What do you think?
Rate this book
Relationships: To Oneself, To Others, To the World
Modern quantum physics, most psychological insight, and all religions reveal the interconnectedness of everything in the universe, that everything always affects everything else. Because all life is lived in relationships, it is essential that we understand what a relationship is, and what every movement in relationships can mean to us and everyone else. Put together, all our individual relationships create society. Attention to our own behavior in relationship will recreate the world.
204 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2003
19 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
About the author
J. Krishnamurti
1,336 books4,268 followersJiddu Krishnamurti was born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in south India. He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society. Dr Besant and others proclaimed that Krishnamurti was to be a world teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. To prepare the world for this coming, a world-wide organization called the Order of the Star in the East was formed and the young Krishnamurti was made its head.
In 1929, however, Krishnamurti renounced the role that he was expected to play, dissolved the Order with its huge following, and returned all the money and property that had been donated for this work.
From then, for nearly sixty years until his death on 17 February 1986, he travelled throughout the world talking to large audiences and to individuals about the need for a radical change in humankind.
Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He did not expound any philosophy or religion, but rather talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday lives, of the problems of living in modern society with its violence and corruption, of the individual's search for security and happiness, and the need for humankind to free itself from inner burdens of fear, anger, hurt, and sorrow. He explained with great precision the subtle workings of the human mind, and pointed to the need for bringing to our daily life a deeply meditative and spiritual quality.
Krishnamurti belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought. On the contrary, he maintained that these are the very factors that divide human beings and bring about conflict and war. He reminded his listeners again and again that we are all human beings first and not Hindus, Muslims or Christians, that we are like the rest of humanity and are not different from one another. He asked that we tread lightly on this earth without destroying ourselves or the environment. He communicated to his listeners a deep sense of respect for nature. His teachings transcend belief systems, nationalistic sentiment and sectarianism. At the same time, they give new meaning and direction to humankind's search for truth. His teaching, besides being relevant to the modern age, is timeless and universal.
Krishnamurti spoke not as a guru but as a friend, and his talks and discussions are based not on tradition-based knowledge but on his own insights into the human mind and his vision of the sacred, so he always communicates a sense of freshness and directness although the essence of his message remained unchanged over the years. When he addressed large audiences, people felt that Krishnamurti was talking to each of them personally, addressing his or her particular problem. In his private interviews, he was a compassionate teacher, listening attentively to the man or woman who came to him in sorrow, and encouraging them to heal themselves through their own understanding. Religious scholars found that his words threw new light on traditional concepts. Krishnamurti took on the challenge of modern scientists and psychologists and went with them step by step, discussed their theories and sometimes enabled them to discern the limitations of those theories. Krishnamurti left a large body of literature in the form of public talks, writings, discussions with teachers and students, with scientists and religious figures, conversations with individuals, television and radio interviews, and letters. Many of these have been published as books, and audio and video recordings.
This author also writes under: Jiddu Krishnamurti
In 1929, however, Krishnamurti renounced the role that he was expected to play, dissolved the Order with its huge following, and returned all the money and property that had been donated for this work.
From then, for nearly sixty years until his death on 17 February 1986, he travelled throughout the world talking to large audiences and to individuals about the need for a radical change in humankind.
Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He did not expound any philosophy or religion, but rather talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday lives, of the problems of living in modern society with its violence and corruption, of the individual's search for security and happiness, and the need for humankind to free itself from inner burdens of fear, anger, hurt, and sorrow. He explained with great precision the subtle workings of the human mind, and pointed to the need for bringing to our daily life a deeply meditative and spiritual quality.
Krishnamurti belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought. On the contrary, he maintained that these are the very factors that divide human beings and bring about conflict and war. He reminded his listeners again and again that we are all human beings first and not Hindus, Muslims or Christians, that we are like the rest of humanity and are not different from one another. He asked that we tread lightly on this earth without destroying ourselves or the environment. He communicated to his listeners a deep sense of respect for nature. His teachings transcend belief systems, nationalistic sentiment and sectarianism. At the same time, they give new meaning and direction to humankind's search for truth. His teaching, besides being relevant to the modern age, is timeless and universal.
Krishnamurti spoke not as a guru but as a friend, and his talks and discussions are based not on tradition-based knowledge but on his own insights into the human mind and his vision of the sacred, so he always communicates a sense of freshness and directness although the essence of his message remained unchanged over the years. When he addressed large audiences, people felt that Krishnamurti was talking to each of them personally, addressing his or her particular problem. In his private interviews, he was a compassionate teacher, listening attentively to the man or woman who came to him in sorrow, and encouraging them to heal themselves through their own understanding. Religious scholars found that his words threw new light on traditional concepts. Krishnamurti took on the challenge of modern scientists and psychologists and went with them step by step, discussed their theories and sometimes enabled them to discern the limitations of those theories. Krishnamurti left a large body of literature in the form of public talks, writings, discussions with teachers and students, with scientists and religious figures, conversations with individuals, television and radio interviews, and letters. Many of these have been published as books, and audio and video recordings.
This author also writes under: Jiddu Krishnamurti
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 6, 2014
One of the most important and passionate books I've read.
Together we can observe the extraordinary phenomena of human existence.
Education must be for learning skills in the art of living, not mere acquisition of academic and intellectual skills, but an understanding of the whole human being mind and heart.
Human beings have to free themselves of fear, conditioning, authority and dogma through self-knowledge.
transform the world to a life of goodness, love and compassion
We all live in relationship. We live in relationship to one another, to our families, to the world, to the earth, and the universe. Every evil affects us all; but so does every good.
Most of us realize, when we are not too scared to look at it, that we are a very lonely people. Even in our our families, among friends, even with a boyfriend or girlfriend, we often feel isolated and lonely.
Even in the most intimate relationship with somebody, we are thinking about ourselves, our fears of being abandoned, our insecurities.
We are taught how to make a living, but not how to live.
The key to right relationship is to understand our own thinking, which is self-knowledge -- the ability to understand all the ways we have been conditioned to think and behave by our personal experience, our families, our culture, country, religions, our gender and biology.
If you don’t understand your own thinking, whatever you do think has little meaning. Without knowledge of your own biases and the impediments of biological or personal prejudice, without understanding your fears, your hurt, your anger, without the ability to see through and beyond them, all your thinking, all your relationships will be fogged or skewed. After all, self-knowledge is the basis for relationship.
You can find the truth about yourself in the most available mirror of all -- the mirror of relationship itself. You can see how you feel, what you think, how you behave just by carefully watching how you are in encounters with the people in your life every day. Life changes every minute, and so do you. Just notice what you are feeling.
This kind of self-knowledge and alertness in behavior brings freedom to your life and relationships. All human brains are more alike than unalike, and to understand yourself is to understand everyone else as well.
Life is enormous. If all we do is dig a hole and crawl into it, we’re going to miss the whole extraordinary experience of living. Live in love, not just with one person in particular, but with all life.
Psychological freedom: it is not our wars, inner and outer, that will set us free, but the truth about ourselves.
Someone else’s opinion about you and the way you live your life is no more nourishing than someone else eating your dinner.
I depend on you because you give me pleasure, you give me comfort, you give me satisfaction, you give me a sense of security, a balance, a harmony, a companionship, a togetherness.
Why do I want a boyfriend or a girlfriend so much?
Being isolated, we try to reach out for a companion, for friendship, for something that we can cling to. Intellectually, emotionally, physically, in the deeper levels of consciousness -- a constant demand to find someone, some idea, some hope, some kind of thing that will give a tremendous sense of being, a sense of identification with another or with ourselves. We do it because there is a sense of emptiness, of loneliness, or insufficiency in the ever self-centered activities.
In pleasure, there is always a subtle form of effort -- a seeking, craving, demanding, struggling to keep it, to get it.
In passion, there is not the slightest fulfillment, therefore there can be neither frustration nor pain. Passion is the freedom from the ‘me’ therefore passion is the essence of life. It is this that moves and lives. But when thought brings in all the problems of having and holding, then passion ceases.
The problem is not sex, but how to be free from the self.
Love is a state of being.
Communion - verbal, intellectual sharing. No barrier. Both meet at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity. That communion really transforms one’s whole state of mind. Love is only possible when there is the act of sharing. Otherwise it is mere emotionalism and sentimentalism.
Our everyday life is this act of imparting, listening and understanding. And for most of us, listening is one of the most difficult things to do. One hardly ever pays attention. Hardly ever sees or listens. But it is only in listening that one learns.
Relationship based on mutual need brings conflict. However interdependent we are, we are using each for for a purpose, for an end. A society based on mutual usage is the foundation of violence. When we use another, we only picture the end to be gained. This prevents communion.
The question == that is, not that you should not be loved, but that you should love. What does it mean? To help naturally without any motive, to be kind, to be generous, to have sympathy, to care for something. Most people have not got it. They are concerned with their achievements, their longings, with their success, with their knowledge. They have built up their past into such colossal importance that it ultimately destroys them.
generosity -- you give to somebody the little that you have
If you have that feeling of love, of generosity, of kindness, of gentleness, then perhaps you can awaken that in others.
Abstinence is only control. Their violence is in denying the flesh and every form of desire, every form of beauty. It is a waste of energy. A suppressed heart cannot know what love is. It cannot know love if it is caught in habit, in sensation.
Chastity can only exist when there is love. Without love, chastity is merely lust, in a different form. Life in the fullness of love is a revolution that will bring about a new world.
We all want companionship, we all want sexual relationships, a biological necessity. And we also want somebody on wom we can rely, in whom we can find security, in whom there is a sense of comfort, support. Because most of us cannot stand alone, on our own feet. We are never at home with anybody because we are living in our own thoughts. We are frightened to stand alone. Because life is very lonely, life is very, very complex and troublesome and one needs somebody with whom you can talk things over.
One finds out how to live with another without conflict. That requires a great deal of intelligence, integrity.
Love is not habitual; love is something joyous, creative, new.Therefore habit is the contrary of love. You can only act when there is an awakening of your mind and heart.
There is no loss of energy in being in love.
Fear is one of the barrier to intelligence. The essence of education is to help the student -- you and me -- to be aware and understand the causes of fear so that from childhood on, we can live free of fear.
The right kind of education is concerned with individual freedom, which alone can bring true cooperation with the whole. Freedom comes through self-knowledge, when the mind goes above its craving for security. The function of education is to help each individual discover the psychological hindrances, and not merely impose new patterns of conduct, new modes of thinking.
When we begin to understand the deep significance of human life, there can be true education. But to understand, the mind must free itself from the desire for reward which breeds fear and conformity. If we regard our children as personal property, then we shall build an environment, a social structure in which there is no love, but only a pursuit of self-centered advantages.
-
Right Education
The right kind of education is not possible en masse. To study, each child requires patience, alertness and intelligence. This calls for skill, interest, and above all, a sense of affection. The spirit of individual freedom and intelligence should pervade the whole school at all times.
It is particularly important for students and teachers to meet regularly to discuss all matters relating to the well being of the whole group. Thrash out the problems of discipline, cleanliness, food, etc. Self-government in school is a preparation for self-government in later life. The school should encourage children to understand one another’s difficulties and peculiarities, moods and tempers, for then they will be more thoughtful and patient in their relationship with others as they grow up.
The world we have created is so superficial, so artificial, so ugly if one looks behind the curtain, and we decorate the curtain hoping that everything will somehow come right.
An educator is one who points the way to wisdom, to truth, not merely a giver of information. To create a new society, each of us has to be a true teacher, which means that we have to be both the pupil and the master; we have to educate ourselves.
Freedom from Conditioning and Conforming
Freedom is not the outcome of discipline. Freedom does not come after conditioning the mind.
Do We Really Love Our Children?
Can parents claim to love their children when by educating them wrongly, they foster envy, enmity and ambition? It is love that stimulates the national and racial antagonisms which lead to war, destruction and utter misery?
If parents love their children, they will not belong to any organized religion; for dogma and believe divide people into conflicting groups, creating antagonism between people.
~
So it seems to me very important to find out what it is we are seeking. You will find that the mind is merely seeking some kind of satisfaction, some kind of pleasant invention which will gratify it; and once having found or created for itself a shelter of opinion and conclusion, therein it stays, so our search seemingly comes to an end. Or, if we are dissatisfied, we go from one to another, always trying to find a permanent security, inwardly as well as outwardly, a permanent happiness, a permanent peace.
When we do not understand our own urges and compulsions, they produce certain activities which create conflict in ourselves; and what we are seeking is to avoid or escape from this conflict, is it not?
Most of us seek security of some kind because our lives are an endless conflict. The boredom of life and the anxiety of life; the despair of existence; the feeling that you want to be loved and you are not loved; the shallowness, the pettiness of everyday existence -- that is our life. You want a permanent state where you will not be disturbed by anything, by any fear, by any anxiety, by any uncertainty, by any sense of guilt. Most of us seek that outwardly as well as inwardly.
When you see the truth that there is no security, then you are creative. You are not tethered to anything.
The actual state of every human being is uncertainty.
The fact is that all of us are insecure; there is nothing secure.
If you understand this question of security and insecurity you find yourself in a state of complete existence, complete being, in which there is no sense of fear, no anxiety, no sense of obedience, compulsion; a complete state of being; a light that does not seek, that has no movement beyond itself.
To find the full significance of living, we must understand the daily tortures of our complex life; we cannot escape them. The society in which we live has to be understood by each one of us -- not by some philosopher, not by some teacher, not by a guru -- and our way of living has to be transformed, completely changed.
In that change, we find the great mystery that each mid is seeking. Concern ourselves with the understanding of this complex existence of everyday life.
Society is relationship between people. Society is cooperation. To come into contact with anything directly is not to verbalize it, but to look at it.
What you are, the world is. So your problem is the world’s problem.
Begin near, that is ~ with our daily existence, with our daily thoughts and feelings and actions.
Routine is deadly.
The world goes on, repeating the monotony, the boredom of life. Against this, intelligence is revolting.
To understand a problem requires not a ready-made answer, not trying to seek a solution for the problem, but a direct consideration of the problem itself, which is to approach it without the desire to find an answer. Then you are directly in relationship with the problem, then you are the problem; then the problem is no longer separate from yourself. That is the first thing to realize -- that the problem of existence, with all its complexities, is not different from ourselves.
Self-knowledge is the beginning of understanding problems. The more one is stupid, the more one is exclusive. Each exclusiveness creates its own problems.
To bring about a new order, we must understand disorder. It is only through negation that you understand the position, not by pursuit of the positive.
Blindly following another destroys you.
Why does one accept this tyranny of authority?
Conditioning is the root of fear, and where there is fear, there is no virtue.
One of the reasons we are occupied with God, with this, that or something else, is because in ourselves we are afraid to be lonely; in ourselves we are afraid to be empty.
Complete Attention Wipes Away Fear
To be free of fear, give complete attention. Do not run away from it; don’t try to change it; don’t try to control it; don’t try to suppress it. Be with it totally, completely, with complete attention. Then you will see that because there is no observer, there is no fear at all…
To be free of despair you have to understand despair itself, and not introduce the idea of hope. There is no end to the corridor of duality.
