Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

«« previous quote

next quote »

Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Ommen, Holland | 5th Public Talk 12th August, 1938

To be satisfied, the mind develops its own technique of resistance and non-resistance, which is the will. And when the mind discovers that in the process of satisfaction there is suffering, then it begins to develop desirelessness, detachment. Thus there is the positive and the negative will ever exerting, ever seeking satisfaction. The desire to be satisfied creates will, which maintains itself by its own continual effort. And where will is, there must always follow fear - fear of not being satisfied of not achieving, of not becoming. Will and fear always go together. And again to overcome this fear, effort is made, and in this vicious circle of uncertainty the mind is caught. Will and fear go always hand in hand, and will maintains its continuity from satisfaction to satisfaction, through memory which gives to consciousness its continuity, as the "I".

Tags: desire, effort, will

Related Quotes
Why cannot the mind experience something that is true, beyond its own projections?
Can there be honesty - that is, clear insight, seeing things as they are - if there is a principle, an ideal, an ennobled formula?
Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.
To go beyond the self-enclosing activities of the mind, you must understand them;
Mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition.
The self, the "me," is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits.
To walk alone, unimpeded by thought, by the trail of our desires, is to go beyond the reaches of the mind.
Is silence to be cultivated, carefully nurtured and strengthened? And who is the cultivator? Is he different from the totality of your being?
Creativeness is not a process of becoming or achieving, but a state of being in which self-seeking effort is totally absent.
Desire, which has been the driving force in man, has created a great many pleasant and useful things; desire also, in man's relationships, has created a great many problems and turmoil and misery - the desire for pleasure.
The religious mind does not depend on time for its development.
Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war
You can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it, because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self.
Until you and I understand the 'me', which is the center of discontent, until we go into it and understand this whole process of becoming, achieving, there must always be discontent.
How can a man that is in prison stimulate the desire for freedom?
There is illusion as long as there is a want, which is different from needs.
To understand what I am saying is not very difficult. The difficulty lies in putting what I am saying into action.
Where there is no creative expression of life, we give undue importance to sex, which becomes an acute problem.
Question: I desire many things from life which I do not have. Can you tell me how to get them?
If we destroy desire, there is death;
When you are really able to think without any craving, without any desire to choose - for choice implies opposites - there is discernment.
The very desire to be free creates its own limitation.
Confusion arises only when you are made incapable of adjustment by your fantastic and harmful conceptions, ideals and beliefs.
Before we can understand what is truth, reality, or know if there be such a thing, we must discern what it is that is constantly seeking.
Through want we create confusion, ignorance and suffering, and then we set in movement the process of escape.
If you can deeply comprehend [this] self-sustaining process of ignorance which gives a solidity to the "I", from which arise all confusion and suffering, then life can be lived fully, without the various subtle escapes and pursuits that, unknowingly, you have created for yourself.
The reality of the permanent can only happen, take place, and is not to be cultivated.
[The] process of escape from actuality, from uncertainty, must lead to illusion, abnormality, neurosis and unbalance.
There is the will of want, which is effort, and the will of comprehension, which is discernment.
The process of choice is merely one want overcoming another, one illusion dispelling another, one set of values substituting itself for another.
I have tried to explain that conduct born of compulsion, whether it be the compulsion of reward or of punishment, of fear or of love, is not right conduct.
Desire cannot exist by itself, it must always be in relation to something.
Desire is not emotion; desire is the result of a mind that is ever seeking satisfaction, whose values are based on satisfaction.
The very question of how to be free of desire is prompted by desire itself.
Only in deep emotion is there no craving for satisfaction.
Desire and emotion are two different and distinct processes; desire being entirely of the mind, and emotion the integral expression of one's whole being.
Desire can only recondition itself, reshape itself to a new pattern, but it will still be desire, giving birth to fear.
Question: Are desire and interest, as we know them now, the same?
Question: How can I attain the quality of desirelessness without having the desire to attain it?
What we are trying to do here is to understand the process of desire, not to put a boundary to craving.
To understand the complex causes of conflict and the desire to be free from it, requires not the mere will to be free, but constant awareness in our daily life.
The motive for cultivating the opposite matters greatly; if it is a desire to escape from the struggle and pain of envy, then its opposite becomes identical with itself and so there is no freedom from envy.
To merely deny craving, to merely oppose its many expressions is not to transcend it but to continue in it.
Our conflict within and without arises, does it not, from the changing and contradictory values based on pleasure and pain?
The conflict of acquisitiveness appears in knowledge, in relationship, in possessions; acquisitiveness in any form creates inequality and brutality.
Being is only when there is no effort, positive or negative, to become;
if we were aware of what is, then the truth of sorrow, of impermanency, of imprisonment would liberate thought from its own ignorance.
The desire to become, negatively or positively, is self-expansive and in the expansion of the self there can be no freedom.
All forms of becoming, negative or positive, cause conflict, resistance.
You are this and you want to be that; you are ignorant and you want to be enlightened; you are arrogant and you want to be humble.
The desire to listen and the action of listening are two quite different states.
In the very desire to achieve anything, there is the seed of its own opposite.
Why do you want to give up something, for getting rid of fear or on seeing it as it is?
Your mind is conditioned right through; there is no part of you which is unconditioned.
Any action born of noise produces more noise, more confusion.
Man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly.
We are saying: Be dead to love; it doesn't matter. Live entirely in your intellect and in your verbal manipulations, your cunning arguments.
An ambitious man, whether he be a merchant, a politician, or a so-called saint is essentially a self-contradictory human being.
We all need a quiet mind, a peaceful mind, an absolutely silent mind without a murmur of thought. Is that possible? Possible means we don't know.
To be fully aware of the present is an extraordinarily difficult task because the mind is incapable of facing a fact directly without deception.
Is there an action which is not the result of effort, which is not the action of will?
Why has all of life, the way we live, become a constant struggle, conflict and effort?
Surely, truth is not something distant; truth is in the little things of everyday life - in every word, in every smile, in every relationship - only we do not know how to see it;
It is easy to perceive what is, but to be free of it is another matter;
Our whole effort is concerned with this superimposition of what we call right ideas on what we consider wrong ideas, and by this attempt we continually create a division in action.
How is one to have this intelligence which destroys struggle and conflict and the ceaseless effort which wears out mind itself?
A man who is trying to fall in love shall never know love.
Pliability of mind is not in becoming something, in worshipping success, but it is known when the mind denudes itself of those resistances which it has brought into being through craving.
As long as the mind is not aware of [its] limitations, the effort to evolve, to succeed, only creates further suffering and increases the unconscious.
Whatever effort the mind makes must be part of that from which it is trying to get away.
We are in a state of continual effort, because that which to us is light, is not light, it is only the light, the good of the intellect.
Do you make an effort to discover the cause of joy? If you do, then joy ceases to be and only its memories and habits exist.
The very question of how to be free of desire is prompted by desire itself.
Neither postponement nor trying to seek an immediate solution to our human problems can free thought from bondage.
Without self-knowledge, to make a choice between the opposites must inevitably lead to further ignorance and sorrow.
Being is only when there is no effort, positive or negative, to become;
Effort made to be free without the liberating action of Truth is still within the enclosing walls of the self.
Unforced receptivity is much more significant than the effort made to understand.
These discussions will have meaning only if we are open to the experience of discovery, which is prevented by our clinging obstinately to beliefs, memories, and conditioned prejudices.
Questioner: We do have to make some kind of effort, do we not?
You may succeed in forcibly stilling the mind, but what is the outcome of such effort? Death, is it not?
Is understanding to come through effort, or is there a state in which effort has ceased for understanding to be?
'How' immediately becomes the problem and therefore you are back again where you were.
I think we will understand the significance of life if we understood what it means to make an effort.
The moment of creation is not born of struggle.
It is only when we are not aware of exactly 'what is', that we make the effort to transform it.
