The Book of Life - Daily Meditations - Jiddu Krishnamurti  ## Metadata - Author: **Jiddu Krishnamurti** - Full Title: The Book of Life - Daily Meditations - Category: #books - Tags: #freedrom #loneliness #love #wisdom ## Highlights - If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. (Location 9) - Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion of any kind. And coercion takes many forms, does it not? There is coercion through influence, through attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement, or subtle forms of reward. (Location 80) - Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing. Without knowing oneself, order is not possible, and therefore there is no virtue. (Location 92) - So when there is the understanding of the whole process of conflict, there is the ending of conflict, there is abundance of energy. Then you can proceed, tearing down the house that you have built throughout the centuries and that has no meaning at all. (Location 113) - The old mind is the mind that is frightened, is ambitious, is fearful of death, of living, and of relationship; and it is always, consciously or unconsciously, seeking a permanency, security. (Location 139) - Without self-knowledge there is no liberation from ignorance, from sorrow. (Location 150) - You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception. (Location 177) - The idea is the result of the thought process, the thought process is the response of memory, and memory is always conditioned. Memory is always in the past, and that memory is given life in the present by a challenge. Memory has no life in itself; it comes to life in the present when confronted by a challenge. And all memory, whether dormant or active, is conditioned, is it not? Therefore there has to be quite a different approach. You have to find out for yourself, inwardly, whether you are acting on an idea, and if there can be action without ideation. (Location 416) - It is only when there is the cessation of complete attention, of love, that there comes the conflict between what I am and what I should be. (Location 435) - Yet, the past can never be put aside. There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe and not to choose. Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation; and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past; and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated. (Location 487) - I who am very earnest, want to dissolve the self. (Location 536) - Any movement of the mind, positive or negative, is an experience which actually strengthens the “me”. Is it possible for the mind not to recognize? That can only take place when there is complete silence, but not the silence which is an experience of the self and which therefore strengthens the self. (Location 542) - But if you and I, as ind ividuals, can see this whole working of the self, then we shall know what love is. (Location 562) - Surely, a man who is understanding life does not want beliefs. A man who loves, has no beliefs—he loves. (Location 565) - And can we look at ourselves without beliefs? If we remove these beliefs, the many beliefs that one has, is there anything left to look at? If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is—and then, surely there is the beginning of the understand of oneself. (Location 634) - Why do we divide life, calling this good and that bad, thereby creating the conflict of the opposites? (Location 684) - Tags: #good-and-bad - Why do we depend? Psychologically, inwardly, we depend on a belief, on a system, on a philosophy; we ask another for a mode of conduct; we seek teachers who will give us a way of life which will lead us to some hope, some happiness. So we are always, are we not, searching for some kind of dependence, security. (Location 762) - Being in a state of confusion, we want someone to get us out of that confusion. So, we are always concerned with how to escape or avoid the state in which we are. In the process of avoiding that state, we are bound to create some kind of dependence, which becomes our authority. If we depend on another for our security, for our inward wellbeing, there arise out of that dependence innumerable problems, and then we try to solve those problems— the problems of attachment. (Location 769) - Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict. However interdependent we are on each other, we are using each other for a purpose, for an end. With an end in view, relationship is not. You may use me and I may use you. In this usage, we lose contact. A society based on mutual usage is the foundation of violence. When we use another, we have only the picture of the end to be gained. The end, the gain, prevents relationship, communion. In the usage of another, however gratifying and comforting it may be, there is always fear. To avoid this fear, we must possess. From this possession there arises envy, suspicion, and constant conflict. Such a relationship can never bring about happiness. (Location 788) - So long as you are unwilling to be nothing, which in fact you are, you must inevitably breed sorrow and antagonism. (Location 804) - To exploit is to be exploited. The desire to use others for your psychological necessities makes for dependence, and when you depend you must hold, possess; and what you possess, possesses you. Without dependence, subtle or gross, without possessing things, people and ideas, you are empty, a thing of no importance. You want to be something, and to avoid the gnawing fear of being nothing you belong to this or that organization, to this or that ideology, to this church or that temple; so you are exploited, and you in your turn exploit. (Location 810) - Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached—property, people, ideas—become all- important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion, the bondage to conclusions. Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. (Location 822) - The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence. (Location 827) - Dependence is one of the things we run to, depend on, because we can’t stand being alone with ourselves. We must have the radio or books or talking, incessant chatter about this and that, about art and culture. So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of selfisolation. We may have a very good job, work furiously, write books, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women, a dozen things to fill it up. (Location 830) - Relationship is a process of self-revelation, of self-knowledge. (Location 880) - When insecurity creeps into dependency, as it inevitably does, then that particular relationship is cast aside and a new one taken on in the hope of finding lasting security; but there is no security in relationship, and dependency only breeds fear. Without understanding the process of security and fear, relationship becomes a binding hindrance, a way of ignorance. Then all existence is struggle and pain, and there is no way out of it save in right thinking, which comes through self-knowledge. (Location 883) - Tags: #pain #dependency - Is it possible for the mind to empty itself totally of fear? Fear of any kind breeds illusion; it makes the mind dull, shallow. Where there is fear there is obviously no freedom, and without freedom there is no love at all. And most of us have some form of fear; fear of darkness, fear of public opinion, fear of snakes, fear of physical pain, fear of old age, fear of death. We have literally dozens of fears. And is it possible to be completely free of fear? (Location 929) - There is physical fear. You know, when you see a snake, a wild animal, instinctively there is fear; that is a normal, healthy, natural fear. It is not fear, it is a desire to protect oneself—that is normal. But the psychological protection of oneself—that is, the desire to be always certain—breeds fear. A mind that is seeking always to be certain is a dead mind, because there is no certainty in life, there is no permanency... (Location 974) - Through self-awareness we begin to discover and so comprehend the cause of fear, not only the superficial but the deep casual and accumulative fears. Fear is both inborn and acquired; it is related to the past, and to free thought- feeling from it, the past must be comprehended through the present. The past is ever wanting to give birth to the present which becomes the identifying memory of the “me” and the “mine,” the “I.” The self is the root of all fear. (Location 1021) - Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests. (Location 1025) - And we know how the religious teachers and others have said that we should be desireless, cultivate detachment, be free from desire—which is really absurd, because desire has to be understood, not destroyed. If you destroy desire, you may destroy life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful. (Location 1042) - What matters is to understand pleasure, not try to get rid of it—that is too stupid. Nobody can get rid of pleasure. But to understand the nature and the structure of pleasure is essential; (Location 1059) - The cinemas, the magazines, the stories, the way women dress, everything is building up your thought of sex. And why does the mind build it up, why does the mind think about sex at all? Why, sirs and ladies? It is your problem. Why? Why has it become a central issue in your life? When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give complete attention to the thought of sex. (Location 1092) - Love is the unknowable. It can be realized only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is free of the known, then only there will be love. So, we must approach love negatively, not positively. (Location 1112) - When do you think about the person whom you love? You think about her when she is gone, when she is away, when she has left you...So, you miss the person whom you say you love only when you are disturbed, when you are in suffering; and as long as you possess that person, you do not have to think about that person, because in possession there is no disturbance... (Location 1124) - It is only when the mind is quiet that it shall know love. (Location 1146) - Most of us spend our life in effort, in struggle; and the effort, the struggle, the striving, is a dissipation of that energy. (Location 1176) - Only when the mind and heart are unburdened of fear, of the routine of sensational habits, when there is generosity and compassion, there is love. (Location 1188) - What you resist ultimately conquers you. (Location 1196) - For most of us, passion is employed only with regard to one thing, sex; or you suffer passionately and try to resolve that suffering. But I am using the word passion in the sense of a state of mind, a state of being, a state of your inward core, if there is such a thing, that feels very strongly, that is highly sensitive—sensitive alike to dirt, to squalor, to poverty, and to enormous riches and corruption, to the beauty of a tree, of a bird, to the flow of water, and to a pond that has the evening sky reflected upon it. To feel all this intensely, strongly, is necessary. Because without passion life becomes empty, shallow , and without much meaning. If you cannot see the beauty of a tree and love that tree, if you cannot care for it intensely, you are not living. (Location 1224) - Tags: #love - Love is a state in which there is no “me”; love is a state in which there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this is good and something else is bad. Love is none of these contradictory things. Contradiction does not exist in love. And how can one love if one is not passio nate? Without passion, how can one be sensitive? To be sensitive is to feel your neighbor sitting next to you; it is to see the ugliness of the town with its squalor, its filth, its poverty, and to see the beauty of the river, the sea, the sky. If you are not passionate, how can you be sensitive to all that? How can you feel a smile, a tear? Love, I assure you, is passion. (Location 1234) - become aware of a mind that is ever saying, “I must,” and “I must not.” Then as a flower blossoms forth of a morning, so intelligence happens, is there, functioning, creating comprehension. (Location 1297) - To feel things greatly, deeply, penetratingly, is very difficult for most of us because we have so many problems. (Location 1332) - Only where there is love, memory ceases; (Location 1380) - Memory clouds perception (Location 1407) - Now, when you say, “I know I am conditioned,” do you really know it, or is that merely a verbal statement? Do you know it with the same potency with which you see a cobra? When you see a snake and know it to be a cobra, there is immediate, unpremeditated action; and when you say, “I know I am conditioned,” has it the same vital significance as your perception of the cobra? (Location 1507) - The major cause of violence, I think, is that each one of us is inwardly, psychologically, seeking security. In each one of us the urge for psychological security—that inward sense of being safe—projects the demand, the outward demand, for security. Inwardly each one of us wants to be secure, sure, certain. That is why we have all these marriage laws; in order that we may possess a woman, or a man, and so be secure in our relationship. If that relationship is attacked we become violent, which is the psychological demand, the inward demand, to be certain of our relationship to everything. But there is no such thing as certainty, security, in any relationship. Inwardly, psychologically, we should like to be secure, but there is no such thing as permanent security... (Location 1760)