Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Amsterdam, Holland | 5th Public Talk 26th May 1955

Question: Will you please explain what you mean by awareness?

Krishnamurti: Just simple awareness! Awareness of your judgments, your prejudices, your likes and dislikes. When you see something, that seeing is the outcome of your comparison, condemnation, judgment, evaluation, is it not? When you read something you are judging, you are criticizing, you are condemning or approving. To be aware is to see, in the very moment, this whole process of judging, evaluating, the conclusions, the conformity, the acceptances, the denials. Now, can one be aware without all that? At present all we know is a process of evaluating, and that evaluation is the outcome of our conditioning, of our background, of our religious, moral and educational influences. Such so-called awareness is the result of our memory, - memory as the 'me', the Dutchman. the Hindu, the Buddhist. the Catholic, or whatever it may be. It is the 'me', - my memories, my family, my property, my qualities, - which is looking judging, evaluating. With that we are quite familiar, if we are at all alert. Now, can there be awareness without all that, without the self? Is it possible just to look without condemnation, just to observe the movement of the mind, one's own mind, without judging, without evaluating, without saying 'It is good', or 'It is bad'? The awareness which springs from the self, which is the awareness of evaluation and judgment, always creates duality, the conflict of the opposites, - that which is and that which should be. In that awareness there is judgment, there is fear, there is evaluation, condemnation, identification. That is but the awareness of the 'me', of the self, of the 'I' with all its traditions. memories, and all the rest of it. Such awareness always creates conflict between the observer and the observed, between what I am and what I should be. Now. is it possible to be aware without this process of condemnation, judgment, evaluation? Is it possible to look at myself, whatever my thoughts are, and not condemn, not judge, not evaluate? I do not know if you have ever tried it. It is quite arduous, - because all our training from childhood leads us to condemn or to approve. And in the process of condemnation and approval there is frustration, there is fear, there is a gnawing pain, anxiety, which is the very process of the 'me', the self.

Tags: awareness, conditioning, memory, time

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It is we human beings who are always concerned about death - because we are not living.
Creative emptiness is not possible so long as there is the thinker who is waiting, watching, observing in order to gather experience, in order to strengthen himself.
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To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result, is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful.
Patience is not time. Impatience is time. Patience has no time.
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Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect and space is divided for him into dimensions, time into past, present and future.
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If action is conditioned by an idea, by a formula, by a concept, action then is not important, but the idea is important, and therefore, there is a conflict between action and idea.
Time is merely the outcome of our not meeting the fact without knowledge.
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A fundamental question cannot be answered by somebody else.
A constant battle is going on within us, wearing us out in the process.
Is there time to overcome death; or is death always in harmony with life, with love, with pain; or is death something to be put far away, one day we have to face it but not now?
Time is a movement invented by thought.
Life is not what we would like it to be; life is not permanent at all.
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If you perceive and live completely in the very thing that you are experiencing, then this idea of change from the unessential to the essential disappears
I say that time does not bring you understanding; when you look to time as a gradual process of unfoldment you are creating a hindrance.
The very inquiry into the future shows that you are already dying.
What is living fully in the present?
The future is nothing but an escape from actuality, through an ideal to which we try to adjust the present, the immediate action.
The "I" process that seeks to perpetuate itself is nothing but accumulated craving.
The past is the background of conditioned thought-action which is dominating and controlling the present and thereby creating a predetermined future.
Where there is intense interest there is full awareness.
In your eagerness you want immediate results, you are concerned with results and not with the ways and means; thus in your haste you become a plaything of empty promises.