Jiddu Krishnamurti

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation - which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased - only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher's or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself - Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs, these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge: the knowledge of God's plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.

Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.

Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery.

If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower.

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.

Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.

Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence.

Truth is something which you must see immediately — and to see something clearly you must give your heart and your mind and your whole being to it immediately.

The demand to be safe in a relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear.