Jiddu Krishnamurti - A man who is seeking a reward is never free

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Sir, don't bother about freedom. First see that you are in a prison: social prison, economic prison, political prison, religious prison, the prison which you have created yourself out of your own desire, out of your own ambition, out of your own fears and pleasures. When you understand your prison, the prison that thought both collectively and individually have created, the prison of our confusion, of our misery, of our suffering, understand that, look at it, go into it, see the structure and the nature of it, then out of that comes freedom. Then it is not a reward. A man who is seeking a reward is never free. Like a man who is always frightened of being punished, that is, fear and pleasure are our principle prisons. And a mind that understands it is really free.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Religion is something extraordinary

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Religion is something extraordinary; it has nothing to do with any organization, with any belief or dogma. Religion is not to be found in any temple, in any church or mosque. It is to be found only when the mind understands itself and is free from fear, free from the demand to be inwardly secure. Then there is a possibility of being compassionate, kindly, and such a mind-heart will know that which is immeasurable, for then the immeasurable is. It is not a thing to be speculated about, it has to be experienced directly. There is something beyond the measure of the mind, but it is not to be found in the Upanishads, in the Gita, in the Bible, nor in the Buddhist literature. It comes through the understanding of yourself in your relationship with people, with nature, and with ideas. When you understand yourself completely, you will discover without any aid from another, without any organized religion, without any priest, that beyond the mind there is something which is timeless. It is a state that can be experienced only when the mind is completely still

Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes - To understand violence and sorrow

Jiddu Krishnamurti - To understand the two essentially deep-rooted problems of violence and sorrow, we must not approach them merely verbally or intellectually; the intellect doesn't solve any problem at all, it may explain problems - any clever person can explain problems, - but the explanation, however erudite, however subtle, is not the reality. It is no use explaining to a man who is very hungry what marvellous food there is, it has no value at all. But if we go into these questions, not intellectually, but actually, totally, come to grips with them, unravelling these two terrible problems that destroy the mind, then perhaps we might go beyond.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Freedom can only come into being with intelligence

Jiddu Krishnamurti - You see somebody whom you consider happy or as having realized, and he does certain things, and you, wanting that happiness, imitate him. This imitation is called discipline, isn't it? We imitate in order to receive what another has; we copy in order to be happy, which you think he is. Is happiness found through discipline? And, by practicing a certain rule, by practicing a certain discipline, a mode of conduct, are you ever free? Surely, there must be freedom for discovery, must there not? If you would discover anything, you must be free inwardly, which is obvious.

Are you free by shaping your mind in a particular way which you call discipline? Obviously, you are not. You are merely a repetitive machine, resisting according to a certain conclusion, according to a certain mode of conduct. So, freedom cannot come through discipline. Freedom can only come into being with intelligence, and that intelligence is awakened, or you have that intelligence, the moment you see that any form of compulsion denies freedom, inwardly or outwardly.

J Krishnamurti Quotes - Our consciousness is conditioned

J Krishnamurti - Our consciousness is conditioned, through education, through various inherited or acquired states, through various contradictions and the conflicts of the opposites; that is the consciousness of which we are. I think it is fairly obvious that this conditioned state if the mind can only be discovered, by each one of us, in looking at ourselves objectively. It seems that to look at ourselves is one of the most difficult things to do, to see ourselves actually as we are, without any theories, without any despair or hope, without any demand or opinion just to look at ourselves. Unless we do this I do not see how one can go beyond this limited, narrow, circle in which we live.

Jiddu Krishnamurti: difference between belief and confidence?

Questioner: What is the difference between belief and confidence? Why do you condemn belief?

Jiddu Krishnamurti: What do we mean by belief? Why do we have to have belief? Belief implies acceptance, trust, faith in something inward or outward. Belief gives assurance, confidence, a sense of security, and the more that you believe in something, the greater the security. To be psychologically without a belief is very disturbing, is it not? Fear and belief ever go together; they are inseparable, they are the two sides of a coin. Belief comes into being when the mind is seeking security, certainty; it creates belief as a means of self-protection or takes on the belief of others; or it projects its hopes and fears into the future, into time, making them as the ideal, and disciplines itself according to its projections in order to achieve security, a refuge where there is no disturbance of any kind.

This factor, the desire for security, for refuge, breeds different forms of beliefs according to environmental and psychological influences. You believe in God, another does not; you are a Hindu or a Muslim, a Christian or a nonbeliever, and so on. Thus, belief divides, setting man against man. The desire to be psychologically secure creates divisions, as mine and yours, and thus gives vast significance to secondary values, to sensory values.

See what belief has done to man and so to the world. Politically or religiously, man is torn apart; the belief in many contending schemes and blueprints is causing conflict and enmity; organized religious beliefs in the name of God and peace are setting man against man; man is destroying man because of his belief in his country, in his security, in his God. Belief invariably breeds more belief, more conflict, more confusion, more antagonism. Belief is the result of the hidden demands of self-fulfillment. Happiness is sought through self-fulfillment, which is through belief, and there is no happiness in things made by the hand or by the mind. If you seek happiness through something, then the thing becomes all-important and not happiness.

