Total Freedom_ the Essential Krishnamurti - Jiddu Krishnamurti  ## Metadata - Author: **Jiddu Krishnamurti** - Full Title: Total Freedom_ the Essential Krishnamurti - Category: #books - Tags: #metaphysical #philosophy #spirituality ## Highlights - “To what extent can a person control his own actions?” A person does not control his own actions if he has not understood environment. Then he is only acting under the compulsion, the influence, of environment; such an action is not action at all, but is merely reaction or self-protectiveness (Page 61) - see how foolish we are, searching the universe for that bliss which is to be found only in our own hearts when the mind is purged of its activities. You are perfectly right. I begin from where I started. I begin with what I am (Page 86) - . At last he wearily returned to his home, and in his own house was the jewel! I see how foolish we are, searching the universe for that bliss which is to be found only in our own hearts when the mind is purged of its activities. You are perfectly right. I begin from where I started. I begin with what I am. (Page 86) - Tags: #philosophy - see how foolish we are, searching the universe for that bliss which is to be found only in our own hearts when the mind is purged of its activities. You are perfectly right. I begin from where I started. I begin with what (Page 86) - I see how foolish we are, searching the universe for that bliss which is to be found only in our own hearts when the mind is purged of its activities. You are perfectly right. I begin from where I started. I begin with what I am (Page 86) - Let us discuss this. Can we as individuals put an end in ourselves to the causes of war? One of the causes is obviously belief, the division of ourselves as Hindus, (Page 189) - is only when we understand the self— not according to Shankara, Buddha, or Christ, but as it actually is in each one of us in relation to people, to ideas, and to things—that there is the cessation of pain. (Page 205) - It is only when we understand the self— not according to Shankara, Buddha, or Christ, but as it actually is in each one of us in relation to people, to ideas, and to things—that there is the cessation of pain (Page 205) - The so-called educated people in the world, who have been to college, to university, have good jobs, fit into a place and stay there and advance there, have their own troubles, their own adversities. One may pass some exam and get a job, or one may have been educated technologically. But psychologically, one doesn’t know anything about oneself. One is unhappy, miserable because one can’t get this or that. One quarrels with one’s husband or wife. And they are all very educated people who read books but disregard the whole field of life. And uneducated people do the same. (Page 240) - Tags: #personal development #philosophy - Look, listen to all this, listen to all the noise that is going on in the world. Don’t take sides, don’t jump to any conclusions, but just listen. Don’t say one noise is better than another noise; they are all noises, so just listen first. And listen also to your own noise, your chattering, your wishes—‘I want to be this and I don’t want to be that’—and find out what it means to listen. Find out, don’t be told. Discuss it with me and find out what it means first. Find out what it means to think, why you think, what is the background of your thinking. Watch yourself, but don’t become self-centered in that watching. Be tremendously concerned, in watching, about further enlargement of yourself (Page 244) - thought which the Greeks imposed upon the West, with their political philosophy, with their mathematics, and so on. Thought has not found an answer and it never will. So we must go then into the whole structure of thought and the content that it has created as consciousness. We must observe the operation of thought in relationship, in our daily life. That observation implies having an insight as to whether it is a fact that the observer is different from the observed, for if there is a difference there must inevitably be conflict, just as there is between two ideologies. Ideologies are the inventions of thought, conditioned by the culture in which they have developed (Page 285) - Then, through negation of what is false—not through resistance or reaction to the false—through choiceless rejection of what is false, you have a different kind of energy (Page 291) - Attachment gives a certain occupation to the mind; you constantly think about something. The brain and the mind say, “I must be occupied with something”—with my god, with my sex, with my drink; “I must be occupied”— with the kitchen, or with some social order, or commune, or whatever it is. Out of this demand for occupation there is attachment, holding on to something. Why must the mind be so occupied? What would happen if it were not so occupied? Would it go astray? Would it disintegrate? Would it feel utterly naked, empty (Page 291) - So the question arises: Is the mind mechanical? That is, in your mind, are your thoughts, your feelings, your reactions, your responsibilities, your relationships, your ways, your opinions, and so on, merely mechanical; that is, responding according to conditioning, according to environmental influence? If that is the totality of the mind, then we live in a tremendous, inescapable prison (Page 295) - Tags: #philosophy #causality - And it is stupid: just to go to the office, to earn money, to take responsibility, to struggle, compete, worry, to despair, to have anxieties, immense sorrows, and then die. We say that is not good enough. We may put it more philosophically, in more extravagant or romantic language, but we see it is stupid and we want something more. Then we say: “How are we to cross this river to the other shore?” We ask, “Who will take us across?” When we ask that question, there is the priest, the guru, the man who knows, and he says, “Follow me”—and then we are done, because he is exactly like us, because he still functions within the field of thought. He has created the gods, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna (Page 297) - As long as there is a center, the “me” or the idea of the “me,” with all its attachments, that very center creates a space around itself. Where there is a center, there must be a border. The border may be extended, but it is still limited by the space that the center has created. Meditation means to come upon that space in which there is no center; therefore, no direction; therefore, no time. Without meditation and the coming upon that thing which is not able to be experienced, which is not to be put into words, which has no time, which has no continuity, life has very little meaning. You may have a lot of money, or no money; you may be attached to your property, to your wife, to your friend, or you may worship your particular little god, which thought has invented, but as long as you live there, there will be suffering, pain, anxiety, and violence. And that has no meaning in itself, obviously. Only when you come upon this space— not invent it, not project it, not bring it about through any system—then only does life have an extraordinary sense of beauty and meaning. Saanen (Page 308) - There is knowledge of the present only when there is a complete understanding of what the structure and the nature of the past is—and ending it. (Page 318) - Tags: #wisdom #epistemology #favorite - Can one look at what is without a prejudice, without prejudgment? Can you look at what is without the observer, who is the past? Say you are envious of people, how do you look at that envy? Are you looking at it as an observer who is different from envy? You look at it as though you are separate from envy, but the fact is that you are envy. You are not the observer who is different; the observer himself is that. So the observer is the observed. Please, this is really very important to understand. When you have grasped the truth that the observer is the observed, then that which is observed undergoes radical change. What prevents a radical change of what is is the interference of the observer, who is the past. To understand this removes all conflict. (Page 320) - Tags: #consciousness - the observer is the observed (Page 321) - And this is the whole basis of meditation: control thought. But he doesn’t ask who the controller is. The controller is still thought (Page 321) - the logic of it, that you can see something clearly only when your mind is silent. You cannot hear what somebody else is saying if you are talking to yourself all the time (Page 339) - You cannot hear what somebody else is saying if you are talking to yourself all the time (Page 339) - Tags: #conversation - Meditation then is the emptying of the content of consciousness—which means the fears, the anxieties, the conflicts in relationship—the ending of sorrow and, therefore, compassion. The ending of the content of consciousness is complete silence. Then that silence is full (Page 342) - Meditation then is the emptying of the content of consciousness—which means the fears, the anxieties, the conflicts in relationship—the ending of sorrow and, therefore, compassion. The ending of the content of consciousness is complete silence. Then that silence is full of energy. It is not vacant silence. It is not a silence that wants something more. So meditation is not the repetition of mantras (Page 342) - Meditation then is the emptying of the content of consciousness—which means the fears, the anxieties, the conflicts in relationship—the ending of sorrow and, therefore, compassion. The ending of the content of consciousness is complete silence. Then that silence is full of energy (Page 342) - The nature of dying can be found in the living. That is, death is the ending, the ending of my possessions, my wife, my children, my house, my bank account (Page 353) - Tags: #death - You don’t have to make the mind quiet. If you end all conflict, the mind naturally becomes quiet. And when the mind is absolutely silent, without any movement of thought, then perhaps you will see something, perhaps there is something sacred beyond all words. And this man has sought everlastingly, something that is beyond measure, beyond thought, which is incorruptible, unnameable, eternal (Page 356) - You don’t have to make the mind quiet. If you end all conflict, the mind naturally becomes quiet. And when the mind is absolutely silent, without any movement of thought, then perhaps you will see something, perhaps there is something sacred beyond all words. And this man has sought everlastingly, something that is beyond measure, beyond thought, which is incorruptible, unnameable, eternal. That can only take place when the mind is absolutely free and completely silent. So one must begin very near, very near. And when (Page 356) - You don’t have to make the mind quiet. If you end all conflict, the mind naturally becomes quiet. And when the mind is absolutely silent, without any movement of thought, then perhaps you will see something, perhaps there is something sacred beyond all words. And this man has sought everlastingly, something that is beyond measure, beyond thought, which is incorruptible, unnameable, eternal (Page 356) - You don’t have to make the mind quiet. If you end all conflict, the mind naturally becomes quiet. And when the mind is absolutely silent, without any movement of thought, then perhaps you will see something, perhaps there is something sacred beyond all words. And this man has sought everlastingly, something that is beyond measure, beyond thought, which is incorruptible, unnameable, eternal. That can only take place when the mind is absolutely free and completely silent (Page 356) - Tags: #philosophy - What is living, what do you call living? Going to the office from nine o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening every day of your life for the next sixty years, being bossed, being bullied, and you bullying somebody else? Or you are a businessman always wanting more and more money, more power, better position, and then go home and quarrel with your wife, sleep with her, and beat her up verbally, or actually (Page 360) - Because if you carry all the burdens of yesterday, your brain becomes mechanical, dull. If you leave all the psychological memories, hurts, pains, behind, every day, then it means dying and living are together. In that there is no fear (Page 361) - If you take a journey into yourself, empty all the content that you have collected and go very, very deeply, then there is that vast space, that so-called emptiness, that is full of energy. And in that state alone there is that which is most sacred, most holy. (Page 363) - Tags: #philosophy #favorite - Is experience different from the experiencer? Give your brain to this, find out! If there is no experiencer (Page 374) - Is experience different from the experiencer? Give your brain to this, find out! (Page 374) - When you yourself become both the teacher and the disciple—disciple being a man who is learning, learning, learning, not accumulating knowledge—then you are an extraordinary human being (Page 375)