Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Ojai, California | 12th Public Talk 1st July, 1934

As we have built up through centuries, generation after generation, this wheel of self-protection, spiritual and economic, let us find out if spiritual or economic self-protection is real. Perhaps economically you may assert self-protection for awhile. The man who has money and many possessions, and who has secured comforts and pleasures for his body, is generally, if you will observe, most insufficient and unintelligent, and is groping after so-called spiritual protection.

Let us inquire however if there really is spiritual self-protection, because economically we see there is no security. The illusion of economic security is shown throughout the world by these depressions, crises, wars, calamities, and chaos. We recognize this, and so turn to spiritual security. But to me there is no security, there is no self-protection, and there never can be any. I say there is only wisdom, which is understanding, not protection. That is, security, self-protection, is the outcome of insufficiency, in which there is no intelligence, in which there is no creative thinking, in which there is constant battle between the"you" and society, and in which the cunning exploit you ruthlessly. As long as there is the pursuit of self-protection there must be conflict, and so there can be no understanding, no wisdom. And as long as this attitude exists, your search for spirituality, for truth, or for God is vain, useless, because it is merely the search for greater power, greater security.

Tags: conflict, fear, security

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You have not solved conflict, you have merely shifted it by substituting a new environment, a new condition, which will in turn produce further conflict.
If you look into your lives, you will see that conflict is continually twisting, perverting, shaping your lives;
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Some people believe that the "I" has had a birth in the distant past and will continue in the future. It is irrelevant to me, it has no significance at all.
You know we have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly.
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In times of peace and quietness, there takes place a gradual change of values, mostly unconscious, and this change, this gradual change, we term the struggle between the old and the young.
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The turmoil, the end, and the "you" are the same; there is no division.
It is the very essence of stupidity to escape from conflict through a series of established values, or through forming a new set of values.
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Relationship is now based on dependence, that is, one depends on another for one's psychological satisfaction, happiness and well-being.
Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter.
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The relationship between what one is and what one desires to be causes fear.
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If what I say is destructive to any particular organization or society, then either that society is false or what I say is false; and it is for you to consider, to judge and to act without compromise.
There cannot be human, vital relationships, or living joyously in the plenitude of life in the present - which to me is the only eternity - so long as mind and heart are crippled through fear;
The very inquiry into the future shows that you are already dying.
Patriotism is a disease, and when you begin to realize, become aware that it is a disease, then you will see how your mind is reacting to that disease.
Where there is fear there must be discipline, compulsion, influence, domination, the search for power which the mind glorifies as virtue and as divine.
You have created disciplines, codes and authorities, and your life is moulded, controlled and shaped by compulsion of various forms and degrees.
As in a circus the animals are trained to function for the amusement of spectators, so the individual through fear seeks out these spiritual trainers whom he calls priests and swamis, who are the defenders of spurious spirituality and the inanities of religion.
When we say we seek out or cultivate a new value, it is but the overcoming of that in which the mind is already caught up, which is its opposite.
Question: I do not care what happens after death, but I am afraid of dying. Must I fight this fear, and how can I overcome it?
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In order to escape from fear, you create faith.
Man is almost suffocated in the prison of false values, of which he is unconscious.
To discuss and intellectually discover what is intelligence would be, I feel, a waste of time and energy, for that would not lift the burden of ignorance and illusion.
Fear is so subtle. so swift, so cunning, that it hides itself in many places.
What happens when you seek security, certainty?
What really awakens intelligence is action without the fear of not adjusting oneself to a standard or an ideal.
One can wholly eliminate fear, it is not a fundamental part of life.
The will to survive, the will to be satisfied, the will to continue - this is the very root cause of fear.
Please do not [at the beginning of these talks] expect an immediate solution for your various problems.
Intellect merely guides fear, controls it, but can never destroy it, for intellect is the very cause of fear.
When there is discontentment, sorrow, the intellect mechanically comes forward with solutions, explanations, tentative suggestions, which gradually crystallize and become habits of thought.
There is only one fundamental problem, which expresses itself in many different ways.
Desire cannot exist by itself, it must always be in relation to something.
Is not the mind, as we know it, an instrument developed for survival, for satisfaction, for self-protection, for resistance, and therefore the instrument of fear?
Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter.
From my point of view, religions with all their intermediaries, their ceremonies, their priests, destroy creative understanding and pervert judgment.
Instead of addressing heterogeneous crowds in many places and dazzling and confounding them with your brilliance and subtlety, why do you not start a community or colony and create a reference for your way of thinking?
One takes comfort, security, in any form of illusion. And man apparently needs many illusions.
Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war
The other day as one was walking along a secluded wooded lane far from the noise and the brutality and the vulgarity of civilization, right away from everything that was put together by man, there was a sense of great quietness, enveloping all things - serene, distant and full of the sound of the earth.
Actually, there is no security in life - neither physical nor intellectual, neither emotional nor spiritual.
There is no such thing as comfort in life, no such thing as security.
When you realize that there is no such thing as comfort, no such thing as security, either in possession of things or of ideas, then you face life as it is, not with the background of intense longing for comfort.
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 in a circus the animals are trained to function for the amusement of spectators, so the individual through fear seeks out these spiritual trainers whom he calls priests and swamis, who are the defenders of spurious spirituality and the inanities of religion.
There is no such thing as fundamental security
To find out what is true, what is the significance of life, what is immortality, without which life becomes a chaotic triviality, a senseless, blind suffering, you must have intelligence;
this search for physical security expresses itself in possessions, with all its cruelties, exploitations, and the rather terrifying stupidities such as nationalism, class wars, racial hatred.
When there is complete nakedness, utter hopelessness, then in that moment of vital insecurity there is born the flame of supreme intelligence, the bliss of truth.
There is no security, no comfort, but only clarity of thought which brings about the understanding of the fundamental cause of suffering, which alone will liberate man.
The continual process of awakening the mind from its own limitations is true experience.
A man who would understand truth must be free from the desire for security and comfort.
One creates one's own authority when there is the desire to protect oneself or take shelter in a hope or in an ideal or in a certain set of values.
What happens when you seek security, certainty?
Intelligence, which has no concern with the conception of security, arranges the well-being of the whole and not merely of the particular.
Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter.