Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

«« previous quote

next quote »

Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil | 4th Public Talk 10th May, 1935

You have to ask yourself whether you are seeking a solution for your suffering within the circle of illusion, within the environment of centuries, and thus creating further illusions and entrenching yourself more within that prison; or whether you are seeking to break through the many illusions that you have built about yourself through the centuries. For in the process of discernment, the cause of suffering is known and dissolved. It is only then, and not till then, that the mind is able to discern truth. The very search for reality is an illusion, because it is but an escape. When all escapes and illusions have been cleared away by understanding, then only can the mind perceive that which is enduring, the immeasurable.

Tags: escape, illusion

Related Quotes
There is a common need to escape, and mutually we use each other. This usage is called love.
We are as war-minded as ever, we hate some other group of people, we despise this political leader and support that, we are duped by organized religions, we are nationalistic, and our miseries continue;
With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes. We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities.
The shallow are ever afraid of what they are; but what they are is the truth.
To worship another is to worship oneself; the image, the symbol, is a projection of oneself.
Your business, your religion, your gods, your leaders, your political and economic actions, your escapes, your social activities, your joining one party and rejecting another - all that is emphasizing and giving strength to the 'me'.
Most of us do not want to die to anything, particularly to that which gives us pleasure, to the memory of things that we have known and cherished.
Whatever you try to do, you do intellectually, and therefore falsely.
Our very seeking for God or truth is an escape.
When all the avenues of escape which the mind has invented have been understood and blocked, there remains only suffering, and then you will understand it.
Most of you who are religiously inclined, are in search of truth, and that very search indicates that you are escaping from the conflict of the present
Heaven knows, we have conflicts all day long, but we have trained our mind to be cunning, and so pass over these conflicts lightly, escape from them.
One should bear in mind that what we call accumulation of sorrows does not lead to intensity, nor does the multiplication of suffering lead to its own dissolution;
You merely seek to adjust yourselves to a pattern, in order to escape from conflict or from your environment.
To me religion is the false result of a false cause, the cause being conflict, and religion merely a means of escape from that conflict.
Perhaps you are merely trying to use my words as a means of escape; perhaps you are using my words, my ideas to fill your own emptiness.
Explanations and formulas offer only means of escape from conflict.
We have built up through many centuries an environment of such illusions as authority, imitativeness, beliefs, ideals, which give us the opportunity of subtle escape.
The future is nothing but an escape from actuality, through an ideal to which we try to adjust the present, the immediate action.
We have many stupidities and limitations which are slowly destroying intelligence, such as ideals, beliefs, dogmas, nationalism and the possessive idea of family;
The subtle desire for ideals and their permanence indicates that you want to cross the ocean of life without suffering.
Where there is the disturbance of our security through the action of life, that we call suffering.
For most people, what they call reality or God or happiness is merely an escape from suffering, from this continual tension between action and understanding.
[The] process of escape from actuality, from uncertainty, must lead to illusion, abnormality, neurosis and unbalance.
To understand life and to have true values, you must perceive how you are held by the opposites, and before rejecting them, you must discern their deep significance.
Suffering, from which we are ever trying to escape, can lead us to the comprehension of the "I" process, to the profound knowledge of oneself, but all escapes into illusion must cease.
You should not withdraw from life to consider life.
As a man takes refuge in the rationalized conclusion [that all things must decay], and thereby softens his suffering, so by taking refuge in a belief, in a supposed fact, you also deaden the action of sorrow.
You may have faith in love, another in God, and so on. All such faith is an anchorage for the mind.
We all have to live in this world; we cannot escape from it.
It is natural, is it not, to be depressed at this present time when there is so much killing, confusion and sorrow?
Why do we not realise that our pursuit of drunkenness, God or an ideal is only the pursuit of our escape from facing the actual, and therefore reduces us to a state of dullness and insensitivity?
What generally happens is that we become very skilful, very clever in our escapes, but suffering continues and this becoming intelligent in escapes is called intelligent living.
The moment you are aware of confusion, of exactly what is, you try to escape from it.
We have to find out what is the accurate, correct, right action, or right livelihood in the world of reality, and reality includes illusion
Can there be honesty - that is, clear insight, seeing things as they are - if there is a principle, an ideal, an ennobled formula?
The craving for experience is the beginning of illusion.
Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.
Meditation is seeing the constant touching the ever-changing movement of life.
A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want?
For me, revolution is synonymous with religion. I do not mean by the word 'revolution' immediate economic or social change; I mean a revolution in consciousness itself.
One takes comfort, security, in any form of illusion. And man apparently needs many illusions.
We have divided life into dying and living. And this division has brought about great fear. And out of that fear we invent all kinds of theories, very comforting, may be illusory, but it is very comforting, illusions are comfortably neurotic.
The religious mind does not depend on time for its development.
Instead of discerning the cause, you think that you can comprehend yourself through another. This looking to the example of another only leads to illusion and suffering.
Most of us do not want to die to anything, particularly to that which gives us pleasure, to the memory of things that we have known and cherished.
The power to create illusion is vastly more significant to understand than to understand reality.
That which is real will be known when the various forms of illusions have ceased.
Most minds have identified themselves with a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal;
What happens to a house whose walls you are merely decorating though its foundations are rotten?
If you don't understand something and merely try to modify it, your action must increase the barriers, must build up new sets of barriers;
Not having that creative intelligence which is the comprehension of environment, man begins to play within the walls of his prison, he begins to embellish and decorate the prison and he makes himself comfortable within its walls;
Intelligence is the only solution that will bring about harmony in this world of conflict, harmony between mind and heart in action.
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.
Our present search for reality is nothing but the search for a greater and more magnificent illusion.
When there is true discernment there is the ecstasy of the immeasurable, which cannot be imagined or preconceived, but only experienced.
Illusion divides itself infinitely.
The continual process of awakening the mind from its own limitations is true experience.
We have many stupidities and limitations which are slowly destroying intelligence, such as ideals, beliefs, dogmas, nationalism and the possessive idea of family;
A man who would understand truth must be free from the desire for security and comfort.
In pursuit of an illusion, one often feels an exhilaration, an emotionalism; but when one examines this emotional structure, it is nothing but a limitation, the building up of walls of refuge.
Until the mind-heart is deeply, profoundly conscious of its own process, its own power to create illusions, there cannot be discernment.
To inquire into the unconditioned state when one's mind is limited is so utterly futile.
It is one of the illusions of the mind that creates the hope of something beyond its own darkness.
The conflict between the actual and the illusory must continue till either the unreal overcomes the actual or the actual breaks through all safeguards, all escapes, and begins to reveal its deep significance.
As the mind is capable of creating illusion this power must be understood before it can be wholly free from its own self-created distractions.
In opposition there is no understanding.
We translate all experience in terms of our own conditioning, the deeper it is the more alertly aware must we be not to misread it.
Just as the sensate man creates havoc in the world, the man of ideation with a framework of references also creates mischief; in fact, the latter does more harm.
Since it is extremely difficult and arduous to be aware, you spin out theories, you escape through property, through name and family, and all the rest of the absurdities which bring about destruction.
It is such a phoney superficial world, so ugly if you look behind the curtain; and we are decorating the curtain and hoping that everything will be right behind it.