U. G. Krishnamurti Quotes

You will be peaceful when all your ideas about awareness are dropped and you begin to function like a computer. You must be a machine, function automatically in this world, never questioning your actions before, during, or after they occur.

I may sound very cynical, but a cynic is really a realist.

"I am like a puppet sitting here. It's not just I; all of us are puppets. Nature is pulling the strings, but we believe we are acting. If you function that way (as puppets), then the problems are simple. But we have superimposed on that (the idea of) a "person" who is pulling those strings."

When once we are freed from the goal [of solving problems], the question of whether it is a positive approach or a negative approach does not even arise.

The framing of what there is by the mind is what you call beauty.

What I am emphasizing is that we are trying to solve our basic human problems through a psychological framework, when actually the problem is neurological. The body is involved. Take desire. As long as there is a living body, there will be desire. It is natural. Thought has interfered and trying to suppress, control, and moralize about desire, to the detriment of mankind. We are trying to solve the ‘problem’ of desire through thought. It is thinking that has created the problem.

"Your own death, or the death of your near and dear ones, is not something you can experience. What you actually experience is the void created by the disappearance of another individual and the unsatisfied demand to maintain the continuity of your relationship with that person for a nonexistent eternity. The arena for the continuation of all these "permanent" relationships is the tomorrow, heaven, next life, and so on. These things are the inventions of a mind interested only in it's undisturbed, permanent continuity in a "self" generated, fictitious future. The basic method of maintaining the continuity is the repetition of the question, "How? How? How?" "How am I to live? How can I be happy? How can I be sure I will be happy tomorrow?" This has made life an insoluble dilemma for us. We want to know, and through that knowledge we hope to continue on with our miserable existences forever."

But thought is a very protective mechanism and is interested in its own survival. At the same time thought is opposed fundamentally to the functioning of this living organism. We are made to believe that there is such a thing as mind. But there is no such thing as your mind or my mind. Society or culture, or whatever you want to call it, has created us solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its own continuity and status quo. At the same time, it has also created the idea that there is such a thing as individual. But actually, there is a conflict between the two – the idea of the individual and the impossibility of functioning as an individual separate and distinct from the totality of man’s thoughts and experiences.

Nobody knows anything about life and there is NO point in defining life.

I tell you, when you stop doing things out of hope and the desire for continuity, all you do along with it stops. You will stay afloat.

Someone asked me, “What do you have to say about Rajneesh after his death?” I said that the world has never seen such a pimp nor will it ever see one in the future. He combined Western therapies, the Tantric system, and everything that you could find in the books. He made a big business out of it. He took money from the boys; he took money from girls, and kept it for himself. He is dead and so we don't say anything. Nil nisi bonum (Of the dead speak not unless it be good)

You don't actually know anything about that person or that thing, except what you are projecting on that object or the individual. The knowledge you have about it is the experience. It goes on and on. That's all. What that really is, you have no way of knowing.

"Sorrow is there for you as long as you think. There is actually no sorrow there to be free from. Thinking about and struggling against "sorrow" is sorrow. Since you can't stop thinking, and thinking is sorrow, you will always suffer. There is no way out, no escape."

"Somewhere along the line in human consciousness, there occurred self-consciousness. (When I use the word "self" I don't mean that there is a self or a center there.) That consciousness separated man from the totality of things. Man, in the beginning, was a frightened being. He turned everything that was uncontrollable into something divine or cosmic. and worshiped it. It was in that frame of mind that he created, quote and unquote, "God." So culture, is responsible for whatever you are. I maintain that all the political institutions and ideologies we have today are the outgrowth of the same religious thinking of man. The spiritual teachers are in a way responsible for the tragedy of mankind."

Nature’s laws know no reward, only punishment. The reward is only that you are in harmony with nature.