Passion without motive. Passion which is not the result of some commitment or attachment. To come upon beauty, there must be passion. Without passion you cannot see beauty. To have that passion there must be love. Just listen. You cannot practice love -- then it becomes mere kindliness, generosity, gentleness, nonviolence, peace; but it has nothing to do with love. And without passion and beauty, there is no love.
It is like leaving a door open. If you leave the door open, the breeze of an evening comes in. You cannot invite it; you cannot prepare for it; you just leave the door open. All you can do is leave the door of your mind open.
To begin, disentangle yourself to be free. Then leave the door open without any intention, without any purpose, without any motive, without any longing, then through the door comes something which cannot be measured by time or experience. Then you will know for yourself that there is something far beyond all the imagination of man, beyond time, beyond all inquiry.
Religions have separated people -- that’s one of the factors of great disorder. Nationalism is poisonous.
Use the essentials of life -- food, clothing, shelter -- supply those.
corporations that suck people in and exploit them in the name of state, capital or religion -- when you see the false and eradicate the false, there is transformation, there is evolution, and in that revolution, you can create a new society. Stop seeking security. There is no such thing.
Truth is something that cannot be given to you. You have to find it out for yourself. And to find it, you must be a law to yourself, you must be a guide to yourself. You must stand alone, not outwardly, but inwardly completely alone, which means, no fear.
Peace is your responsibility, the responsibility of each one of us. How you live your daily life. If you want peace in the world, you have to live peacefully. Because out of freedom from power and competition, you have love. Only a mind capable of loving will know what it is to live peacefully.
There is only one human race. What is your relationship to it?
Civilizations vary but culture throughout the world is fundamentally the same: to be compassionate, generous, to forgive and so on. The love of God and the freedom are not so easy to come by, yet without these, material welfare doesn’t mean much.
Peace is a state of mind. Freedom from all desire to be secure.
How extraordinarily important it is that there should be at least some who do not belong to any particular group or race or special religion or society. They will create the sisterhood of humanity for they will seek the truth. To be free from outward riches there must be the awareness of inward poverty, which brings untold riches.
A stone may direct the course of a river; so a small number may direct the course of culture.
Periodically one group exploits another group, and the exploitation brings on a violent crisis.
As the individual, so the nation, so the state. You may not transform another, but you can be certain of your own transformation.
To help another, you must know yourself. Like you, he is the result of the past. We are all interrelated. Spread light and peace. Otherwise you spread greater chaos and misery. To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness. The self is a book of many volumes.
Unless you and I establish a relationship of love, there is bound to be decline and deterioration.
Thought creates the thinker. Most of our relationship is based on this image-formation, and one hopes to establish relationship between images. When the image breaks up, there will be an inward peace.
We want a purpose only when we don’t understand or want a mode of conduct with an end in view. If I love you, is that not sufficient in itself? When we understand the ways of life, the everyday pain, anxiety, fear, ambition, greed, love, peace, harmony - that is life -- the total process of existence.
Reality is the unknown.
There is no right relationship, there is only understanding of relationship.
Deeply our life is a confusion, a mess, a misery, an agony. The more sensitive we are, the more the despair, the anxiety, the guilt, and naturally we want to escape because we haven’t found an answer, we don’t know how to get out of this confusion. We want to go to some other realm, to another dimension. We escape through music, through art, through literature, but it is just an escape. It has no comparison with what we are seeking. We must understand this demand for deep, abiding experience, because only the mind that does not seek or demand any experience enters a realm that is totally new.
We are astonishingly isolated. Our behavior leads to this isolation, this loneliness and we want to escape from it.
Wo, we have lost our relationship with nature. Homes would be a means of taking shelter. Since we do not love nature, we do not know how to love human beings and animals. We have lost the sense of tenderness, that sensitivity, that response to things of beauty. It is only in the renewal of that sensitivity that we can have understanding of what is true relationship. Sensitivity comes when the utilitarian outlook is put aside. We must use the earth as it is meant to be used.
The earth is ‘ours’ -- not an employer’s or employed, noone is the boss -- we need a feeling of ‘ourness’ -- our earth is to be cherished, to be created, to be cared for.
the whole hierarchical, authoritarian attitude toward life must come to an end.
We are human beings, not Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, or Muslims.
All people need basic physical necessities. They don’t belong to any ideological or political group.
Love, the Beauty of the Earth, Answers Any Problem
Watch the beauty of the sunset. You have denied all that because you have associated beauty with pleasure, and pleasure with sex, and so-called love.
Beauty is not that at all. Beauty is contact, yea communion with the sunset with all the color, loveliness and light… so that there is not you and object, which you are looking at.
Together we can observe the extraordinary phenomena of human existence.
Education must be for learning skills in the art of living, not mere acquisition of academic and intellectual skills, but an understanding of the whole human being mind and heart.
