=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

Do not think about doing it, but actually do it now. That is, be aware of the trees, the palm tree, the sky; hear the crows cawing; see the light on the leaf, the colour of the sari, the face; then move inwardly. You can observe, you can be aware choicelessly of outward things. It is very easy.

But to move inwardly and to be aware without condemnation, without justification, without comparison is more difficult. Just be aware of what is taking place inside you—your beliefs, your fears, your dogmas, your hopes, your frustrations, your ambitions, and all the rest of the things. Then the unfolding of the conscious and the unconscious begins. You have not to do a thing.

The Collected Works vol XV, p 85

=== Thoughts ===

It’s a fascinating experience- “choiceless awareness” . To sit in total silence, devoid of the accumulation of the “I”, and simply observe without condemnation, identification, or justification. To listen to the beating of your heart, feel the expansion of your lungs, and the vibratory energy coursing through you, connecting you to the rest of the universe.

To watch thought unravel like the many miles of a dark road at night. To float along above the river of consciousness-unattached to its petty desires, delusions, and divisions- following along its course and observing that graceful movement of its destination-less progression through the void.

To enjoy that space which exists only when total silence prevails, that respite from the hectic confusion you’ve become accustomed to calling “my life”. To bask in the glow of unfiltered awareness, and observe with pure perception. There’s simply nothing like it. Nothing at all.

And it will surprise you to see just how little you know about yourself- how you work, and what you actually are. It will shock you to see your connection to the environment without experiencing yourself through the filter of your images, beliefs, and conclusions. It will feel like opening your eyes for the first time, and seeing everything in a completely different way, but one that feels vaguely familiar.

It might even feel more natural than your ordinary daily awareness. It certainly does to me. It might be like waking up from an incredibly deep sleep, or a very long and lucid dream, and finally returning to reality.

But you might experience an initial moment of sheer panic, a helplessness driven by total confusion, or absolute chaos. You might be gripped with fear, and your mind might attempt to reassert control with an unmatched ferocity that explodes into your stream of consciousness as a barrage of frantic questions- Where have you gone? What have you become? What should you do? What can you do? What is to become of you? Are you dying? Does it matter?

And as the wheels of your mind begin to race away, spinning off in a desperate attempt to get you to cling to some semblance of familiarity, to some vestige of security, you will have to refuse to engage with thought and instead remain in a state of total detachment.

You will have to refuse that desire to cling back to your ego, to avoid grabbing that last rung of the ladder as the helicopter takes off from the mountain peak, for you know that the only other way down is to abandon yourself completely, and to jump into the void with hands wide open.

And that is exactly what you will do. You will remain standing on the edge of the cliff in a state of total observation. And after that first gasp of fear, once all of your illusions have fallen away, you will jump into the void, and experience reality for what it is.

And in that moment you will understand what it means to be entirely and absolutely Free.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

The dictionary meaning of the word ‘perception’ is to become aware of, to apprehend. That is, you see the cupboard, you have a preconception of it; that is not perception. Is there seeing without preconception? Only the mind that has no conclusion, such a mind can see. The other cannot.

If I have previous knowledge of that cupboard, the mind identifies it as cupboard. To look at that cupboard without the previous accumulation of prejudices or hurts, is to look. If I have previous hurts, memories, pain, pleasure, displeasure, I have not looked.

Tradition and Revolution

=== Thoughts ===

To see things for what they are, we must be capable of putting aside our preconceptions, our prejudices, and that entire structure and hierarchy of conclusions and classifications which we have so carefully constructed over the course of our lives.

Without putting all of this aside, when you look at things, you will see them only according to your preconceived ideas, rather than for what they actually are. And a mind that looks through the screen of ideas can never hope to find that joy, that ecstasy, and that detachment which is required for living in a state of total freedom.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

I am learning about myself—not according to some psychologist or specialist—I am watching and I see something in myself; but I do not condemn it, I do not judge it, I do not push it aside—I  just watch it. I watch that I am proud—let us take that as an example. I do not say, “I must put it aside, how ugly to be proud.”—but  I just watch it. As I am watching, I am learning.

Watching means learning what pride involves, how it has come into being.  I cannot watch it for more than five or six minutes—if one can, that is a great deal—the next moment I become inattentive. Having been attentive and knowing what inattention is, I struggle to make inattention attentive. Do not do that, but watch inattention, become aware that you are inattentive—that is all.

Stop there. Do not say, “I must spend all my time being attentive”, but just watch when you are inattentive. To go any further into this would be really quite complex . There is a quality of mind that is awake and watching all the time, watching though there is nothing to learn. That means a mind that is extraordinarily quiet, extraordinarily silent. What has a silent, clear mind to learn?

The Impossible Question, pp 25-26

=== Thoughts ===

To really experience reality we must be capable of watching that movement which is our life, the evolution of the world, and the subtle, but constant transformation of energy happening all around us at each and every moment. We must follow along with impermanence, paying close attention to it’s career, and observing our relationship with the environment.

This observation is something entirely new, it is unstructured and unplanned, without rules, guidelines, or goals. It is not watching according to Krishnamurti’s strategy, the Buddha’s strategy, or even our own strategy, but simply observation. Observation for observations sake.

And it is only in that action of total observation, which flourishes after we’ve put aside our attachment to preconceived conclusions, images, and ideas, that we can experience reality for what it really is, and reach an understanding of both ourselves and our world.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

The act of listening is the act of learning. One has to learn so much about life, for life is a movement in relationship. And that relationship is action. We have to learn—not accumulate knowledge from this movement that we call life and then live according to that knowledge, which is conformity.

To conform is to adjust, to fit into a mould, to adjust oneself to the various impressions, demands, pressures of a particular society. Life is meant to be lived, to be understood. One has to learn about life, and one ceases to learn the moment one argues with life, comes to life with the past, with one’s conditioning as knowledge. So there is a difference between acquiring knowledge and the act of learning.

You must have knowledge; otherwise you will not know where you live, you will forget your name, and so on. So at one level knowledge is imperative, but when that knowledge is used to understand life—which is a movement, which is a thing that is living, moving, dynamic, every moment changing—when you cannot move with life, then you are living in the past and trying to comprehend the extraordinary thing called life. And to understand life, you have to learn every minute about it and never come to it having learned.

The Collected Works vol XV, pp 13-14

=== Thoughts ===

Without the use of practical knowledge, daily living would be a disaster. Without access to that accretion of past experience to guide ourselves through the variety of tasks, challenges, and problems that we face on a daily basis, we’d be lost in a nightmare of total chaos.

Certain behaviors, like driving, speaking a language, typing, and playing a musical instrument require knowledge of the past; they require that we rely on previous experience. And it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

But what place has knowledge, what place has the past in our search for Truth, Reality, or Enlightenment?

If everything in the universe is impermanent (in a constant state of change) then how could the past (which is fixed) possibly guide our understanding of the present?

Real wisdom (understanding) cannot possibly be captured by a book, a concept, or an idea. Reality cannot be described by a painting, a photograph, a play, or a film. And Truth is not disseminated in speeches, lecture halls, or mp3 files.

Wisdom, Truth, Reality, or Enlightenment (call it what you will) cannot be wrapped up, packaged, and prepared for distribution like the “fixed” commodities we’re used to dealing with, because it’s constantly evolving. Truth is not a commercial entity, it can’t be bought or sold, it can’t be given, and it certainly can’t be set in stone. It is constantly evolving.

And even though our inventory of knowledge is also constantly evolving- expanding, growing, becoming more profound, or more exciting- as our our beliefs, concepts, and ideas are transformed by our continued life experience, by what we read, see, hear, feel, taste, and touch, that inventory is still essentially based on the past.

That inventory of knowledge is funded exclusively based on our previous experience, which is essentially fixed, or dead. There is no possibility that fixed notions, stable ideas, conceptions, and conclusions can provide a complete illumination of the present.

Thus knowledge cannot possibly shed light on Truth, Reality, or Enlightenment. The stagnant cannot fully illuminate the fluid. The stable cannot fully illuminate the moving. And the fixed cannot fully illuminate the impermanent.

Let go of that knowledge which you’re so attached to. Stop with your clinging to the past. Put aside your systems and training, your ideas, beliefs, conclusions, and intellectual concepts galore.

Face yourself and your life for what it is- something unique, unprecedented, and new. Something which requires your complete attention, careful consideration, and total observation, at each and every moment.

Follow along with the movement of your life, the movement of the world, and the relationship that connects the two.

Illuminate your understanding, and live in total Freedom.

You can do it, if you’d only try.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

Questioner: Can we learn from experience?

Krishnamurti: Certainly not. Learning implies freedom, curiosity, inquiry. When a child learns something, he is curious about it, he wants to know, it is a free momentum, not a momentum of having acquired and of moving from that acquisition.

We have innumerable experiences; we have had five thousand years of wars. We have not learnt a thing from them except to invent more deadly machinery with which to kill each other.

We have had many experiences with our friends, with our wives, with our husbands, with our nation—we have not learnt.

Learning, in fact, can only take place when there is freedom from experience.

The Impossible Question, p 78

=== Thoughts ===

The idea that we can apply knowledge built up from past experience to current issues is one that makes little sense, when viewed through the lens of impermanence, because each situation and each problem is entirely new.