The moment you are aware, which is neither to condemn nor justify, the moment you accept, look and observe what is, there is no effort; then the thing that you observe, that which is, that which you are aware of, has an extraordinary significance.
All greatness, like love, comes to you. If you pursue love it will never come, but if you are open, still, not demanding, it will come.
Most of you agree with what we have discussed so far in regard to the falseness of the trick played by the mind on itself; yet you have not seen the real depth of this problem and, therefore, it has not brought about clarification and transformation in you.
Does sorrow, suffering, come to an end through effort, through a thought process?
Awareness demands an extraordinarily persistent watchfulness to see how the mind works when there is suffering, to follow the swift movement of every thought and thereby comprehend the whole process of effort, of thought and of memory.
Attention is not exclusive. If I exclude, there is effort and effort leads to distortion.
Sincerity can never be simple; sincerity is the breeding ground of the will, and will cannot uncover the ways of the self.
It is only the righteous man that develops his will as a means of resistance, and a man of will can never find truth, because he is never free.
Freedom cannot be given; freedom is something that comes into being when you do not seek it;
Is silence to be cultivated, carefully nurtured and strengthened? And who is the cultivator? Is he different from the totality of your being?
We are saying: Be dead to love; it doesn't matter. Live entirely in your intellect and in your verbal manipulations, your cunning arguments.
You cannot brush the past aside. It is there.
An ambitious man, whether he be a merchant, a politician, or a so-called saint is essentially a self-contradictory human being.
Have the teachings attributed to the great teachers - Christ, Buddha, Hermes and others - any value for the attainment of the direct path to truth?
The energy which seeks truth creates its own discipline without any form of imposition; and as the river finds the sea, so that energy finds its own freedom.
You can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it, because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self.
Is there an action which is not the result of effort, which is not the action of will?
Will is the outcome of the conflict of choice, but discernment is choiceless.
There are two kinds of will - the will that is born out of desire, want, craving, and the will that is of discernment, comprehension.
The change in will is submission to the authority of ideal and conduct. The change of will is discernment, intelligence, in which there is not the conflict of antitheses.
The will to exist, the will to become perfect, the will to succeed, the will to acquire, the will to find God, is the urge of egotism.
Will living according to a pattern, an ideal, following it ruthlessly, meditating upon it, bring you to the discovery of yourself?
Is each one aware of the mechanical process of the intellect, of the will, which destroys the spontaneous, the real?
Creative emptiness is not to be run after or sought by devious ways. It must happen. Truth is.
Being poor inwardly, psychologically, spiritually, one thinks of enriching oneself through possessions, with ever increasing complex demands and problems.
You may be able to overcome greed through the mere exertion of the will of denial, but that does not lead to understanding, to love, for such a will is the product of conflict and therefore cannot free itself from greed.
Understanding is not brought about through the mere exertion of a one-sided will but through that experimental approach which has that peculiar quality of wholeness.
All overcoming is a form of ignorance and violence; only understanding can free thought from bondage.
It is only when we are really inwardly free from greed, not merely in our outward relationship and action, that there can be peace and disinterested action.
To understand the complex causes of conflict and the desire to be free from it, requires not the mere will to be free, but constant awareness in our daily life.
The motive for cultivating the opposite matters greatly; if it is a desire to escape from the struggle and pain of envy, then its opposite becomes identical with itself and so there is no freedom from envy.
Without self-knowledge, to make a choice between the opposites must inevitably lead to further ignorance and sorrow.
In opposition there is no understanding.
This abandonment of the self is not an act of will;
An intelligence which is the product of desire, of self-expansion, is ever creating resistance, and it can never bring about tranquillity.
It is truth alone that frees, not the activity of will.
[Understanding] involves change of will altogether and not merely change in will.
You cannot overcome a hindrance; the hindrance has to be understood by approaching it without condemnation, without judging, without a desire to alter it.
You will have understanding only when you consider the problem, when you accept it, look at it, become aware of its significance completely, and even love it.
All greatness, like love, comes to you. If you pursue love it will never come, but if you are open, still, not demanding, it will come.
So, as long as the thinker is separate from his thought, there will be problems, one after the other, innumerable problems;