Human beings have to free themselves of fear, conditioning, authority and dogma through self-knowledge.
transform the world to a life of goodness, love and compassion
We all live in relationship. We live in relationship to one another, to our families, to the world, to the earth, and the universe. Every evil affects us all; but so does every good.
Most of us realize, when we are not too scared to look at it, that we are a very lonely people. Even in our our families, among friends, even with a boyfriend or girlfriend, we often feel isolated and lonely.
Even in the most intimate relationship with somebody, we are thinking about ourselves, our fears of being abandoned, our insecurities.
We are taught how to make a living, but not how to live.
The key to right relationship is to understand our own thinking, which is self-knowledge -- the ability to understand all the ways we have been conditioned to think and behave by our personal experience, our families, our culture, country, religions, our gender and biology.
If you don’t understand your own thinking, whatever you do think has little meaning. Without knowledge of your own biases and the impediments of biological or personal prejudice, without understanding your fears, your hurt, your anger, without the ability to see through and beyond them, all your thinking, all your relationships will be fogged or skewed. After all, self-knowledge is the basis for relationship.
You can find the truth about yourself in the most available mirror of all -- the mirror of relationship itself. You can see how you feel, what you think, how you behave just by carefully watching how you are in encounters with the people in your life every day. Life changes every minute, and so do you. Just notice what you are feeling.
This kind of self-knowledge and alertness in behavior brings freedom to your life and relationships. All human brains are more alike than unalike, and to understand yourself is to understand everyone else as well.
Life is enormous. If all we do is dig a hole and crawl into it, we’re going to miss the whole extraordinary experience of living. Live in love, not just with one person in particular, but with all life.
Psychological freedom: it is not our wars, inner and outer, that will set us free, but the truth about ourselves.
Someone else’s opinion about you and the way you live your life is no more nourishing than someone else eating your dinner.
I depend on you because you give me pleasure, you give me comfort, you give me satisfaction, you give me a sense of security, a balance, a harmony, a companionship, a togetherness.
Why do I want a boyfriend or a girlfriend so much?
Being isolated, we try to reach out for a companion, for friendship, for something that we can cling to. Intellectually, emotionally, physically, in the deeper levels of consciousness -- a constant demand to find someone, some idea, some hope, some kind of thing that will give a tremendous sense of being, a sense of identification with another or with ourselves. We do it because there is a sense of emptiness, of loneliness, or insufficiency in the ever self-centered activities.
In pleasure, there is always a subtle form of effort -- a seeking, craving, demanding, struggling to keep it, to get it.
In passion, there is not the slightest fulfillment, therefore there can be neither frustration nor pain. Passion is the freedom from the ‘me’ therefore passion is the essence of life. It is this that moves and lives. But when thought brings in all the problems of having and holding, then passion ceases.
The problem is not sex, but how to be free from the self.
Love is a state of being.
Communion - verbal, intellectual sharing. No barrier. Both meet at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity. That communion really transforms one’s whole state of mind. Love is only possible when there is the act of sharing. Otherwise it is mere emotionalism and sentimentalism.
Our everyday life is this act of imparting, listening and understanding. And for most of us, listening is one of the most difficult things to do. One hardly ever pays attention. Hardly ever sees or listens. But it is only in listening that one learns.
Relationship based on mutual need brings conflict. However interdependent we are, we are using each for for a purpose, for an end. A society based on mutual usage is the foundation of violence. When we use another, we only picture the end to be gained. This prevents communion.
The question == that is, not that you should not be loved, but that you should love. What does it mean? To help naturally without any motive, to be kind, to be generous, to have sympathy, to care for something. Most people have not got it. They are concerned with their achievements, their longings, with their success, with their knowledge. They have built up their past into such colossal importance that it ultimately destroys them.
generosity -- you give to somebody the little that you have
If you have that feeling of love, of generosity, of kindness, of gentleness, then perhaps you can awaken that in others.
Abstinence is only control. Their violence is in denying the flesh and every form of desire, every form of beauty. It is a waste of energy. A suppressed heart cannot know what love is. It cannot know love if it is caught in habit, in sensation.
Chastity can only exist when there is love. Without love, chastity is merely lust, in a different form. Life in the fullness of love is a revolution that will bring about a new world.
We all want companionship, we all want sexual relationships, a biological necessity. And we also want somebody on wom we can rely, in whom we can find security, in whom there is a sense of comfort, support. Because most of us cannot stand alone, on our own feet. We are never at home with anybody because we are living in our own thoughts. We are frightened to stand alone. Because life is very lonely, life is very, very complex and troublesome and one needs somebody with whom you can talk things over.
One finds out how to live with another without conflict. That requires a great deal of intelligence, integrity.
Love is not habitual; love is something joyous, creative, new.Therefore habit is the contrary of love. You can only act when there is an awakening of your mind and heart.
There is no loss of energy in being in love.
Fear is one of the barrier to intelligence. The essence of education is to help the student -- you and me -- to be aware and understand the causes of fear so that from childhood on, we can live free of fear.
The right kind of education is concerned with individual freedom, which alone can bring true cooperation with the whole. Freedom comes through self-knowledge, when the mind goes above its craving for security. The function of education is to help each individual discover the psychological hindrances, and not merely impose new patterns of conduct, new modes of thinking.
