not limited by specialization. As long as we regard the cause, the background, the conditioning, as unrelated to the effect, there must be conflict between thought and the background. So the problem is much more complex than whether to believe in reincarnation or not, because the question is how to act, not whether you believe in reincarnation or in karma. That is absolutely irrelevant.

Love Is Not Cultivated 

Love is not to be cultivated. Love cannot be divided into divine and physical; it is only love—not that you love many or the one. That again is an absurd question to ask:

“Do you love all?” You know, a flower that has perfume is not concerned who comes to smell it, or who turns his back upon it. So is love. Love is not a memory. Love is not a thing of the mind or the intellect. But it comes into being naturally as compassion, when this whole problem of existence—as fear, greed, envy, despair, hope—has been understood and resolved. An ambitious man cannot love. A man who is attached to his family has no love. Nor has jealousy anything to do with love. When you say, “I love my wife,” you really do not mean it, because the next moment you are jealous of her.

Love implies great freedom—not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will—go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems—you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly.

And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all.

And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth.

What Is Your Reaction?

And is it possible to create a society in which all this corruption and misery does not exist? It can be created only when you and I as individuals break away from the collective, when we are free of ambition and know what it means to love. That was my whole reaction, in a flash.

Compassion Is Not The Word

Compassion is not something that you can cultivate through thought, through discipline, control, suppression, nor by being kind, polite, gentle, and all the rest of it.

Compassion comes into being only when thought has come to an end at its very root.

Transmitting Compassion

That which conforms can never flower in goodness. There must be freedom, and freedom comes only when you understand the whole problem of envy, greed, ambition, and the desire for power. It is freedom from those things that allows the extraordinary thing called character to flower. Such a man has compassion, he knows what it is to love—not the man who merely repeats a lot of words about morality.

So the flowering of goodness does not lie within society, because society in itself is always corrupt. Only the man who understands the whole structure and process of society, and is freeing himself from it, has character, and he alone can flower in goodness.

Come to It Empty-Handed 

Compassion is not hard to come by when the heart is not filled with the cunning things of the mind. It is the mind with its demands and fears, its attachments and denials, its determinations and urges, that destroys love.

December – Aloneness, Religion, God, Meditation 

The Answer to Prayer

Stillness that is induced, enforced, is not stillness at all. It is like putting a child in the corner—superficially he may be quiet, but inwardly he is boiling. So, a mind that is made quiet by discipline is never really quiet, and stillness that is induced can never uncover that creative state in which reality comes into being.

Is There Truth In Religions? 

Why do you have beliefs? Obviously, because beliefs give you security, comfort, safety, a guide. In yourself you are frightened, you want to be protected, you want to lean on somebody, and therefore, you create the ideal, which prevents you from understanding that which is. Therefore, an ideal becomes a hindrance to action.

To Climb High One Must Begin Low

As you yourself are aware, the greed for power is almost inexhaustible in a so-called spiritual organization; this greed is covered over by all kinds of sweet and official-sounding words, but the canker of avariciousness, pride, and antagonism is nourished and shared. From this grow conflict, intolerance, sectarianism, and other ugly manifestations.

Would it not be wiser to have small informed groups of twenty or twenty-five persons, without dues or membership, meeting where it is convenient to discuss gently the approach to reality? To prevent any group from becoming exclusive, each member could from time to time encourage and perhaps join another small group; thus, it would be extensive, not narrow and parochial.
To climb high one must begin low. Out of this small beginning one may help to create a more sane and happy world

The Religious Man

When the mind totally puts aside all the knowledge that it has acquired, when for it there are no Buddhas, no Christs, no Masters, no teachers, no religions, no quotations; when the mind is completely alone, uncontaminated, which means that the movement of the known has come to an end—it is only then that there is a possibility of a tremendous revolution, a fundamental change…. The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing, and for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being.

Beyond the Limitations of Beliefs 

To discover God or truth—and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it—to recognize that, to realize that, the mind must be free of all the hindrances that have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is.

Free from the Net of Time 

Meditation is the beginning of wisdom, which is the understanding of one’s own mind and heart.

Meditation 

Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense…. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind—to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation.

Know the Whole Content of One Thought

To be aware of every thought, to know from what source it springs and what is its intention—that is meditation. And to know the whole content of one thought reveals the whole process of the mind.

Igniting the Flame of Self-Awareness 

If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on.

The important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state.

Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquillity of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized.

Writing down what one thinks and feels, one’s desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding.

The Way of Meditation 

There is comprehension only when the mind is still, and the mind cannot be still as long as it is ignorant of itself. That ignorance is not dispelled through any form of discipline, through pursuing any authority, ancient or modern. Belief only creates resistance, isolation, and where there is isolation, there is no possibility of tranquillity.

Tranquillity comes only when I understand the whole process of myself—the various entities in conflict with each other which compose the “me.”

A Mind in the State of Creation 

Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all the things that the mind has put together. If you do that—perhaps you won’t, but it doesn’t matter, just listen to this— you will find that there is an extraordinary space in the mind, and that space is freedom. So you must demand freedom at the very beginning, and not just wait, hoping to have it at the end.

Finding Silence 

To meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched, it is innocent.

Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being.

This whole process is meditation.

Generosity of the Heart Is the Beginning of Meditation 

There can be no meditation without generosity, without goodness—which is to be free from pride, never to climb the ladder of success, never to know what it is to be famous; which is to die to whatever has been achieved, every minute of the day.

It is only in such fertile ground that goodness can grow, can flower. And meditation is the flowering of goodness.

Meditation Is Essential to Life 

The understanding of this total process of existence—the influences, the sorrows, the daily strain, the authoritative outlook, the political actions, and so on—all this is life, and the process of understanding it all, and freeing the mind, is meditation. If one really comprehends this life then there is always a meditative process, always a process of contemplation—but not about something. To be aware of this whole process of existence, to observe it, to dispassionately enter into it, and to be free of it, is meditation.