Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Group Discussion 2nd December, 1947 | Madras, India

Mind is constantly wrapping itself in belief, belief in ideation, belief in memory, etc. Essentially we believe in order to be secure, not to get lost in the wood, to have a lighthouse, to have a point towards which thought is culminating, progressing, focussing. This focal point helps us to guide ourselves. A belief, whether physiological or psychological, is a necessity to him who is frightened. 'It is my experience and therefore I hold on to it as a guide, a conviction which helps me to progress in life.' Surely belief, a conclusion, a working hypothesis, a conviction, an experience which I hold on to as a guide, an ideal, a conviction which helps me to progress in life, are all merely a pattern, a mould in which the thought functions.

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Religion, surely, is the uncovering of reality. Religion is not belief.
As long as mind is caught up in belief, there is no understanding, there is no freedom.
Truth is truth, one, alone; it has no sides, no paths; all paths do not lead to truth.
Freedom cannot be given; freedom is something that comes into being when you do not seek it;
Every habit, repetition, rituals strengthened by belief and dogma, sensory responses, can be and are refined, but the alert awareness, sensitivity, is quite another matter.
A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want?
That is the nature of belief: taking for granted, accepting something to be true when your own enquiry, your own vitality, energy, has not found out, you believe.
Belief implies accepting as true what we don't know.
Do you agree with the teachings of Buddha?
By studying what we consider important in life, those things which we have accepted - the values, the standards, the beliefs, the innumerable things that we hold - by examining them, perhaps we shall find out the ways of our own thinking and thereby know ourselves.
All men, everywhere in the world have a belief, it does not matter what it is, and that belief guides their mind, whereas life should guide and not belief.
You have to believe in God only when there is no understanding, and you cannot have understanding by searching for it.
Where there is a search for comfort, security, there must be a pattern, a mould, in which we take shelter, and therefore we begin to preconceive what God must be, and what truth must be.
As beliefs separate people, condition people, keep them apart, so possessiveness, expressing itself as class-consciousness and growing into nationality, keeps people apart.
I hold that to have a belief is a limitation.
To really think, the mind must not be tethered to a belief.
To me, truth has no aspects; it is one, and that which is complete, whole, has no aspects.
To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd.
Belief is merely an escape from the present conflict.
Most minds have identified themselves with a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal;
Self-discipline implies a mind that is tethered to a particular thought or belief or ideal, a mind that is held by a condition;
Both the believer and the non-believer in God and immortality are wrong, because the mind cannot comprehend reality until it is completely free of all illusions.
Should not traditions, beliefs, dogmas be questioned?
Man is almost suffocated in the prison of false values, of which he is unconscious.
Your traditions and your beliefs are shelters under which you take cover in time of trouble.
When the mind is stagnant, drugged to sleep by beliefs, crippled by limitations, and is awakened by the movement of life, that awakening we call suffering.
To understand and awaken [this] harmonious intelligence, one must begin, not with assumptions and authoritative assertions, but negatively.
When people say that they believe in reincarnation, in immortality, in God, these are but emotional cravings which to them become objectified concepts and facts.
If you have beliefs, you are translating and moulding your experiences according to them, and so you are continuously forcing and limiting thought-emotion, and these limitations become the "I" process.
There are three conditions of mind: "I know", "I believe", and "I do not know."
We begin to discern what is true only when all want has ceased, for want creates beliefs, ideals, hopes, which are mere escapes.
For a man who is truly uncertain, there is hope;
Fundamentally, vicarious experience cannot have integral value.
To inquire into the unconditioned state when one's mind is limited is so utterly futile.
Surely that is another form of conditioning. How do you know that there is the real?
Are you conscious with your whole being that you are protecting yourself in some form or other through belief, acquisitions, virtue, ambition?
It is one of the illusions of the mind that creates the hope of something beyond its own darkness.
Both the religious and the materialistic mind are conditioned by their own prejudices which prevent the integral comprehension of truth and the communion with it.
Belief and non-belief are definite hindrances to the understanding of reality;
Surely there is a difference between right thinking and right or conditioned thought.
We cannot assume anything, can we?
Questioner: Is not belief in God necessary in this terrible and ruthless world?
By accepting a belief, you exclude all other forms of thinking.
You believe and your belief is merely a condition imposed upon you because it gratifies you and gives you security in society, factually, psychologically and abstractly.
Question: What is the difference between belief and confidence?
If we recognise we are blind, we would be careful and would not make any dogmatic assertion about anything.
Why do you believe and what is there to believe? Do you believe that you are alive? Do you believe that you hear?
If you know God as an idea or as a formula it cannot be real.
To know that I have realized, you also must have realized.
The end is of the same nature as the means; if you use wrong means, you create wrong ends.
Are we aware of the fact that we have belief?
Millions of people can be made, by modern propaganda, to believe in anything - as it has been proved over and over again - in war, in nationalism, in butchery, in calling themselves Mohammedans or Hindus and killing each other.
Belief has no importance whatsoever, it is just a marvellous escape.
We use belief as the most gratifying means to guide ourselves.
In belief is implied authority, an authority either imposed by a society, by a tradition, or the authority through experience in oneself, the authority of memory.
A man who is very firmly fixed in a belief is not pliable; and only that which is pliable, is enduring.
To a man who is believing and seeks guidance, there is never a moment when there is an ending.
... there is no meeting ground between you who are full of beliefs, ceremonies and rituals, and I who am without them.
Beliefs throughout history have acted as a barrier between man and man, and any organization based on a belief must inevitably bring war between man and man as it has done over and over again.
As nationalism divides human beings, beliefs break up friendship and create animosity.
If you experience something directly, it would be experience not based on belief;
When belief becomes stronger than affection, stronger than love, when belief is more important than humanity and your whole make-up is one of belief - whether belief in God or in an ideology, in communalism or in nationalism - , obviously you are the very cause of destruction.
The mind can deceive itself and fabricate anything it wishes.
Please don't be on the offensive or the defensive; because, to understand you must explore, and exploration ceases when you are biased, when you are tethered to a tradition or to a belief.
Question: May we request you to state clearly whether there is God or not?