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
Any acceptance of authority is the very denial of truth.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Acceptance
Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Intelligence
When you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Listening, Feelings
In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Self-improvement, Progress
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
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Tradition
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Life and Living
Tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a fixation, a concept that one readily accepts, perhaps not with a great deal of thought.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Tradition
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
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Freedom
All tradition is merely the past.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Tradition
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
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
Fear is the process of the mind in the struggle of becoming. In becoming good there is the fear of evil; in becoming complete, there is the fear of loneliness.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Ideas have become far more important to us than action – ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present – that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Ideas
Learning is the very essence of humility, the learning from everything and from everybody. There is no hierarchy in learning.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Few can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Problems, Problem-solving, Identifying Problems
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
It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Trust
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
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
Do not think about yourself,
but be aware of the thought, emotion,
or action that makes you think of yourself.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It’s the mirror of your consciousness: this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joys and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Poverty, The Poor
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
Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Topics: Violence
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can’t go very far if you don’t begin very near.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Nagarjuna Indian Buddhist Philosopher
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Indian Hindu Philosopher
Sri Aurobindo Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet
Dada J. P. Vaswani Indian Hindu Philosopher
Basava Indian Hindu Philosopher
Patanjali Indian Hindu Philosopher
Ramana Maharshi Indian Hindu Mystic
Rabindranath Tagore Bengali Poet, Polymath
Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic
Nisargadatta Maharaj Indian Hindu Religious Leader