We assume that thinking will solve our problems, but we have never gone into the whole issue of what thinking is. So long as I remain a Hindu, a Christian, or what you will, my thinking must be shaped by that pattern; therefore, my thinking, my whole response to life, is conditioned. So long as I think as an Indian, a German, or whatever it is and act according to that petty, nationalistic background, it inevitably leads to separation, to hatred, to war and misery. So we have to inquire into the whole problem of thinking. There is no freedom of thought because all thought is conditioned. There is freedom only when I understand that all thought is conditioned and am therefore free of that conditioning- which means, really, that there is no thought at all, no thinking in terms of Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, German, or what you will, but pure observation, complete attention. In this, I think, lies the real revolution -in the immense understanding that thought does not solve the problem of existence. Which does not mean that you must become thoughtless. On the contrary. To understand the process of thinking requires not acceptance or denial but intense inquiry. When the mind understands the whole process of itself, there is then a fundamental revolution, a radical change, which is not brought about through conscious effort. It is an effortless state, out of which comes a total transformation.
J. Krishnamurti/Hamburg 1956, Talk 6
