We assume that thinking will solve our problems

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

I must realize my own conditioning and do absolutely nothing

I think it is very important to understand that any effort made to free oneself from one's conditioning is another form of conditioning. If I try to free myself from Hinduism, or any other ism, I am making that effort in order to achieve what I consider to be a more desirable state; therefore, the motive to change conditions the change. So I must realize my own conditioning and do absolutely nothing. This is very difficult. But I must know for myself that my mind is small, petty, confused, conditioned, and see that any effort to change it is still within the field of that confusion; therefore, any such effort only breeds further confusion.

J. Krishnamurti/Hamburg 1956, Talk 6

I am born with a label

I see that, as a human being, I am the result of innumerable influences, social compulsions, religious impressions, and that if I try to find reality, truth, or God, that very search will be based on the things I have been taught, shaped by what I have known, conditioned by my education and by the influences of the environment in which I live. So, can I be free of all that? To be free, I must first know for myself that my mind is conditioned, that is, I must be fully aware that I am not really a human being, but a Hindu, a Catholic, a German, a Protestant, a communist, a socialist, or whatever it may be. I am born with a label, and this, or some other label of my own choosing, sticks to me for the rest of my life. I am born and die in one religion, or I change from one religion to another, and I think I have understood reality, God, but I have only perpetuated the conditioned mind, the label. Now, can I, as a human being, put all that away from me without any compulsion?

J. Krishnamurti/Hamburg 1956,Talk 6

A motive is bound to be the result of self-centered desire

Can the mind, without any form of compulsion, without a motive, bring about a transformation within itself? A motive is bound to be the result of self-centered desire, and such a motive is self-enclosing; therefore, there is no freedom, there is no transformation of the mind. So, can the mind break away from all influence and from all motive? And is not this very breaking away from all influence and from all motive in itself a transformation of the mind?

J. Krishnamurti/Hamburg 1956,Talk 6

But what then?

Questioner:We listen to what you say. You carefully show the triviality and the limitation of thought. We listen, we reflect, and we do come upon a new stillness. Conflict does end. But what then?

Krishnamurti: Why are you asking this?

Questioner: You're asking a blind man why he wants to see.

Krishnamurti: The question wasn't asked as a clever gambit, or in order to point out that a silent mind doesn't ask anything at all, but to find out whether you are really searching for something transcendental. If you are, what is the motive behind that search-curiosity, an urgency to discover, or the desire to see such beauty as you have never seen before? Isn't it mportant for you to find out for yourself whether you are asking for the more, or whether you are trying to see exactly what is? The two are incompatible.
J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 10

Is there no good and bad?

Questioner: Then how do you know what is good and what is bad? Or is there no good and bad? What is to prevent me from crime or even murder? If I have no standards what is to prevent me from God knows what aberrations?

Krishnamurti: To deny all this is to deny oneself, and oneself is the conditioned entity who continually pursues a conditioned good. To most of us negation appears as a vacuum because we know activity only in the prison of our conditioning, fear and misery. From that we look at negation and imagine it to be some terrible state of oblivion or emptiness. To the man who has negated all the assertions of society, religion, culture and morality, the man who is still in the prison of social conformity is a man of sorrow. Negation is the state of enlightenment which functions in all the activities of a man who is free of the past. It is the past, with its tradition and its authority, that has to be negated. Negation is freedom, and it is the free man who lives, loves, and knows what it means to die.

J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations ,7

The extraordinary movement of relationship

Questioner:Now I would like to ask you, is there in fact any such thing as enlightenment, and if so, what is it?

Krishnamurti: If it is an escape from everyday living, everyday living being the extraordinary movement of relationship, then this so-called realization, this so-called enlightenment, or whatever name you like to give it, is illusion and hypocrisy. Anything that denies love and the understanding of life and action is bound to create a great deal of mischief. It distorts the mind, and life is made a horrible affair.

J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 6

The other shore may be this shore

You want to get to the other shore at any cost and you are swimming frantically, not knowing where the other shore is. The other shore may be this shore, and so you are swimming away from it. If I may suggest it: stop swimming. This doesn't mean that you should become dull, vegetate and do nothing, but rather that you should be passively aware without any choice whatsoever and no measurement - then see what happens. Nothing may happen, but if you are expecting that bell to ring again, if you are expecting ail that feeling and delight to come back, then you are swimming in the opposite direction.

J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 5

This ache for the other shore

You are seeking, asking, longing, to walk on the other shore. The other shore implies that there is this shore, and from this shore to get to the other shore there is space and time. That is what is holding you and bringing about this ache for the other shore. That is the real problem - time that divides, space that separates, the time necessary to get there and the space that is the distance between this and that.

J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations,4

Reality is a living thing

Reality is a peculiar thing; it is there when you are not looking, but when you do look, with greed, what you capture is the sediment of your greed, not reality. Reality is a living thing and cannot be captured, and you cannot say it is always there. There is a path only to something which is stationary, to a fixed, static point. To a living thing which is constantly in movement, which has no resting place how can there be a guide, a path? The mind is so eager to attain it, to grasp it, that it makes it into a dead thing. So, can you put aside the memory of that state which you had? Can you put aside the teacher, the path, the end - put it aside so completely that your mind is empty of all this seeking?

J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 4

There is no way to the other shore

There is no way to the other shore. There is no action, no behaviour, no prescription that will open the door to the other. It is not an evolutionary process; it is not the end of a discipline; it cannot be bought or given or invited. If this is clear, if the mind has forgotten itself and no longer says -the other bank or this bank - if the mind has stopped groping and searching, if there is total emptiness and space in the mind itself- then and only then is it there.
J. Krishnamurti/Eight Conversations, 3

This extraordinary unfading flower

Haven't you ever asked yourself why it is that human beings lack this thing? They beget children, they have sex, tenderness, a quality of sharing something together in companionship, in friendship, in fellowship, but this thing - why haven't they got it? Haven't you ever wondered lazily on occasion when you are walking by yourself in a filthy street or sitting in a bus or on holiday by the seaside or walking in a wood with a lot of birds, trees, streams and wild animals- hasn't it ever come upon you to ask why is it that man, who has lived millions and millions years, has not got this thing, this extraordinary unfading flower?

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 123

Can you with one breath, with one look, know yourself very simply as you are?

Seeing everything that goes on in your daily life, your daily activities - when you pick up a pen, when you talk, when you go out for a drive or when you are walking alone in the woods - can you with one breath, with one look, know yourself very simply as you are?

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 121

A spiritual mind does not seek at all

The spiritual  mind is something entirely different from the mind that believes in religion. You cannot be spiritual and yet be a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist. A spiritual mind does not seek at all, it cannot experiment with truth. Truth is not something dictated by your pleasure or pain, or by your conditioning as a Hindu or whatever religion you belong to. The spiritual mind is a state of mind in which there is no fear and therefore no belief whatsoever but only what is.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 119

I must change first

After all, any movement which is worth while, any action which has any deep significance, must begin with each one of us. I must change first; I must see what is the nature and structure of my relationship with the world -and in the very seeing is the doing; therefore I, as a human being living in the world, bring about the different quality, and that quality, it seems to me, is the quality of the spiritual mind.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 119

Small fires can become a blaze

Every day we see or read of appalling things happening in the world as the result of violence in man. You may say, 'I can't do anything about it', or, 'How can I influence the world?' I think you can tremendously influence the world if in yourself you are not violent, if you lead actually every day a peaceful life.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known,118

No technique, therefore no authority

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 116

When thought has understood its own beginning

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old - this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 115

Dependence on experiences only makes our minds duller

We depend on experiences, on challenges, to keep us awake. If there were no conflicts within ourselves, no changes, no disturbances, we would all be fast asleep. So challenges are necessary for most of us; we think that without them our minds will become stupid and heavy, and therefore we depend on a challenge, an experience, to give us more excitement, more intensity, to make our minds sharper. But in fact this dependence on challenges and experiences to keep us awake, only makes our minds duller.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 113

We cannot recognize a new experience

When we demand an experience of reality - as we all do, don't we?- to experience it we must know it and the moment we recognise it we have already projected it and therefore it is not real because it is still within the field of thought and time.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, 112