Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was an Indian spiritual leader. His philosophy was based on a denunciation of organized religion and religious gurus, and the attainment of self-realization through introspection and self-knowledge.
Krishnamurti was born in Madanapalle in South India. While an adolescent, Annie Besant’s Theosophical Society took him under its wing and prepared him to become a savior figure. However, in 1929, Krishnamurti disengaged himself from the Theosophical Society and spent the rest of his life traveling and teaching independently.
Krishnamurti published his dialogues on a wide variety of spiritual and global issues. Drawing from several Hindu and Buddhist traditions, his teachings encouraged individuals to cultivate self-knowledge, and, through re-conditioning or de-conditioning their mental processes, to create a pure, undifferentiated awareness. His work is now spread through numerous Krishnamurti Foundation schools that he established worldwide.
Krishnamurti’s notable works include Freedom from the Known (1969,) and the compilations of his teachings in The Awakening of Intelligence (1987,) Think on These Things (1989,) and On Fear (1994.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jiddu Krishnamurti
Learning is the very essence of humility, the learning from everything and from everybody. There is no hierarchy in learning.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
The fact is that truth is life and life has no permanency. Life has to be discovered from moment to moment, from day to day. It has to be discovered. It cannot be taken for granted. If you take it for granted that you know life, than you are not living. Three meals a day, clothing, shelter, sex, your job, your amusement, and your thinking process—that dull, repetitive process is not life.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
In the cultivation of the mind, our emphasis should be not on concentration, but on attention. Concentration is a process of forcing the mind to narrow down to a point, whereas attention is without frontiers.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
The mind has to be empty to see clearly.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely, the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears, when you give your whole attention to it.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Thinking
Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness,
and conflict comes when you seek consolation,
forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Fear, Courage
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious, of which you are not aware. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy. You want to be consciously happy: the moment you are consciously happy, happiness is gone.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Intelligence
To find out what you love to do demands a great deal of intelligence; because, if you are afraid of not being able to earn a livelihood, or of not fitting into this rotten society, then you will never find out. But, if you are not frightened, if you refuse to be pushed into the groove of tradition by your parents, by your teachers, by the superficial demands of society, then there is a possibility of discovering what it is you really love to do. So, to discover, there must be no fear of not surviving.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
A man who is not afraid is not aggressive,
a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can’t go very far if you don’t begin very near.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do not think about yourself,
but be aware of the thought, emotion,
or action that makes you think of yourself.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
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