Meditation is the ending of thought

Meditation in the ending of thought

What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but rather the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable. Through negation there is the positive state. Merely to gather, or to live in, experience, denies the purity of meditation. Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. The mind can never be made innocent through experience. It is the negation of experience that brings about that positive state of innocency which cannot be cultivated by thought. Thought is never innocent. Meditation is the ending of thought, not by the meditator, for the meditator is the meditation. If there is no meditation, then you are like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour. Wander by the seashore and let this meditative quality come upon you. If it does, don't pursue it. What you pursue will be the memory of what it was - and what was is the death of what is. Or when you wander among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and to the ending of it. Meditation is the root, the plant, the flower and the fruit. It is words that divide the fruit, the flower, the plant and the root. In this separation action does not bring about goodness: virtue is the total perception.

The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader Talks in Europe 1968

Life knows no division

Do not think that what I say applies to the young and not to the old, or vice-versa. I am emphasizing this because a friend of mine said the other day, "Why have you taken up this work? You are too young. You might still fall in love." As though spirituality were reserved for the aged and those with one foot in the grave. The moment you divide up life and think of its goal as something to be attained eventually in some distant future, the sweet purpose of this realisation is lost, because the eventuality of life is in the very movement of action. Life knows no division into young and old. - Early Works, circa 1930 Early Works, circa 1930

"Goal of Life " ( from early works)

The goal of life

Now this reality is something which I assert that I have attained. For me, it is not a theological concept. It is my own life-experience, definite, real, concrete. I can, therefore, speak of what is necessary for its achievement, and I say that the first thing is the recognizing exactly what desire must become in order to fulfil oneself, and then to discipline oneself so that at every moment, one is watching one's own desires, and guiding them towards that all-inclusiveness of impersonal love which must be their true consummation. When you have established the discipline of this constant awareness, this constant watchfulness upon all that you think and feel and do, then life ceases to be the tyrannical, tedious, confusing thing that it is for most of us, and becomes but a series of opportunities towards that perfect fulfillment. The goal of life is, therefore, not something far off, to be attained in the distant future, but it is to be realised moment by moment in that now which is all eternity.

Early Works, circa 1930

Purpose of Criticism

The purpose of criticism

Wherever I have been, the criticism with which people busy themselves about me deals nearly always with superficialities and is hardly worth answering.

For example, I was asked the other day why it is - if I have found that reality which I say I have discovered - I am so tired, I am not well. Naturally, if one travels from India to America and back again, one gets physically tired. I am not ill; I have got as much energy as anybody, but I reserve my energy for a particular purpose. If I worked at pitching tents here (editor's note, Eerde Gathering, Holland 1930), I should not have the energy to talk, so I prefer to keep my energy for talking, as this happens to be my metier. Personally, I do not mind if I talk or not. If you are willing to listen, then I will talk; if you are not, then that is the end of it. It does not make any difference to me personally.

Again, in India, people ask me why I shave twice a day, or once a day. Such criticism dissipates energy. What you should be criticising all the time, through your observation, is whether I am truly living that reality which I say I have attained - whether I am showing forth that perfection of self which I say that I have realised. To do this properly, you must understand that of which I am speaking. I am not saying this in a disparaging way. To understand anything, one must find out what it is all about. Similarly, when you rebel against anything, you must be sure what it is you are rebelling against. Before I deal with that reality, I want this to be settled, at least in your minds - I have to face it wherever I go, but that does not matter to me. But you who gather here every year, off and on, should have ceased from that kind of superficial criticism. You should not be asking yourselves why I do not live in a tent, why I live in a hut, why I live in a castle. (I am living in a hut, if you must know.) Please understand this, because to me it is very serious. I would much rather that you did not come to these Camps than you come every year and remain superficial.

Criticism is only of value in so far as it trains your observation so that it can eventually be turned on yourself. That is the purpose of criticism. I used to criticise everyone and everything; but afterwards I turned that criticism upon myself to see if that which I criticised outside myself remained in my own heart and mind. The moment I turned that light of criticism upon myself, I began to grow, I began to destroy the unessential.

Early Works, circa 1930 "Krishnamurti" by Pupul Jayakar

Y dont' U form / found a community, Mr.JK ?

Why do you want me to found a community?

Question: Instead of addressing heterogeneous crowds in many places and dazzling and confounding them with your brilliance and subtlety, why do you not start a community or colony and create a reference for your way of thinking? Are you afraid that this could never be done?

Krishnamurti: Sir brilliance and subtlety should always be kept under cover, because too much exposure of brilliance only blinds. It is not my intention to blind or show cleverness, that is too stupid; but when one sees things very clearly, one cannot help setting them out very clearly. This you may think brilliant and subtle. To me, what I am saying is not brilliant: it is the obvious. That is one fact.

The other is, you want me to found an ashram or a community. Now, why? Why do you want me to found a community? You say that it will act as a reference, that is, something which can be pointed out as a successful experiment. That is what a reference implies, does it not? - a community where all these things are being carried out. That is what you want. I do not want to found an ashram or a community, but you want it. Now, why do you want such a community? I will tell you why. It is very interesting, is it not?

You want it because you would like to join with others and create a community, but you do not want to start a community with yourself; you want somebody else to do it, and when it is done you will join it. In other words, Sir, you are afraid of starting on your own, therefore you want a reference. That is, you want something which will give you authority of a kind that can be carried out. In other words, you yourself are not confident, and therefore you say, `Found a community and I will join it'. Sir, where you are you can found a community, but you can found that community only when you have confidence. The trouble is that you have no confidence.

Why are you not confident? What do I mean by confidence? The man who wants to achieve a result, who gets what he wants, is full of confidence the business man, the lawyer, the policeman, the general, are all full of confidence. Now, here you have no confidence. Why? For the simple reason you have not experimented. The moment you experiment with this, you will have confidence. Nobody else can give you confidence; no book, no teacher can give you confidence.

Encouragement is not confidence; encouragement is merely superficial, childish, immature. Confidence comes as you experiment; and when you experiment with nationalism, wit even the smallest thing, then as you experiment you will have confidence, because your mind will be swift, pliable; and then where you are there will be an ashram, you yourself will found the community.

That is clear, is it not? You are more important than any community. If you join a community, you will be as you are - you will have somebody to boss you, you will have laws, regulations and discipline, you will be another Mr. Smith or Mr. Rao in that beastly community. You want a community only when you want to be directed, to be told what to do. A man who wants to be directed is aware of his lack of confidence in himself. You can have confidence, not by talking about self-confidence, but only when you experiment, when you try. Sir, the reference is you, so, experiment, wherever you are, a whatever level of thought. You are the only reference, not the community; and when the community becomes the reference, you are lost. I hope there will be lots of people joining together and experimenting, having full confidence and therefore coming together; but for you to sit outside and say, `Why don't you form a community for me to join?', is obviously a foolish question.

J. Krishnamurti The Collected Works, Vol. V