Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Ojai, California | 8th Public Talk 25th June, 1934

Question: When a person I love, without attachment or longing, comes into my thoughts and I dwell on them pleasantly for a moment, is this what you decry as not living fully in the present?

Krishnamurti: What is living fully in the present? I will try again to explain what I mean. A mind that is in conflict, in struggle, is continually seeking an escape; either the memory of the past unconsciously precipitates itself in the mind, or the mind deliberately turns back into the past and lives in the delight of that past, which is one form of escape. Or else the mind in conflict, in struggle, which is without understanding, seeks a future, a future that you call a belief, a goal, a culmination, an achievement, a success, and escapes to that. It is the function of memory to be cunning and to escape from the present. This process of looking back is but one of the tricks of memory which you call self-analysis, which but perpetuates memory, and therefore limits and confines the mind, banishing intelligence.

So there are these various forms of escape, and when mind has ceased to escape through memory, when memory no longer clouds the mind and heart, there is then that ecstasy of living in the present. This can only be when mind is no longer taking delight in the past or the future, when mind does not create division; in other words, when that supreme intelligence which is truth, which is beauty, which is love itself, is functioning normally, without effort - then in that state intelligence is timeless, and then there is not this fear of not living in the present.

So there are these various forms of escape, and when mind has ceased to escape through memory, when memory no longer clouds the mind and heart, there is then that ecstasy of living in the present. This can only be when mind is no longer taking delight in the past or the future, when mind does not create division; in other words, when that supreme intelligence which is truth, which is beauty, which is love itself, is functioning normally, without effort - then in that state intelligence is timeless, and then there is not this fear of not living in the present.

Tags: memory, time

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