When we begin to understand the deep significance of human life, there can be true education. But to understand, the mind must free itself from the desire for reward which breeds fear and conformity. If we regard our children as personal property, then we shall build an environment, a social structure in which there is no love, but only a pursuit of self-centered advantages.
-
Right Education
The right kind of education is not possible en masse. To study, each child requires patience, alertness and intelligence. This calls for skill, interest, and above all, a sense of affection. The spirit of individual freedom and intelligence should pervade the whole school at all times.
It is particularly important for students and teachers to meet regularly to discuss all matters relating to the well being of the whole group. Thrash out the problems of discipline, cleanliness, food, etc. Self-government in school is a preparation for self-government in later life. The school should encourage children to understand one another’s difficulties and peculiarities, moods and tempers, for then they will be more thoughtful and patient in their relationship with others as they grow up.
The world we have created is so superficial, so artificial, so ugly if one looks behind the curtain, and we decorate the curtain hoping that everything will somehow come right.
An educator is one who points the way to wisdom, to truth, not merely a giver of information. To create a new society, each of us has to be a true teacher, which means that we have to be both the pupil and the master; we have to educate ourselves.
Freedom from Conditioning and Conforming
Freedom is not the outcome of discipline. Freedom does not come after conditioning the mind.
Do We Really Love Our Children?
Can parents claim to love their children when by educating them wrongly, they foster envy, enmity and ambition? It is love that stimulates the national and racial antagonisms which lead to war, destruction and utter misery?
If parents love their children, they will not belong to any organized religion; for dogma and believe divide people into conflicting groups, creating antagonism between people.
~
So it seems to me very important to find out what it is we are seeking. You will find that the mind is merely seeking some kind of satisfaction, some kind of pleasant invention which will gratify it; and once having found or created for itself a shelter of opinion and conclusion, therein it stays, so our search seemingly comes to an end. Or, if we are dissatisfied, we go from one to another, always trying to find a permanent security, inwardly as well as outwardly, a permanent happiness, a permanent peace.
When we do not understand our own urges and compulsions, they produce certain activities which create conflict in ourselves; and what we are seeking is to avoid or escape from this conflict, is it not?
Most of us seek security of some kind because our lives are an endless conflict. The boredom of life and the anxiety of life; the despair of existence; the feeling that you want to be loved and you are not loved; the shallowness, the pettiness of everyday existence -- that is our life. You want a permanent state where you will not be disturbed by anything, by any fear, by any anxiety, by any uncertainty, by any sense of guilt. Most of us seek that outwardly as well as inwardly.
When you see the truth that there is no security, then you are creative. You are not tethered to anything.
The actual state of every human being is uncertainty.
The fact is that all of us are insecure; there is nothing secure.
If you understand this question of security and insecurity you find yourself in a state of complete existence, complete being, in which there is no sense of fear, no anxiety, no sense of obedience, compulsion; a complete state of being; a light that does not seek, that has no movement beyond itself.
To find the full significance of living, we must understand the daily tortures of our complex life; we cannot escape them. The society in which we live has to be understood by each one of us -- not by some philosopher, not by some teacher, not by a guru -- and our way of living has to be transformed, completely changed.
In that change, we find the great mystery that each mid is seeking. Concern ourselves with the understanding of this complex existence of everyday life.
Society is relationship between people. Society is cooperation. To come into contact with anything directly is not to verbalize it, but to look at it.
What you are, the world is. So your problem is the world’s problem.
Begin near, that is ~ with our daily existence, with our daily thoughts and feelings and actions.
Routine is deadly.
The world goes on, repeating the monotony, the boredom of life. Against this, intelligence is revolting.
To understand a problem requires not a ready-made answer, not trying to seek a solution for the problem, but a direct consideration of the problem itself, which is to approach it without the desire to find an answer. Then you are directly in relationship with the problem, then you are the problem; then the problem is no longer separate from yourself. That is the first thing to realize -- that the problem of existence, with all its complexities, is not different from ourselves.
Self-knowledge is the beginning of understanding problems. The more one is stupid, the more one is exclusive. Each exclusiveness creates its own problems.
To bring about a new order, we must understand disorder. It is only through negation that you understand the position, not by pursuit of the positive.
Blindly following another destroys you.
Why does one accept this tyranny of authority?
Conditioning is the root of fear, and where there is fear, there is no virtue.
One of the reasons we are occupied with God, with this, that or something else, is because in ourselves we are afraid to be lonely; in ourselves we are afraid to be empty.
Complete Attention Wipes Away Fear
To be free of fear, give complete attention. Do not run away from it; don’t try to change it; don’t try to control it; don’t try to suppress it. Be with it totally, completely, with complete attention. Then you will see that because there is no observer, there is no fear at all…
To be free of despair you have to understand despair itself, and not introduce the idea of hope. There is no end to the corridor of duality.
Passion without motive. Passion which is not the result of some commitment or attachment. To come upon beauty, there must be passion. Without passion you cannot see beauty. To have that passion there must be love. Just listen. You cannot practice love -- then it becomes mere kindliness, generosity, gentleness, nonviolence, peace; but it has nothing to do with love. And without passion and beauty, there is no love.
It is like leaving a door open. If you leave the door open, the breeze of an evening comes in. You cannot invite it; you cannot prepare for it; you just leave the door open. All you can do is leave the door of your mind open.
To begin, disentangle yourself to be free. Then leave the door open without any intention, without any purpose, without any motive, without any longing, then through the door comes something which cannot be measured by time or experience. Then you will know for yourself that there is something far beyond all the imagination of man, beyond time, beyond all inquiry.
Religions have separated people -- that’s one of the factors of great disorder. Nationalism is poisonous.
Use the essentials of life -- food, clothing, shelter -- supply those.
corporations that suck people in and exploit them in the name of state, capital or religion -- when you see the false and eradicate the false, there is transformation, there is evolution, and in that revolution, you can create a new society. Stop seeking security. There is no such thing.
Truth is something that cannot be given to you. You have to find it out for yourself. And to find it, you must be a law to yourself, you must be a guide to yourself. You must stand alone, not outwardly, but inwardly completely alone, which means, no fear.
Peace is your responsibility, the responsibility of each one of us. How you live your daily life. If you want peace in the world, you have to live peacefully. Because out of freedom from power and competition, you have love. Only a mind capable of loving will know what it is to live peacefully.
There is only one human race. What is your relationship to it?
Civilizations vary but culture throughout the world is fundamentally the same: to be compassionate, generous, to forgive and so on. The love of God and the freedom are not so easy to come by, yet without these, material welfare doesn’t mean much.
Peace is a state of mind. Freedom from all desire to be secure.
How extraordinarily important it is that there should be at least some who do not belong to any particular group or race or special religion or society. They will create the sisterhood of humanity for they will seek the truth. To be free from outward riches there must be the awareness of inward poverty, which brings untold riches.
A stone may direct the course of a river; so a small number may direct the course of culture.
Periodically one group exploits another group, and the exploitation brings on a violent crisis.
As the individual, so the nation, so the state. You may not transform another, but you can be certain of your own transformation.
To help another, you must know yourself. Like you, he is the result of the past. We are all interrelated. Spread light and peace. Otherwise you spread greater chaos and misery. To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness. The self is a book of many volumes.
Unless you and I establish a relationship of love, there is bound to be decline and deterioration.
Thought creates the thinker. Most of our relationship is based on this image-formation, and one hopes to establish relationship between images. When the image breaks up, there will be an inward peace.
We want a purpose only when we don’t understand or want a mode of conduct with an end in view. If I love you, is that not sufficient in itself? When we understand the ways of life, the everyday pain, anxiety, fear, ambition, greed, love, peace, harmony - that is life -- the total process of existence.
Reality is the unknown.
There is no right relationship, there is only understanding of relationship.
Deeply our life is a confusion, a mess, a misery, an agony. The more sensitive we are, the more the despair, the anxiety, the guilt, and naturally we want to escape because we haven’t found an answer, we don’t know how to get out of this confusion. We want to go to some other realm, to another dimension. We escape through music, through art, through literature, but it is just an escape. It has no comparison with what we are seeking. We must understand this demand for deep, abiding experience, because only the mind that does not seek or demand any experience enters a realm that is totally new.
We are astonishingly isolated. Our behavior leads to this isolation, this loneliness and we want to escape from it.
Wo, we have lost our relationship with nature. Homes would be a means of taking shelter. Since we do not love nature, we do not know how to love human beings and animals. We have lost the sense of tenderness, that sensitivity, that response to things of beauty. It is only in the renewal of that sensitivity that we can have understanding of what is true relationship. Sensitivity comes when the utilitarian outlook is put aside. We must use the earth as it is meant to be used.
The earth is ‘ours’ -- not an employer’s or employed, noone is the boss -- we need a feeling of ‘ourness’ -- our earth is to be cherished, to be created, to be cared for.
the whole hierarchical, authoritarian attitude toward life must come to an end.
We are human beings, not Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, or Muslims.
All people need basic physical necessities. They don’t belong to any ideological or political group.
Love, the Beauty of the Earth, Answers Any Problem
Watch the beauty of the sunset. You have denied all that because you have associated beauty with pleasure, and pleasure with sex, and so-called love.
Beauty is not that at all. Beauty is contact, yea communion with the sunset with all the color, loveliness and light… so that there is not you and object, which you are looking at.
Read
February 6, 2014review (continued)
Beauty is not that at all. Beauty is contact, yea communion with the sunset with all the color, loveliness and light… so that there is not you and object, which you are looking at. The extraordinary communion without the object, without the thinker and the thought ~ that is beauty. And that is also love. Without love, you will find no answer to any problem in life. With love, you can do what you will. With love, there is virtue and there is humility.
Killing comes in many forms: killing by a word or gesture, in fear or anger. And does not comparison kill? For the safety or expansion of one nation, another is destroyed. Animals are killed for food or profit or sport. We destroy the cabbage or a carrot to eat, or destroy a pest. Where does it stop? So the issue isn’t merely the killing, but the cruelty and hate in each of us. That’s our real problem, isn’t it?