Each situation in our lives, each individual moment, brings a radically different challenge ; a challenge which must be faced anew, not with some strategy constructed based on the events of the past, but based on a thorough, complete, and intelligent assessment of the present moment.

The attempt to superimpose obsolete plans and outdated conclusions on something which is radically new, and not simply just novel, leads to nothing but further confusion, division, and misery.

Applying these solutions from the past to current situations divides us from the present, destroying our ability to see things as they actually are, and dooming us to repeat our previous mistakes. Humanity keeps falling into the same old traps!

Each generation fights wars for entirely selfish reasons, destroying each other, building up animosity, fear, and hatred, because people who would otherwise have absolutely no reason to quarrel.

We continue to divide ourselves from each other, generating inequality, injustice, and misery for those “less fortunate” individuals that get caught up in the drama, creating a world built on immorality, division, and disorder.

If there is any hope for solving the enormous problems that mankind currently faces, it is quite obvious that we must at once abandon all efforts funded on previous experience, and explore radically new alternative courses of action.

It’s long past time that we tried something different.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

Just listen, because if you are capable of listening and seeing the truth of what is being said, then thought will not act. If you are in that state of listening, the fact, the truth, will act. If a seed is planted in the earth and has vitality, it will grow. In the same way, the act of listening is the soil.

The act of listening is only possible when there is attention, and attention does not exist if there is interpretation, evaluation, condemnation, or judgement of that to which you are listening. If you listen completely, attentively, without any observer who is the thinker, then that very act of listening will put away what is false, and you will listen only to what is true.

The act of listening is the field. In that field every kind of seed is sown, and only the seed that has vitality, energy, strength, will come up, will flourish. That’s what we are doing now.

We’re actually listening, neither accepting nor disagreeing nor judging. We’re actually listening so completely that the very act of listening destroys what is false and lets the seed of truth take root.

The Collected Works vol XVI, pp 146-147

=== Thoughts ===

To understand Reality, to find Truth, to know God, or to reach Enlightenment- call it what you like- requires a supreme act of attention. It has nothing to do with muscular movements, physical exertion, lighting incense, offering prayers, collecting up enough spiritual points to ascend to the next level, or any of the other rubbish commonly prescribed by “priests”,  “gurus”, “meditation experts”, and “spiritual coaches”- charlatans, all of them. It does, however, require that you initiate and continue to perform an endless series of  subtle actions. You must execute a perpetual series of entirely selfless observations.

Reaching Truth is not like flicking on a light-switch, lighting a candle’s wick, opening a door, or any of those other absurd metaphors, because it is certainly not a one time deal. You do not “arrive”, you do not “transcend”, and you do not become anything different from what you already are. Reality will not unfold before you all at once for you to understand forever, because reality itself is in a constant state of evolution.

If you have any sense at all, if you are at all aware of yourself or your surroundings, you should also be aware that absolutely everything is in a state of constant change. It should be obvious that the universe exists in an endless state of transformation, revitalization, and renewal, as explained by the elegant Buddhist concept of Impermanence.

Understanding impermanence, the concomitant fact that the nature of reality is essentially empty, you should see that attachment to fixed conclusions- like your identity- is absolutely absurd. In fact, when viewed under the illumination of impermanence and emptiness, you will see that attachment to anything becomes quite obviously insane.

Thus, to find Truth, to know God, or to experience Reality for what it is, you will have to first put aside your attachments, your clinging, and your identification with the “self”. You will have to abandon your beliefs, your ideas, and your conceptions.

You will have to make a supreme act of attention which requires unwavering dedication to diligently observing the perpetual evolution of both yourself and your surroundings, allowing you to remain aware of the relationship between the two. And if you want to see Reality, you will not be able to stop making this act of observation, since everything is in a permanent state of flux. You must remain in a constant state of alert, astute, and attentive observation, following along with the movement of the universe.

Now please don’t confuse what I’m saying here. I am not making the claim that the “you” (the ego) must do anything in particular, because there is nothing to accomplish, there is nothing to complete, and there are certainly no goals, tasks, nor any paths for you to follow. There are no predetermined movements, no mantras, no meditations, nor any books to guide you to this understanding.

As Krishnamurti says, “Truth is a Pathless Land“. It can’t be taught, it can’t be given, and it most certainly cannot be bought. It’s not listed on Amazon, it’s not on a shelf at Barnes & Noble, it’s not chanted at the Meditation Center, nor written on the scrolls stored in the Temple.

Because Truth is a living, breathing entity. It is an endless flowing motion, following along with the rest of Reality in a constant state of change. It is that ceaseless movement, that triumphant progression, and boundless transformation of energy, flowing throughout the universe, through each and every one of us, and everything else that exists.

And to see it, to listen to it, to follow along with it, requires intelligence. It requires a mind that is still, whole, holy, undistracted, and undivided. And intelligence can only flower when the mind is still, when “self” has dissolved, along with all of its trappings. The “ego”, and that accumulation resulting from a lifetime of conditioned learning- your beliefs, prejudices, distortions, and interpretations- must all be put aside.

To execute this complete act of attention, you must first face the fact that you have been brainwashed to perceive the world in a certain way, you must accept the reality that you distort, interpret, and pervert the things you see, feel, hear, taste, and touch, and you must make yourself capable of looking at it all in an entirely new light.

You must abandon your attachment to all of that, without bringing in the idea of “control”. Because the controller is the same as the controlled. After all, who is controlling your behavior? Isn’t it simply another fragment of thought? And isn’t it ridiculous to assume that any one fragment of thought has any right to control the rest? Which fragment is most important? Which fragment is the real you? None of them, obviously.

At each and every moment, your world is made up of the sum of its constituent parts. Your personal reality is determined by the behavior of those parts, by the relationships they share, and by their individual movements in action. Your world undergoes a state of constant evolution, as those parts move around, redefine themselves, and mix with each other in different ways.

Because of this, there is no difference between the internal “you”, and the external “other”, because even your smallest actions will eventually cascade into an avalanche, affecting everything else that exists by way of the interconnectedness of all things, by way of the Butterfly Effect.

When you can put aside your ego, your accumulated knowledge, your convictions, conclusions, and subjective beliefs- that illusory division between “self” and “other” will be exposed in the light for what it really is; a complete and utter falsehood.

It’s no more than a superstition; the product of centuries of societal brainwashing, the accumulation and obsession with knowledge, with achievement, with goals, and with plans, driven by the desire to find some assurance of security. You attempt to fill up the void and establish an enduring form of the self, in order to protect yourself from fear of non-existence. And it all rests on that futile , yet most fundamental of all human drives, the urge to immortality.

But exposed in the light of Truth, this false construction of the “self”, and the division between “internal” and “external” collapses, and the world comes rushing in.

In that moment, all the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place. You will find order, confusion will dissolve, and you’ll get a glimpse of what it means to be “awakened”. But remember, it’s not like flipping on a switch. In a few days, a few hours, or perhaps even just a few seconds, you’ll lose that clarity, and fall back into the shadow.

Something will happen that pulls you back down into the darkness, plunging you into the confusion, chaos, and disorder. And until you can adapt to each and every moment, remaining in a state of limitless, unfocused, and undivided attentiveness, you will never be able to see the Truth.

But you can do this, if you’d only try.

=== JKrishnamurti.org – Daily Quote ===

Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion.

So, the speaker suggests, respectfully, that you so listen and not interpret what he says. When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion.

We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.

That Benediction is Where You Are, pp 22-23

=== Thoughts ===

When we experience the world, when we listen to the sound of the wind, the sound of music, or even the sound of our own heartbeat, most of us don’t hear those sound as they actually exist. We interpret them through the screen of knowledge, through the distorting lens of the “self”, of our identities, with all of their conclusions, beliefs, and prejudices. We interpret what we hear in terms of previous experience experience.

Experiencing the world in this way, we meet with nothing new. We encounter only modifications, adaptations, and alterations. The things that we experience are merely novel, rather than new. There is a huge difference between those two words. We lose that essential human trait, that fundamental feature of our being- the capacity for creativity- becoming shoddy little second-hand people.

We drill all the life out of living, leading monotonous lifestyles that promote habitual behavior. We fall prey to patterns, becoming attached to “planning”, “goals”, and obsessing over attempts toward achieving “success”.

We lose our inspiration, becoming despondent, depressed, and disinterested in the world around us. And, worst of all, we misunderstand the source of this confusion- which is our attachment to the self and all of it’s trappings- attempting to dig ourselves out of that hole by further filling up the void with our possessions, our conclusions, and ridiculous beliefs.

And when we are faced with these facts, our typical, perhaps even natural response is to ask: “What am I to do about it?”

But as I explained above, and as Krishnamurti has stated before- the it is me! “I”  can do nothing!

The source of the confusion and the crux of the problem is our attachment to that “I”. It’s that obsession with our “ego”, that clinging to the “self”.

The answer is not in planning, it has nothing to do with premeditated behavior. It lies in putting all that aside, negating the trappings of the self, and simply allowing events to unfold without attempting to control them. It’s refusing to interpret, evaluate, or appraise.

Simply, to listen. That’s when the Miracle unfolds.