What do we mean by confidence? Trust or faith in something. Assurance or confidence gives a certain trust in oneself, as practice on an instrument gives. From this continued and sustained assurance there is a kind of self-aggression. Confidence in the self is another form of self-fulfillment.

Now, there is another kind of confidence which comes through self-knowledge. I am using confidence for the lack of a better word. To be aware of every thought and feeling and to follow them through completely brings joy; in understanding the many layers of consciousness - the superficial and the hidden - there is freedom whose joy is wholly different from the self-expanding assurance.

When there is an understanding of the poison of the hindrances, then there is freedom; when the activities of the self are explored and understood, then there is imperishable ecstasy. This exploration is not based on any belief, on any formulation of the mind. Discovery based on belief ceases to be the true; experience based on belief is the self-projected continuation, and so experience is ever binding. When the mind is aware, its cunning tricks are known, then it knows itself as its own creator. Then, when it ceases to create, there is creation.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti Talk - November 9, 1947

There is no sensitivity when you are seeking fame, when you are dogmatic, when you are violent, when you are in a position of authority and misuse tha

J Krishnamurti - There is no sensitivity when you are seeking fame, when you are dogmatic, when you are violent, when you are in a position of authority and misuse that authority by being rude, vulgar, oppressive. All that obviously makes the mind, the whole being insensitive. Only a mind that is vulnerable is capable of affection, love - not a mind that is jealous, possessive, dominating.

We understand now, without going too much into detail, more or less what sensitivity means. It is another thing to be in that state, not intellectually agree, or say, ''How am I to come to that state where I'm totally vulnerable, and therefore totally sensitive?'' You can't come to it by some trick; you'll come to it naturally, sweetly, easily, without effort, if you understand all that we have said previously about drugs, experience, ambition, greed, envy. There is sensitivity only when there is freedom.

Freedom implies freedom per se, not freedom from something. Having understood the past, we are now considering how by one look one is free of the whole structure. To look, to observe, to be aware of the whole structure instantly, there must be sensitivity. That sensitivity is denied if there is any form of image about oneself or about what one should be, that image being based on pleasure. The mind that is seeking pleasure in any form is inviting sorrow.

Jiddu Krishnamurti : What do you mean by aloneness?

Questioner: What do you mean by aloneness?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Sir, let us find out. Now, to find out, please give attention, if I may use that word attention, not merely to what I am saying, but to the working of your own mind. Be aware of your own mind, not in order to alter it, not in order to make it more beautiful, more this and less that, but just be aware, attentive, and we shall find out together what it means to be alone.

I think most of us know what it means to be lonely, we are familiar with that extraordinary fear, anxiety, which comes from the self-enclosing process of the mind, and which we call loneliness. Have you not felt, at one time or another in your life, a sense of complete isolation? There comes a certain barrier, a sense of destruction, of frustration, or the cessation of all relationships. Surely we have all felt this, and having felt it we are afraid of it, we run away from it, so we turn to religions. Please watch your own mind, you are not merely listening to me. This is actually what is happening to all of us, to human beings everywhere. Because we are lonely, we want to be loved; because we are lonely, we turn on the radio, go to the cinema, and seek every other form of distraction, noble and ignoble, religious and nonreligious. This is our life. We do not want to face the state of loneliness, which is extraordinarily fearful - at least we think it is fearful - so we run away, we escape, we take flight from that loneliness. We seek companionship, love, we have a wife or a husband, we worship an authority, and so on, always depending on another through some form of attachment because then we do not have to face in ourselves that which is lonely, which is empty, which is so completely self-enclosing. Whether you accept it or not, that is the actual fact, it is what is happening psychologically to most people.

Now, if you can look at the emptiness, that sense of being cut off from all relationships, without escape, if you can be with it without fear, without trying to fill it or alter it in any way, then you will find that it is really the complete abandonment of society, an aloneness which is not an escape, but which has no recognition by society. Do you understand what that means? Society is a process of recognition - one is recognized as a saint, as a writer, as a good man, as a bad man, as a capitalist, a communist, or whatever you like. In breaking away from all that, the mind is completely alone - not lonely, but alone. It is no longer influenced by society, it is completely dissociated from all recognition; therefore, it is capable of being alone.

Surely, there must be such aloneness for reality to be. Only the mind that is alone, incorrupt, innocent, though it may have thousands of years of experience - only such a mind is capable of perceiving that which is God, truth. And that is possible only when we face loneliness, this loneliness in our hearts which we try to cover up by every means - by so-called love, by distraction, through worship, through amusements, through knowledge. When the mind sees the futility of all that and remains with that which is completely self-enclosing, limiting, empty, then in that emptiness there comes aloneness. Then the mind is fresh, alone, innocent, and it is only such a mind that receives the eternal.

Source - J Krishnamurti speech, February 23, 1955