Look and be simple

Surely, since you have burnt yourself in politics, your problem is not only to break away from society, but to come totally to life again, to love and to be simple. Without love, do what you may, you will not know the total action which alone can save man. "That is true, sir: we don't love, we aren't really simple." Why? Because you are concerned with reforms, with duties, with respectability, with becoming something, with breaking through to the other side. In the name of another, you are concerned with yourself; you are caught in your own cockleshell. You think you are the center of this beautiful earth. You never pause to look at a tree, at a flower, at the flowing river; and if by chance you do look, your eyes are filled with the things of the mind, and not with beauty and love. "Again, that is true; but what is one to do?" Look and be simple.

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JK

Truth is in every leaf, every tear

God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.

- J.K.

The art of listening

Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion. When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion. We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.
- JK

To see that the mind is conditioned

All that we can do is to see that the mind is conditioned and, through self-knowledge, to understand the process of our own thinking. I must know myself, not as I would ideologically like to be, but as I actually am, however ugly or beautiful, however jealous, envious, acquisitive. But it is very difficult just to see what one is without wishing to change it, and that very desire to change it is another form of conditioning; and so we go on, moving from conditioning to conditioning, never experiencing something beyond that which is limited.
- JK

The conscious, the unconscious & conditioning

What is the mind? There is the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is occupied with the everyday duties—it observes, thinks, argues, attends to a job, and so on. But are we aware of the unconscious mind? The unconscious mind is the repository of racial instinct, it is the residue of this civilization, of this culture, in which there are certain urges, various forms of compulsion. And can this whole mind, the unconscious as well as the conscious, uncondition itself? Now, why do we divide the mind as the conscious and the unconscious? Is there such a definite barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind? Or are we so taken up with the conscious mind that we have never considered or been open to the unconscious? And can the conscious mind investigate, probe into the unconscious, or is it only when the conscious mind is quiet that the unconscious promptings, hints, urges, compulsions come into being? So the unconditioning of the mind is not a process of the conscious or of the unconscious; it is a total process which comes about with the earnest intention to find out if your mind is conditioned.
- JK

Ideals?

The ending of a quality such as violence or greed is not a matter of time, and it does not come about through ideals; it has to be done immediately, not through time. We get caught up in the gradualism of ideals when we are concerned with time.Please do not jump to conclusions or say, “Without ideals I shall be lost”, but rather listen to what is being said. I know all the arguments, all the justifications of ideals. Just listen, if you kindly will, without a conclusion, and try to understand what the speaker is talking about; do not block your understanding by saying “I must have ideals.”Ideals have existed for centuries. Various religious teachers have talked of ideals, but they may all be wrong and probably are. To adhere to an ideal is obviously to postpone freeing the mind from violence, greed, envy, ambition and the desire for power. If one is concerned, as one should be, with righteousness, which is the foundation upon which rests all true inquiry into what religion is, then one must investigate the possibility of ridding the mind of violence, of greed, of envy, of acquisitiveness, not at some time in the distant future, but now.
- JK

A change that is not of time

Surely, this is the fundamental question that one ought to put to oneself—how to bring about a change which is not of time, which is not a matter of evolution, which is not a matter of slow growth. I can see that if I exercise will, control, if I discipline myself, there are certain modifications; I am better or worse, I am changed a little bit. Instead of being bad tempered or angry or vicious or jealous I am quiet; I have repressed all that, I have held it down. Every day I practise a certain virtue, repeat certain words, go to a shrine and repeat certain chants, and so on and so on. They all have a pacifying effect; they produce certain changes but these changes are still of the mind, they are still within the field of time, are they not? My memory says, “I am this, and I must become that.” Surely, such activity is still self-centred; though I deny greed, in seeking non-greed I am still within the self-enclosing process of the “me”. And I can see that it leads nowhere, do what I will; though there may be change, as long as my thinking is held within the process of the “me”, there is no freedom from struggle, pain.
- JK

Human?

I wonder if any of us has wondered why the human being, throughout the world, is perhaps the only animal that is so corrupt - I am using the word 'corrupt' in its basic sense of being broken up - so contradictory, so self-deceptive, and so extraordinarily dishonest. I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves why human beings live that way, saying one thing and doing another, thinking one thing and acting in a totally different manner. All the indications throughout the world are that there is a great degeneration taking place. We are becoming more and more mechanical by following a routine, by following a certain tradition, and by following some leader, some guru - generally self-appointed. Why do we, human beings, follow anybody at all? - except that perhaps when we are physically ill we need a doctor, a surgeon or a dentist. But, psychologically, inwardly, do we need anybody at all to help us to step out of this corruption, this confusion, and this extraordinary sense of insecurity that exists throughout the world? I wonder if we are aware of all this? Or, are we all self-enclosed, with our own little families, our own little jobs, our own little gurus and, therefore, we just forget the rest of the world? So, I ask why a human being, man or woman, has become so utterly degenerate. I am using that word very carefully. To 'degenerate' is to not create oneself; it is not flower in goodness and in beauty, but all the time to destroy oneself.
- JK

Want (Pt. 1)

Let us say that you have a house with a beautiful garden, and you look after it nicely. Then you see a television set advertised and, if you have the money, you will buy it. You will keep buying more and more things and adding them to what you already possess and, yet, you will not be satisfied; you will want something more. You will want to be happy, you will want to be peaceful, you will want to be loved. As your wife or husband doesn't love you, you will turn to the priest, to God, or you will give your love to somebody else; but even then you will not be satisfied, and you will keep going on and on in this way.

Now, have you ever asked yourself if there is such a thing as being satisfied? Whatever you have, you always want something more. If you are the big man in your town, you want to be the Prime Minister of the whole country, and so on. You are everlastingly accumulating, climbing the ladder of success. At the end of it all, there is death; and you want, hope, there will be something even after you die. You never question and find out if there is an end to wanting. One must have food, clothing and shelter - that is understood. But why should one have the desire to be well-known, to see one's picture in the newspapers, to be famous as a marvelous artist, a great thinker, or a self-sacrificing social worker? You never ask that question, do you? If you find out for yourself why this craving gnaws at your heart night and day, you will also discover that you can go beyond it - not in ideas, not in imagination, not lost in some cloud away from yourself, but factually. Then you will also find that you can live happily in this mad, stupid world with a few essential things, being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied but tremendously alive; and from that will come the discovery of something much greater, something far beyond all this wanting and not-wanting.
- JK

You know, one of the strange things is that though India is a very sad country, there is always a smile. The poor smile. They are starving, downtrodden, the have no happiness, they are perpetually working and, yet, as you go by the street, especially in the countryside, they smile at you. This happens nowhere else in the world. This is the miracle of this country.
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There is something curiously pleasant to walk, alone, along a path, deep in the country...

J. Krishnamurthi (JK)