Life is not an abstraction

If one allows a problem to endure for a month or a day, or even for a few minutes, it distorts the mind. So is it possible to meet a problem immediately without any distortion and be immediately, completely, free of it and not allow a memory, a scratch on the mind, to remain? These memories are the images we carry about with us and it is these images which meet this extraordinary thing called life and therefore there is a contradiction and hence conflict.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 93

Are you crying for yourself or for another?

When you lose someone you love you shed tears- are your tears for yourself or for the one who is dead? Are you crying for yourself or for another? Have you cried for another? Have you ever cried for your son who was killed on the battlefield? You have cried, but do those tears come out of self-pity or have you cried because a human being has been killed?

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 83

When you prepare your children to fit into society

Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness- but when you prepare your children to fit in society you are preparing them to be killed. If you loved your children you would have no war.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 83

Co-operation cannot possibly exist through images

Two people who have lived together for a long time have an image of each other which prevents them from really being in relationship. If we understand relationship we can co-operate but co-operation cannot possibly exist through images, through symbols, through ideological conceptions.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 9

This extraordinary thing which man has sought

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 87

It is very easy to cry for yourself

 If you cry out of self-pity your tears have no meaning because you are concerned about yourself. If you are crying because you are bereft of one in whom you have invested a great deal of affection, it was not really affection. When you cry for your brother who dies cry for him. It is very easy to cry for yourself because he is gone. Apparently you are crying because your heart is touched, but it is not touched for him, it is only touched by self-pity and self-pity makes you hard, encloses you, makes you dull and stupid.

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J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 84

Where there is respectability there is no order

Most parents unfortunately think they are responsible for their children and their sense of responsibility takes the form of telling them what they should do and what they should not do, what they should become and what they should not become. The parents want their children to have a secure position in society. What they call responsibility is part of that respectability they worship; and it seems to me that where there is respectability there is no order; they are concerned only with becoming a perfect bourgeois. When they prepare their children to fit into society they are perpetuating war, conflict and brutality. Do you call that care and love?

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 83

Problems exist only in time

Problems exist only in time, that is when we meet an issue incompletely. This incomplete coming together with the issue creates the problem. When we meet a challenge partially, fragmentarily, or try to escape from it - that is, when we meet it without complete attention- we bring about a problem. And the problem continues so long as we continue to give it incomplete attention, so long as we hope to solve it one of these days.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 73

A gradual process?

Now let us ask ourselves a further question. Is this freedom, this solitude, this coming into contact with the whole structure of what we are in ourselves -is it to be come upon through time? That is, is freedom to be achieved through a gradual process? Obviously not, because as soon as you introduce time, you are enslaving yourself more and more. You cannot become free gradually. It is not a matter of time.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 70

It is only when you live with something

It is only when you live with something intimately that you begin to understand it. But the moment you get used to it- get used to your own anxiety or envy or whatever it is- you are no longer living with it.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 7

Living with yourself as you are

In this solitude you will begin to understand the necessity of living with yourself as you are, not as you think you should be or as you have been. See if you can look at yourself without any tremor, any false modesty, any fear, any justification or condemnation -just live with what you actually are.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 69

Where there is love is there comparison?

Don't you know what it means really to love somebody to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing -don't you know what it means? Where there is love, is there comparison? When you love someone with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is there comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love, there is not the other.

  
J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 82

When there is love there is no duty and no responsibility

Does love have responsibility and duty, and will it use those words? When you do something out of duty is there any love in it? In duty there is no love. The structure of duty in which the human being is caught is destroying him. So long as you are compelled to do something because it is your duty you don't love what you are doing. When there is love there is no duty and no responsibility.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 83

Love does not obey

Love is not the product of thought which is the past. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Love is not hedged about and caught in jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. Love is always active present. It is not 'I will love' or 'I have loved'. If you know love you will not follow anybody. Love does not obey. When you love there is neither respect nor disrespect.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 82

The whole beauty of the earth

Throughout the world, so-called holy men have maintained that to look at a woman is something totally wrong: they say you cannot come near to God if you indulge in sex, therefore they push it aside although they are eaten up with it. But by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 80

When you say you love God what does it mean?

 When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, 'I love God', is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself - and that is not love.

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J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 79

The demand to be safe in relationship

The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path? We are not loved because we don't know how to love.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 78

Something totally new

Death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought is old. When there is death there is something totally new. Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 77

A mind completely empty of itself

 If you have died to one of your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die. To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longing, pleasure; and agonies.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 77

Who lives with beauty and love

The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.
J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 77