Be Part of the Wholeness
The lush green meadow was the center of the world. You were part of that center. You were part of that enchanted solitude.
The religious mind is a scientific mind -- able to observe facts without distortion, to see itself as it is. Innocent.
The religious mind is not fragmentary. It doesn’t divide life into compartments. It comprehends the totality of life -- the life of sorrow and pain, the life of joy and passing satisfactions.
The concept you have of God is not God. Without thought, there is a state of innocency no self-deception, no wanting, no desire for a result. Then you find out for yourself what is true.
You cannot hold the waters of the sea in a garment or capture the wind in your fist. But you can listen to the deep murmurings of the storm, to the violence of the sea, you can feel the enormous power of the wind, its beauty and its destructiveness. For you must destroy totally the old for something new to be.
Meditation is not Mantra, Prayer, Ritual or Other Form of Drug
Meditation is a state of attention to every thought and every feeling -- a silence, brought about naturally, effortlessly. Into that silence, the unknown may come.
Life Has No Answer
Life has only one thing, one problem, which is, living. Most of us want to be gratified, to find a safe place, a heaven with no disturbance. But as long as we seek, life will be disturbed.
You Cannot Come to Truth as a Beggar
When you pray, as a result of your confusion, misery, suffering, you ask someone to give you knowledge, comfort and you do have comfort. The asker generally receives what he asks for, but what he receives may not be the truth, and generally it is not the truth. Truth must come to you. You see the truth not by asking. But we are beggars, we everlastingly seek comfort, we seek some kind of state in which we will never be disturbed…
The mind, seeing thought in flux, impermanent, creates the thinker as the permanent, absolute, Atman, endless.
That which is measureless can only come into being, you cannot invite it, it will only come into being when the mind no longer demands, no longer asks, begs, prays, when the mind is free.
A religious man does not seek God. The religious man is concerned with the transformation of society, which is himself. The religious man is concerned totally and completely with the understanding of society, which is himself. This means a complete cessation of greed, envy, ambition -- not dependent on circumstances.
Religion is the love which is like the river, living, moving everlastingly. In that state you find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. Having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it -- that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don’t say, and that is the beauty of life.
Beauty is not that at all. Beauty is contact, yea communion with the sunset with all the color, loveliness and light… so that there is not you and object, which you are looking at. The extraordinary communion without the object, without the thinker and the thought ~ that is beauty. And that is also love. Without love, you will find no answer to any problem in life. With love, you can do what you will. With love, there is virtue and there is humility.
Killing comes in many forms: killing by a word or gesture, in fear or anger. And does not comparison kill? For the safety or expansion of one nation, another is destroyed. Animals are killed for food or profit or sport. We destroy the cabbage or a carrot to eat, or destroy a pest. Where does it stop? So the issue isn’t merely the killing, but the cruelty and hate in each of us. That’s our real problem, isn’t it?
Be Part of the Wholeness
The lush green meadow was the center of the world. You were part of that center. You were part of that enchanted solitude.
The religious mind is a scientific mind -- able to observe facts without distortion, to see itself as it is. Innocent.
The religious mind is not fragmentary. It doesn’t divide life into compartments. It comprehends the totality of life -- the life of sorrow and pain, the life of joy and passing satisfactions.
The concept you have of God is not God. Without thought, there is a state of innocency no self-deception, no wanting, no desire for a result. Then you find out for yourself what is true.
You cannot hold the waters of the sea in a garment or capture the wind in your fist. But you can listen to the deep murmurings of the storm, to the violence of the sea, you can feel the enormous power of the wind, its beauty and its destructiveness. For you must destroy totally the old for something new to be.
Meditation is not Mantra, Prayer, Ritual or Other Form of Drug
Meditation is a state of attention to every thought and every feeling -- a silence, brought about naturally, effortlessly. Into that silence, the unknown may come.
Life Has No Answer
Life has only one thing, one problem, which is, living. Most of us want to be gratified, to find a safe place, a heaven with no disturbance. But as long as we seek, life will be disturbed.
You Cannot Come to Truth as a Beggar
When you pray, as a result of your confusion, misery, suffering, you ask someone to give you knowledge, comfort and you do have comfort. The asker generally receives what he asks for, but what he receives may not be the truth, and generally it is not the truth. Truth must come to you. You see the truth not by asking. But we are beggars, we everlastingly seek comfort, we seek some kind of state in which we will never be disturbed…
The mind, seeing thought in flux, impermanent, creates the thinker as the permanent, absolute, Atman, endless.
That which is measureless can only come into being, you cannot invite it, it will only come into being when the mind no longer demands, no longer asks, begs, prays, when the mind is free.
A religious man does not seek God. The religious man is concerned with the transformation of society, which is himself. The religious man is concerned totally and completely with the understanding of society, which is himself. This means a complete cessation of greed, envy, ambition -- not dependent on circumstances.
Religion is the love which is like the river, living, moving everlastingly. In that state you find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. Having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it -- that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don’t say, and that is the beauty of life.
Read
September 25, 2012did like this
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews