Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

The world is me and I am the world.

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?

Opinions have no value, though the whole world is run on opinions. Opinions are limited. Your opinion, or my opinion, the opinions of the totalitarians, or the opinions of the church people and governments are all limited. Your judgments and opinions that give values are all limited. When you think about yourself from morning until night, as most people do, that is limited. When you say you are Swiss, or when you are proud to be British as though you are God’s chosen people, that is limited. So opinions are limited. When one sees that clearly, then one does not cling to opinions or the values that opinions have created, because your opinion against another opinion doesn’t bring about peace. That is what is happening in the world, one ideology against another ideology — communist, socialist, democrat, and so on. So please understand that if you are adhering to your opinion and I am sticking to mine, then we shall never meet.

There must be freedom from opinion and values so that we are actually not holding back our opinions and using them as axes to beat each other, to kill each other. Opinions are limited and therefore they must inevitably bring about conflict. If you hold on to your limited conclusions, and another holds his limited conclusions, experiences, then there must be conflict, wars, destruction. If you see that very clearly, then opinions become very superficial, they have no meaning. Don’t have opinions, but be free to inquire, and in that inquiry act. The very inquiry is action; it is not that you inquire first and then act, but in the process of inquiry you are acting.

When you are young you are curious to know all about everything, why the sun shines, what the stars are, all about the moon and the world around us; but as we grow older, knowledge becomes a mere collection of information without any feeling.

What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is. To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need; food, clothing and shelter, is destroyed. Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree”, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be only stopped when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself.

The first of these Qualifications is Discrimination; and this is usually taken as the discrimination between the real and the unreal which leads men to enter the Path. It is this, but it is also much more; and it is to be practised, not only at the beginning of the Path, but at every step of it every day until the end. You enter the Path because you have learnt that on it alone can be found those things which are worth gaining. Men who do not know, work to gain wealth and power, but these are at most for one life only, and therefore unreal. There are greater things than these — things which are real and lasting; when you have once seen these, you desire those others no more.

In the denial of disorder there is order.

One was watching the other day a red-tailed hawk, high in the heavens, circling effortlessly, without a beat of the wing, just for the fun of flying, just to be sustained by the air-currents. Then it was joined by another, and they were flying together for quite a while. They were marvellous creatures in that blue sky, and to hurt them in any way is a crime against heaven. Of course there is no heaven; man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly. This life has become a turmoil, a travail of endless striving. One wonders if man, a human being, will ever live on this earth peacefully. Conflict has been the way of his life - within the skin and outside the skin, in the area of the psyche and in the society which that psyche has created.

Through a narrow window we can see only part of the sky, and not the whole vastness, the magnificence of it.

As I said, relationship has true significance only when it is a process of self-revelation, when it is revealing oneself in the very action of relationship. But most of us do not want to be revealed in relationship.

To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.

So, while you are young you must begin to find out what is this strange thing called happiness. That is an essential part of education.

Is there an observation which is not the instrument of thought?

"A man who lives never asks, "What is living?" and he has no theories about living. It is only the half-alive who talk about the purpose of life."

When you love, you are not lonely. The sense of loneliness arises only when you are frightened of being alone and of not knowing what to do. When you are controlled by ideas, isolated by beliefs, then fear is inevitable; and when you are afraid, you are completely blind.